California & Hawaii
During our three days there we took the trolley bus tour that took us to Old San Diego. There is a layout of museums showing all memorabilia from the Wild West days. The bus goes down to the harbour and through the main town and then across the amazing high bridge to a place called Coronado Island, this offers a great beach resort and very cosmopolitan. It has the largest US Navy air base. Back on the mainland there is the largest US naval dock yard, which is home to the USS Midway, which is now a floating museum and well worth a visit, we spent four hours on board.
The next stop on our trip was to head north to Santa Monica, one of the beach areas of Los Angeles, famous for its pier and boardwalk. We stayed here for three nights. We hired bicycles from the hotel and cycled for some miles along the boardwalk, calling in at the famous Muscle beach, where all the body builders are on show. We spent another day driving along the coast to Malibu, another part of Highway 1 coast road. We then drove up towards the famous Hollywood sign, down to the shops of Rodeo Drive and popped in for a visit to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I just happened to see Brad Pitt coming out of The Polo Lounge having dined there.
Off we went to Hawaii, our first stop, and we arrived in Honolulu for one night. We walked the length of Waikiki Beach which is full of high rise hotels with a lot of people surfing. The next morning we took the local bus to Pearl Harbour, it did take about an hour and half though with all the traffic and traffic lights. You could actually spend a whole day there. We were limited as we were due to travel to the port and pick up our Hawaiian cruise ship.
We set off from Honolulu and headed towards Maui, where we were docked for two days. The first day we went on a trip to Iao Valley, a beautiful rain forest area, then on to a fruit and nut plantation, and finally onto an aquarium known as the Maui Ocean Centre, which was amazing. We should have really had a car for these two days as we would have seen more.
Next stop was Hawaii, known as The Big Island. The first side of the island was Hilo where we went on a trip to the most recent eruption of Kilauea. We walked out on new land from the eruption in 1982, it was a fabulous experience, and there were even the beginnings of new coconut trees on the land. The second day of this island was from Kona on the opposite side. We got a tender into shore from the ship, a lovely town, home to lots of restaurants, bars and hotels. We spent some time on the beach there.
Our final island was Kaui. We were there for about a day and a half. We had decided to hire a car for day one and drove up to Waimea Canyon, what an awesome sight. We just managed to catch up on the beauty before the weather came in, the mountain is known as one of the wettest places on earth! We then travelled around the other side of the island and headed along east and up to north, but had to turn back due to the rain and fog. On the last afternoon the ship leaves port at 2pm and sails north to see the area that is not accessible by road, truly spectacular scenery, very rugged. Some of the scenes from Jurassic Park were filmed in this area due to the ancient and dramatic landscape. We even had the pleasure of hump back whales playing alongside the ship, a definite highlight of the trip.
Back to Honolulu on Oahu and our flight home via a night in Los Angeles to break up the long journey. A great holiday experience!
