Everybody's family here!

We've heard Hawaii called "the friendly isles" - and they're not wrong! We've visited two islands now - first of all the dry west coast of the Big Island (pronounced Ha-Vy-ee as the island, as part of Ha-Wy-ee, the American State!!!) and then beautiful Kauai, the most westerly island, before returning to the east and south of Big Island ... don't ask us WHY we're all over the place - we're just going along for the ride! On both islands we've been treated like family - today's bus driver called us 'cousins' - and made to feel incredibly welcome.

Yesterday we landed at Nawiliwili and travelled through former sugar cane country (now planted with coffee trees) beside beautiful sandy beaches, then on to the Waimea canyon, which is reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, but nowhere near so grand! We visited the place where Captain Cook first landed, and some wonderful blow holes. Today we landed at Hilo and travelled to the Kilawea volcano - a large caldera with lots of steam and sulphurous gases blowing out, which we viewed from an observatory on the rim of the caldera, while the earth moved gently under our feet! From there we went to a botanical garden, full of the same plants as we try to grow at home, but really luxuriant, due to the rainfall of 3000 millimetres (120 inches) a year. It was so beautiful that it inspired John to buy a beautiful arrangement of pale pink anthuriums and deep pink ginger for our cabin!

Thanks to all of you who've registered comments to our blogs - you can also write to us at windolf@ozemail.com.au as we check our mail every couple of days. Hope this gets through - we're having some trouble with satellite connections!

Pane (Frances) and Keonii (John)