Incredible rock pools along Oahu’s wild coast

We arrived at Hanauma Bay an hour later than planned thanks to us missing the bus, not just missing it but watching it go past on the road parallel to us. Brilliant. Hanauma bay was formed in a volcano cone beside the coast and over time seawater has flooded it creating a diverse area for…

Swimming with dolphins in the wild | Hawaii

There’s something very special about swimming with dolphins in the wild; they decide if they swim with you, they’re not kept in a horrible glass tank and passed from one tourists to another or forced to perform tricks for food. In the wild they come and go as they please, they hunt their own food…

Shark cage tour in Oahu | Hawaii

The north shore of O’ahu is home to world famous waves and a variety of sharks. We’re only good at riding basic waves so we left that for the pros and decided to go on a Shark Cage tour splashing out $100 for the trip from Haleiwa. We decided to save a few pennies on…

Surfing with turtles and hiking Maui’s valleys

The first day we went surfing in Maui we lasted a mere two minutes before a lifeguard on a jet ski zoomed past telling everyone to get out of the sea as a shark had been spotted. All of the coast around our Airbnb house and surf board rental place was closed for the rest…

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…