USA

After Easter we set off to Waikiki Beach for a 4 day conference that Kev was to attend. Luckily I befriended Nikki, David Stimpsons wife who was my partner in crime for those 4 days and we managed to hike Diamond Head Crater, take Hoola lessions, shop the Waikele outlet shops, take a catamaran ride out past the headland, go in an outrigger race and drink our way through the cocktail list at the Banyan Tree Bar...(starting and finishing on the Blue Hawaiian).

The conference activities in the evenings were great too, they all involved beautiful buffet meals and all drinks inclusive set up in the ballroom. One evening the 750 of us attended a traditional luau in front of the Royal Hawaiian (the pink palace) on the lawn. We watched a show and ate traditional food. After the meal I was (un)lucky enough to be chosen from the crowd to be taken up on stage, dressed up in a sarong and grass hat and shown by the dancers how to 'hoola'! (Very nervous smile)
My 15 seconds of fame was spend clapping stupidly from nervousness and doing some kind of movement that looked like the Tennessee WigWam. Anyway, its all on camera..great!

The last night of the conference the theme of the evening was 'True Blue Aussie in Hawaii'

After the conference was over Kev & I set off in a hire car, first time behind a wheel on the right hand side of the car and on the right hand side of the highway..up to the North Shore to see the great pipeline. However pipeline was a little sad that day and told we had to wait for Winter to see the huge swells..(which we intend to do in the future). The other side of Oahu was extremely different, all very overgrown jungle on the roadsides, the sounds of roosters, old worn out looking beach shacks, in need of much paint. But it had character..the awesome jagged verticle cliffs that hugged the roadside were just breathtaking. We booked into our bed and breakfast as there are no hotels over there on the Windward Coast, in a town called Kailua. Our hosts were Barbara and David, a 'very' retired couple. David was an optometrist and bragged about being 80 years of age. He looked very fit and tanned for an old bloke, but very deaf! Barbara who was a little younger told us she went out with a group of friends 3 times a week outrigging. Living life the way I plan to!

The following day we set about back to the Ka'awwa valley ranch which is a huge property owned by a family that consists of a valley between rows of these spectacular cliffs. The ranch is used for Hollywood movie filming, and has had Jurassic Park, Godzilla, Platoon, 50 First Dates, and the TV Series Lost shot there. We hired 4 wheel motor bikes, ATV's as they call them and did a 2 hour tour through the creek and bushland of this gorgeous valley. What an awesome 2 hours!

Ka'awwa Valley, you can see Hurley's golf course (Lost) to the right

I was put up the front because of my bad driving

Apart from Kev having a few surfs at Waikiki, talking with heaps of locals, cruising around in our little convertible crysler, checking out the great beaches, we didn't get up to much else. It wasn't long before we were back on the plane for the 10 hour journey home. It was strange spending the afternoons back in reality without the 5.30pm Hawaiian singers and hoola girls by the pool, watching the lighting of the torches on the beach, and enjoying those gorgeous sunsets.

View from our hotel room, Waikiki

Sunset Waikiki Beach