Unusual beaches along the Hana Highway

As we set off for our second roadtrip along the Hana Highway we had our windscreen wipers on full whack. All the beautiful waterfalls with inviting waterholes were now wild torrents with brown water gushing down forming whirl pools. We’d envisioned a day of jumping in the refreshing pools but we’d have a death wish…

Walking on Mars in Maui | Hawaii

Maui totally wowed us today, it’s such a varied island with idyllic beaches, a sea full of wildlife, roads through rainforests, plummeting waterfalls and lush valleys. The island is over 10,000ft high and at the very top is a giant volcano crater full of cinder cones and red volcanic soil…that’s what truly wowed us. It…

Somewhere over the rainbow in Maui | Hawaii

I love days full of variety; we didn’t really know what we were doing with our day but it all worked out rather well from swimming with turtles and watching a blowhole and the sun create constant rainbows to wandering around old towns and beautiful road trips. We began in the warm morning sunshine at…

Roadtrip through Maui’s rainforest and waterfalls

The Hana highway is only 52 miles long yet it has over 600 twists and turns and 50 or so one-lane bridges, it takes about two and a half hours of constant driving to reach Hana. We set off early in our modest rental car and followed convertible mustangs along the winding road. The highway…

A warm welcome to Hawaii

So here we are, two backpackers basking in the Hawaiian sunshine, squeezin’ fresh limes from the trees out back into our coconut rum cocktails, life’s good in Maui. We are by no means on a backpacker budget here, our Airbnb room in Kihei, southwestern Maui costs £50 a night, but on the plus side we…

Sumo wrestlers and more in Tokyo

If we came all the way to Japan and didn’t see a Sumo Wrestler we would be very disappointed. The day didn’t begin well as we were behind schedule for the sumo practice at Arashio Beyo. Then we stupidly bought the wrong metro pass and had to walk large distances to save buying another ticket….

First day in Tokyo

Craig and I have explored lots of cities around the world but we’ve never lost each other…that was until we visited Tokyo. We went to the Asakusa area and wandered around the shrines, I told Craig I wanted to take a quick photo so did it in seconds, continued through a gate and stopped to…

Incredible views of Mount Fuji

It took seven trains to get from Osaka to Kawaguchiko which is part of the Fuji Five Lakes region. We did take one wrong train but still it would of taken six if we did it right. A bullet train took us most of the distance and we even got our first glimpse of Mount…

The wild deer of Nara and 30,000 cherry trees, Japan

It was a miserable day and totally pouring with rain but we didn’t have any spare time to kill so headed to Nara as planned. A very wet walk even in our ponchos took us to Nara Park which wasn’t a typical park and lots of roads cut through it. The park is home to…

Exploring Kyoto’s top sights

The bamboo grove of Arashayama is an image I’ve seen posted online numerous times and finally it was our chance to see it. Sadly everyone else had the same idea…it was heaving and totally impossible to take a photo without anyone else in it. The bamboo forest wasn’t as vast as I expected, just a…