Waikiki: A challenging wilderness experience?
As it came to February 2005, my sister and I felt we both needed a holiday. We were delighted to realise we could take the same couple of weeks leave from our respective jobs. The decision was made to go OS but where? Our holiday key selection criteria were fairly straight forwards. Our destination had to, in order of importance:
a. Get us out of the summer heat,
b. Have deck chairs or similar on which to lounge, read, snooze and write post cards, and
c. Involve some sort of reasonably challenging wilderness experience.
When we thought about it, atlas open before us, we found our choices were few. For instance, an ecology cruise to the Antarctic would satisfy criteria (a) and (c) but not (b). Similarly, a package holiday to Fiji would satisfy (b) but not (a) and (c) and the famous Salzburg ‘Sound of Music’ tour (that was my idea) in the European mid-winter would deal with (a) and less likely (c).
You may not know that zimbles have an innate fascination with exciting natural phenomena such as meteorites, deep sea trenches and tornados. Hence, it came as no surprise to near and dear, when we decided on Hawaii: volcanos here we come! A quick email to our ever cheerful travel agent, Manic-Louise and it was F.A.B. Virgil! A short(ish) hop across the Pacific and there we were, first on Oahu and then on the island of Maui.
From Maui, we joined a day tour to “The Big Island” to see Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It was an awesome experience (almost better than 'quokka' on a triple word score!). I’d love to go back and walk rather than coach through the park.
Here are some of my favourite lava photos from the trip.
Molten rock at 1100 C. It was a bit warm standing there.
The southern flank of Kilauea. 
More lava.
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