After nine days on Big Island and ten on Maui we’re now back in Waikiki on Oahu, enjoying the last days of our trip. It’s been great and I can’t say we’re looking forward to coming back to the cold weather back home.

After our amazing manta ray encounter on Big Island, we headed to Hilo on the other side of the island. Here we experienced the forces of nature in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where we saw a smoking volcanic crater and walked on the hardened lava landscape while feeling the heat from the flowing lava in the cracks beneath us. Our last day on Big Island we spend kayaking and snorkeling in Kealakekua bay, where we saw spinner dolphins playing and the site where James Cook was killed.

Our next stop was Maui. Here we drove the famous Road to Hana, twisting through tropical jungle and over dozens of cliff-hugging, narrow one-lane bridges. On the way was several small and bigger waterfalls, which we swam in. We went on a snorkel cruise to Molokini, a sunken volcanic crater, which unfortunately had as many snorkelers as fish. We saw the sunrise from the top of Haleakala volcanic crater and lastly we had a go with the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing!

Here back in Waikiki we've among other things spend a day snorkeling at Hanauma Bay Nature reserve and Martin and me have done some more diving, seeing both ships wrecks, squids, an eagle ray and of course more turtles!

First off, Hawaii is amazing!!

Our first week was spend on Oahu, which is the island where Honolulu is. Here, a lot of time was spend on diving; Gry, Stefan and Martin spend 4 days getting their the PADI Open Water Certificate, and on one af the days I went with them. The guys' diving instructor took some great shots of us underwater, which you can see here.
The rest of the time was spend on just strolling around, doing some shopping, relaxing on the beach and of course a visit to Pearl Harbor. You can see the photos from Oahu here.

Next we headed to the Big Island, where we are now. Here we've experienced the diversity this island has to offer - this is the only island in the world which has four eco-systems (rainforest, desert, vulcanos and the sea). We spend a day going to the top of the highest vulcano in the world, Mauna Kea, which is 4200 meters above the ocean and had the most amazing view over the entire island. Then we've spend a day hiking in a lush walley, seeing a waterfall and a black sand beach.

And yesterday we went diving with manta rays - first a day dive, where we saw all kinds of different fish and was lucky enough to be accompanied by two manta rays at the end of the dive. After an hour or so and the boat, watching the sun set, we jumped in the water again to do the famous manta ray night dive! Divers and snorkelers from the different boat all jump i the water around the same time, and gathers around one spot, pointing their lights in the same directions, so we all forms a sort of light-cone. The lights attract plankton which attracts the manta rays, who feeds of it. The entire dive was spend in awe, just sitting on the bottom gazing at the magnificent creatures that floated around in the water, doing flips and looking like they were having the time of their lives :) They came so close that we could touch them and some of them actually touched us, hitting our lights or our heads with their giant wings, nothing harmful of course. It was an experience of a lifetime! We've bought a video of us down there, which we'll be happy to show you when we get back. If you can't wait, you can catch a glimpse of the manta rays on the dive shops homepage.