The rugged North Shore of Hawai'i

Hawaii certainly lives up to all the images that were floating round my head. Lush green hills, flowers behind ears, bold Hawaiian shirts, and many many Americans.

cool chevrolet

We stayed on Oahu, the main island where the international airport is situated. Honolulu is a busy city with sky scarpers lining the horizon and waves lapping up to shore and airstrip.

As we are not city dwellers we hired a car from the airport and took a scenic drive around the island via winding roads, long tunnels and spectacular views until we reached our final destination. We stayed at a backpacker hostel on the north shore, close to Sunset beach and Banzai Pipeline (surfers will know exactly where this is!).

Our hostel, named the 'Brown House', is a funky house on 3 stories, made from chunky dark wood with balconies and steps at different levels. The hostel attracts mainly surfers in the winter wanting to surf and break boards on the hugely powerful waves that beat the rugged north shore. Luckil for us the waves during summer as not nearly as big, but we did see some photos from winter 2006 a friend had taken: waves with a 20ft faces, complete with 4 or 5 surfers all competing to get the advantage for the wave to make it their own.

green turtle

We kite surfed at two main places. The first was Kailua Bay, a large sheltered bay with turquoise waters and a long sandy beach. The other spot we spent time at was Mokuleia, on the north shore. This area is marked on the map as shark infested!! and also a hammerhead breeding ground, but received much stronger winds than Kailua Bay (on the east coast). Luckily we didn't see any sharks at this spot, however last sunday a tiger shark attacked a surfer at the same spot in Mokuleia. Luckily the surfer had quick reactions and shoved his surfboard towards the shark, which could only take a large bite of fibreglass, and then swam off disgusted. A lucky escape and real-life enough for us not to kitesurf there again.

Ha ha

Hawaii is now lodged in my mind as the place where we jumped out of a perfectly good airplane at 14,000ft to gain the ultimate adrenalin rush of skydiving. The skydiving centre and runway was next to the kiting spot in Mokuleia so we saw many people's brightly coloured chutes filling the sky day after day. It took one visit the centre to book a skydive for the following day. So the next day was quite overcast and there was a thick band of clouds so we were not even sure whether the jump would be going ahead. However the staff are very persuasive and had us signing our lives away in a paper contract and we were in the airplane quicker than we could protest. The small plane with its bright graffiti took off and climbed high in the sky. During the ascent the pilot took it upon himself to read a newspaper... At the highest altitude the door opened and people started piling out. I was the last in the plane to go and once I had jumped out, the plane did some aerobatics and breathtaking death rolls for me to watch. (As if I didn't have enough on my mind than to think the plane wing would hit me...!!) The adrenalin rush was HUGE and the feeling of falling at 120mph was amazing. Not one thought of un-opened parachutes popped into my mind. My instructor, who was strapped to my back gave me a running commentary of the island and pointed out some of the film locations where 'Lost' the addictive TV series was filmed. The landing was a little sketchy but we landed safely none the less.

he he

The north shore is also a breeding and feeding zone was green turtles who lodge themselves on the beaches for several hours to lap up the sunlight before they leave to find more food to eat. We saw heaps of them in the water and when snorkeling one evening one came up behind me and swiped me with one of its huge flippers.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable time in Hawaii and think it is a destination we will visit again in the future, but perhaps to the windsurf mecca Maui to experience the strong kona winds. Leaving Hawaii has marked an end to a large part of our travels, as in Dominica Republic we will both we working so will not be quite as free as a bird as we have been over the past 8 months (lucky us)

incoming!

Kailua Bay

Mokuleia Beach

moments after the skydive

our hostel

storm approaching

sunset beach

the famous surf town sign

this was outside the skydive centre

wall murials