We’ve been enjoying the Hawaiian sun for the past couple of days, which was a welcome relief after the cooler days in San Francisco. We were a little disappointed though as no one met us at the Kona airport with the traditional flower leis to put around our necks. I guess those days have long since passed with the higher number of travellers who arrive each and every day in Hawaii.

This was our week to “chill” and the first stop in the trip where we could completely unpack all of the suitcases and stay for a while. After doing the domestic duties of washing and drying all of the accumulated dirty clothes, we set about exploring the immediate region. A big highlight for the children and the reason why we chose the Big Island, was the ability to swim with the dolphins at The Dolphin Quest program in the nearby Hilton Waikaloa Resort Hotel. The day was made even more memorable as Callum had an accident in the evening just before we were ready to leave the hotel and we had to take him to a nearby hospital for 7 stitches to his head!

Not one to complain normally, but we were charged by the minute while we waited at the hospital. 7 stitches in the emergency room and over two hours of waiting cost us the pricey sum of 1’342. – U.S. dollars! Now I understand all the fuss of trying to reform the American medical insurance plans. Wow!

Although the weather was beautiful every day, the wind was unrelenting and our excursions to the beach were short and few to say the least. We decided to drive over to the east side of the island where the active volcano, lush vegetation and numerous waterfalls were all in complete contrast to the stark landscape on the west side of the island. Mauna Kea, reportedly the tallest mountain on earth if one calculated the height included from the ocean floor, was nearly always in the clouds and on our day drive across the island we had rain for the one and only time during our stay. In Hilo it reportedly rains even more than Seattle, Washington or Lucerne for those of you closer to Switzerland!

The botanical gardens and waterfalls on the east side of the island fulfilled in any case our expectations of a tropical island. A highlight of the trip was not only the short walk to Akaka Falls through a lush rain forest, but also our picnic lunch at Onomea Bay. We were right on an outcropping of lava rock sticking out into the bay with the sea crushing down on all sides of us!

As we had originally prepared for our next part of the journey to Australia there was one definite “downer” in the trip plans. Without fully realising what actually happens when you cross the international dateline from east to west, we had planned to leave on July 12th from Honolulu en route to Australia. This meant however, that we arrived in Sydney on the morning of July 14th – two days later!! No big deal really, except for the fact that our middle daughter, Bryany, has her birthday on July 13th! This meant that she literally missed her own birthday! Well we have tried to arrange a surprise for her on the Air Canada flight over to Sydney, so you will all have to tune into the next report from Sydney to find out exactly what they did.

Now I’ve purposely not mentioned too much about the watch, because with the crossing of the international dateline, even I was a bit perplexed on how to set the third time zone correctly. But the more I wear this watch, the more often I have people asking me all about it.

At the last shopping mall where Bryany received an “early” birthday present from her Godfather with a pair of healey’s (normal tennis shoes that have an additional plug-in roller on the bottom to give the heals a roller skate effect) I was able to use the chronograph stopwatch to time my daughter and son having races while waiting for the other two ladies of the house to finish shopping! Another additional asset to this complex timekeeping Travel Tec watch on my wrist.

More from “down under” next week,

Ted Mate