Hawaiian Vacation Take 2

More thoughts on the island of Hawai'i - the flowers there are just amazing. I liked the lava - but there's a lot of it to see. You just look and look and look, and hey - there's more lava! I wouldn't mind visiting there again, because we had only a few hours to look around, but of the four islands we visited it was my least favorite. I'd totally give it another chance, I'm sure there's more there to see then what we got a taste of.

The next day we hit Oahu. I have been there a couple of times, and John had been there before too, and we haven't been that impressed by it. I mean, come on now, it's HAWAII, right? How bad could it be? But Honolulu is a big city, and the traffic is horrendous. Getting out of Honolulu is a must if you want to spend much time enjoying the island.

This time, we got off the beaten path and John's cousin found an island we could snorkel to called Goat Island. Once we got there, we had the beach to ourselves save the two people that walked by at one point. Snorkeling out there was a bit rough, and on the way back we all decided to walk across the rocks instead of swimming. The water had gotten even more rough, so I'm glad we did.

We spent some time just tooling around the island, taking pictures at all the appropriate places, eating Shave Ice and hitting a cute little farm. The drive from Honolulu to Goat Island was beautiful and it was the best experience I'd had on Oahu. I would happily go back and probably want to stay on the North Shore. I liked the beaches there and the slower pace was nice.

We had a longer time on Oahu, (the ship didn't leave until 11pm) but we had to have our car back at a certain time, so we got back on the ship around 6:00 and went to dinner. We played some games on deck and took it easy the rest of the night.

Here we are at China Man's hat - Matt tells us that you can snorkel out to that island too - we'll have to try that some day!