After begrudgingly getting up at 5am we managed to catch the first ferry to Maui, where we then caught a taxi to our rented condo in Kihei on the South coast.

The Condo was to be our home for the next week, and it was brilliant! The condo was huge with 2 seperate bedrooms, a great kitchen and dining room as well as a huge lounge with a massive flat screen tv. We had unlimited use of the property's facilities which included a large outdoor swimming pool, a full size tennis court and a table tennis table. It was the perfect place to hang out. The first 5 nights consisted of sunbathing, perfecting the art of the running bomb into the pool, staying in bed till mid afternoon (well that was just Reidy) watching films and eating homecooked food done by Claire. Just what we wanted and needed - theres only so much Subway, Mcdonalds, Burger King, Dennys, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut (the list goes on) you can take...

For the last couple of days we hired a car to see more of the island.

We visited Mcenna beach, which we were told was something like the 3rd mst beautiful beach in the world. It wasn't. There was nothing wrong with it but it was just an average beach. The waves were great again though and with a tennis ball we were entertained for hours. We came up with a game where we just sat there on the beach and let these huge waves just wipe us out and drag us all over the place.

On our last day we drove to Hana, again this was said to be the most beautiful drive in the world. It wasn't. It was just a nice drive with a couple of good views. It was nothing compared to New Zealand to be honest. We got to Hana and saw a black sandy beach which was different. We saw some caves where legend has it that some princess killed herself thousands of years ago.

We had a bit of a night out on our last night in Maui, having a really good meal and going to a couple of bars in the town centre. We left the day after on the morning boat and spent just one night in Honalulu before we all shared a very early morning (4AM!!) taxi to airport for our nex flights. We were heading to LA and Reidy and Claire were heading to Fiji (jealous!). We said our goodbyes and then went to catch our flights.

Our time in Hawaii has been great, but mainly because it was such good fun spending time with Reidy and Claire - even though we havent seen them for going on 12 months, it only felt like we'd been apart 5 minutes!

Hawaii itself just felt like America. We wrongly imagined it would be palm trees, coconuts and hammocks whilst sipping cocktails by stunning sunny beaches...what we got was tower blocks, shops, and takeaways on every street corner.