Hawai'i - Part 4 - Back to Honolulu

We arrived back in Honolulu only slightly later than if we had taken our original flight, but almost $300 lighter!!We are booked back into the same hotel we were in last week as we left a case here - thankfully it was still here when we got back!!!

We have just 2 days left in Hawai'i so the next day (Sunday) we spent on the beach keeping the tan topped up.On Monday we took the GrandCircleIsland tour which we really should have done at the start of our 2 weeks here as it gives you a taste of the whole island!!Oh well, we now have an excuse to come back and visit the places we got a flavour of today.

This was a full day tour on a lovely air conditioned coach with a great driver / tour guide called Cousin Duke.He was very funny and kept us entertained for the entire trip, as well as teaching us to speak Hawaiian.

Some of the sights we visited included the beach where they filmed "From Here to Eternity", the location of some of the scenes from "Lost" and "Jurrasic Park", Mac Nut Farm, Coral Kingdom (where we had a Hawaiian plate lunch), the Dole pineapple plantation and a special unscheduled stop where we watched giant Hawaiian Green Turtles basking in the sun.

Cousin Duke also pointed out to us the dip in the island where the Japanese planes attacked the military bases just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour - this location also featured in the film Tora! Tora! Tora!

Our time in Hawaii has sadly come to an end - we both loved the islands and wished we could have stayed longer (in fact we did try to change our flights just before Christmas but Air New Zealand wanted $150 each plus the difference in the cost of the flights!!).We had to get up at 4:00 am for our 5:00 taxi to the airport as our flight leaves at 6:45 am.It is only an internal flight so we didn't need as long at the airport to check in…. or so we thought.

As we were returning to the US mainland, they have very strict regulations about fruit etc being taken into the country so before we could even get to the check in desk we had to line up to go through Agricultural Inspection.We passed this successfully and joined the line to have our luggage weighed - this wasn't so successful! I was slightly over (53 lb) but they let mine go but Ant was about 5 lb over so we had to take some clothes out of his case and cram them into his already jammed hand luggage.Once we got over this hurdle we joined the line to check in which was actually quite quick and pain free!!

This left us with just enough time to grab a coffee and some oatmeal from Starbucks before our flight was called!!!Internal flights in the US don't offer a complimentary food service and as we had so little time (and none of the stores were open at that time of the morning anyway), we spent the 5 hour flight feeling quite hungry despite the oatmeal!!!