We had to set the alarm for this morning, Chay and I had to be at another Wyndham resort down the road by 8:30am for the official sales pitch routine that was a requirement of us getting the discount card that has already saved us plenty on the helicopter tour we had booked for later in the day. We can spare a little time to save a lot of money! It had bucketed down overnight again, we had to run from the car to the resort venue between downpours but still looked like drowned rats. The guy doing the presentation, Shane, turned out to be an ex-pro surfer, he took a shine to us and has decided hes giving us a surf lesson on his day off later this week, who are we to argue?? Leo has been wanting to try surfing for ages, perfect opportunity :)

Back to our room to rustle up the kids (they'd eaten but were still in their PJs, no surprises there!), we hit the road to Lihue and enjoyed a leisurely 45min drive along the coast. The rain had stopped by mid-morning and the cloud was lifting, all looking good for our 3pm take off. Following a recommendation from Shane for a few good lunch spots we settled on Duke's at Nawiliwili Bay, which is right by the heli tour company's office. While most people wanted to sit out front in the baking sun, we opted for the cooler shaded area inside by the Koi pond, really nice. Awesome service and great food too.

We checked in for our flight with Sunshine Helicopters then had some time to spare, which we filled by looking at the neighbouring shops. Bought a couple of t-shirts, and some nail polish that changes colour in UV light - hey, I am a girl after all! :)

A quick safety briefing and introductions with our fellow passengers, all from mainland USA. They decided seeing as we'd travelled twice as far from Australia they better stop complaining about their 5 hour flight! We all piled into the shuttle for the quick trip to the airport, remembering our allocated pilots and seat numbers (based on even weight distribution). Turns out our pilot is the guy I've been emailing to enquire about kite boarding! Still no definite date booked in for that yet.

As this was Cody and Leo's first ever helicopter flight it was interesting to see how they coped - like total pros! Smiles all round :) We took off from Lihue Airport and followed the standard tour route of clockwise around the island, towards the south coast first where our pilot pointed out the land that 'for sale' in the George Clooney movie The Descendants, before turning inland to view Jurassic Falls (can't recall the official name), which featured in the first Jurassic Park movie in the opening as the helicopter descends to the island. Over to Waimea Canyon, the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific", we'll be driving up there in the next few days. The lookout at the top is perched on a ridge that has a spectacular view, although I think we probably had a BETTER view from the air! We dropped right down into Kalalau Valley, the most photographed area with its gorgeous green and red landscape. We moved out to the Napali Coast, over the water so we could look back at the amazing lava tube formations from thousands of years ago - it really is spectacular. The flight along the Napali Coast was just stunning, its easy to see why theres no road along there! Even hiking it would be pretty hard going, its an 11 mile trail one way, although Kalalau Beach is a very worthy reward for your efforts.

We passed along the North Shore and familiar locations from our drive the previous day, through Hanalei Bay and then turned up the valley to check out another waterfall. We turned towards the centre of the island and into the crater of Mt Waiale'ale, the wettest spot on Earth. The vertical walls, lush greenness and numerous waterfalls reminded me a lot of Fiordland, New Zealand, aka 'home' :) This place definitely takes the prize for rainfall, with an average of 452 inches (11.5 metres) and a record of 683 inches (17.3 metres!) in 1982.

Coming back towards Lihue Airport we passed over Wailua Falls, the twin waterfall made famous by the TV series Fantasy Island (I know you're all saying "The plane! The plane!" right now, aren't you? ) We arrived back around 50min after we took off, although it seemed much longer - perhaps that was because our attention was riveted on the scenery and not the time! Well worth the money spent in our opinion, we saw things we couldn't have otherwise seen unless we hiked for hours or days.

A round of amazing gelatos from Papalani Gelato (excellent was the overall verdict!), we collected 'Julia' from the car park for our drive back to Princeville. We stopped at the Kilauea Lighthouse on the way back, situated at the northern-most point of the Hawaii Islands. The Lighthouse itself was closed so we could only see it from the end of the access road, but this is the one that featured in "Lilo and Stitch", the Disney cartoon movie. No Lilo or Stitch to be seen though :)

Our usual salad for dinner with cold meats, the boys had a frozen pizza, watched another DVD movie, and off to bed around 9pm for a very happy family after a pretty busy day.