King Kamehameha floral parade and Pearl Harbor

Today we decided to take the bus to see the floral parade in celebration of King Kamehameha who was the first king of Hawaii (1795). The king Kamehameha day is a national state holiday on June 10th and the floral parade on Honolulu is usually the day after.

The floral parade did not last for long since our bus already was delayed and the parade had already started.

The parade also included segways...

After the floral parade we waited to take the bus towards Arizona memorial aka Pearl Harbor because of the heavy traffic due to the floral parade.
Finally we got the right bus and it took us 45 minutes to get to Pearl Harbor.
At Pearl Harbor we saw the USS Bowfin, a submarine that was launched exactly a year after the Japanese air strike. And we visited the USS Arizona Memorial.

The USS Arizona was one of the many ships that sank, but were most American soldiers lost their life during the Japanese air strike of Pearl Harbor. First we got to see a 23 minute long documentary of Pearl Harbor and the history behind the Japanese aggression. Then we were shipped off to the USS Arizona Memorial where you can still see parts of the big ship underwater.

There are still American soldiers at rest inside the ship today.

Tomorrow we are leaving Hawaii to go to our beloved countries. We have 4 plane trips before us, 3 trips for Sonja. So at around 5 am are we leaving our nice bed & breakfast to get to the airport to fly to L.A. There will however only be a short stop of maximum 3 hours there so no sightseeing in L.A, but rather recovery before our next 10 hour trip towards London...We are not going to look forward to it, but we look forward to come back to the Netherlands and Norway. This trip has been amazing and we have experienced a whole lot.

10th of June Kailua

Today we decided to stay in Kailua and work on our tan.
We rented snorkel gear and went to the beach.

We swam and tried to sun, but it felt more like to be sand blown.
We didn't see any turtles either, so we decided to try another beach.
We cycled on a kind of "white bikes" to Lanikai beach, but it was the same here.
Around 4 o'clock we had enough of the sand and returned to our apartment.

We finished the day with a delicious dinner at Zia's, an Italian restaurant.

9th of June Kailua, Waikiki Hawaii

Today we had a hawaiian breakfast. Pineapple, apple, banana and blueberry bagels.

After breakfast we left for Waikiki and used the public transport Thebuss. If you have looked up everything on the internet it is very easy and cheap. But they don't have friendly drivers.
Waikiki beach was ok but crowdy. Our beach at Kailua is a lot more spacey and quiet.
We walked to the Diamond head crater, an old vulcano crater with a fine lookout over the city.
We didn't have a map, so of course we walked the wrong way around the crater. After
quite a long stroll we arrived at the crater, but it took a lot more to come to the lookout.
First a track widing up and then 175 steps to the top. It was a nice view, but I had expected something more after all this exercising.

We took Thebus back again to Ala Moana shopping center. They have a lot of shops in this senter and a food center. We ate a late japanese lunch at 4 o'clock. We took a look at the hawaiian foodcorner, but tripestew didn't appeal to us. Of course we had to buy some nice things, while we were at the shopping center.
Back in Kailua we bought some food and Hawaiian outfit.

8 June (2x) Whangarei/Auckland/Sydney/Hawaii

You might be wondering why I put (2x) behind 8 June. Thats because we had a sort of Groundhog Day (for our older followers) on the 8th of June but then different. We left the holiday park in Whangarei, New Zealand at 9.30 in the morning on the 8th of June and we arrived in Honolulu at 9.00 in the morning of the 8th of June. How can this be would you wonder, well that's because we crossed the international date line that is placed between New Zealand and Hawaii. So our 8th of June lasted very long, but I'll begin at the beginning.

As I said we left our last holiday park at 9.30 to drive to Auckland to return our campervan and catch the plane to Sydney where we had to transfer to our flight to Honolulu. This was also the very last time we were at the airport in Sydney and fortunately also the last time this journey that we had to watch John Travolta being funny at the beginning of the security film in all Quantas planes. Our next flights will only be American Airlines and British Airways.

We had a good flight to Honolulu (almost 10 hours) and we even managed to get all a bit of sleep but that was probably only because they had a lousy entertainment system on board, just 1 big screen for our entire part of the plane.
We arrived in Honolulu at 9.00 am and were greeted with aloha's by the personnel we met at the airport. We took a taxi to Kailua where we booked a sort of bed and breakfast, that turned out to be very nice with our own appartment, a swimming pool, a wonderful dog and a lot of small lizzards.

We didn't do much today as we were sort of pooped by all the travelling. We just went to have a look at the beautiful beaches of Kailua and we did some shopping. In the evening we made our own taco's and now it's 19.30 and we are sort of ready to go to bed.

7th of June Bay of Islands

Today we planned to drive to the bay of Islands. First we went shopping in Whangarei, we bought a new backpacker for Marja. She needed a new one because hers were stolen in Rotorua.
When we started to drive to Paihia it started to rain quite a lot. By the time we got to Paihia it looked a little bit better, so we bought tickets to a Dolphincruise.
At 1.30 pm the cruise started and it was sunny and the sky was blue.

It was a very nice trip in the bay of islands. We saw "The hole in the rock" out at the pacific ocean, but it was to much wind to cruise the boat through the hole. The hole didn 't look big enough for our boat either.
We had still not seen any dolphins and the cruise was almost over.

5 minutes before we had to turn to the harbour again there suddenly were 4 dolphins in the water. The black and red shoe on the picture is Nathalies.
Everyone was very happy.

We drove back again to Whangarei holiday park and were more than satisfied with this day.

BTW: It is now possible to comment without making a google account, sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. The "add comments (legg inn kommentar)" feature is still in Norwegian, and we have not been succesfull to switch it to English. But it is now easier to comment as much as you like :)

6th of June

We woke up around 8 and left the hot water beach camping after eating breakfast in our juicy wagon. We drove to Hot Water Beach on our quest to find the hot springs that this beach was known for. However we did not think we would see it due to the tide and the strong undercurrent so we tried to find it from the other side of the Hot Water Beach,but again we failed because the rocks hid the hot springs. We did get a bit of water on us, but it was not from the hot spring water.

Then we drove off towards Hahei and to the Cathedral Cove. We walked for about 30 minutes to the Cathedral Cove, which was probably the most exercising thing we have done on this trip so far.

Afterwards we took a short coffee break in Hahei before we set off towards Auckland and Whangarei, where we were staying for the night.

Auckland Skyline

5 June Rotorua/Hot Water Beach

Today we had the first setback in our journey. We awoke to find one of the front side windows of the campervan smashed. Marja' s backpack and raincoat that had been in the front were stolen. We had all heard a loud noise in the middle of the night and felt the campervan moving but as we were in deep sleep when it happened we hadn't realised what had actually happened and we had just slept on. Fortunately all the important things such as money, passports etc had been in the back, as well as Nathalie's and my backpack. So in stead of having a relaxed breakfast as we had planned, we had to call the police and the rental company to try and have our window fixed. Unfortunately it was a Sunday, and furthermore the Sunday in the long weekend, as the next day, the 6th of June, is a public holiday in New Zealand and Australia, as they then celebrate the birthday of Queen Elisabeth. After about 1,5 hour a carglass repair van arrived and the man asked us to follow him to his workplace on the other side of Rotorua. According to the glass repair man a lot of smashed windows had occured in Rotorua since a certain family had moved back into town... He put in a temporary plastic window so we could drive on. We had a quick look around in Rotorua, did some shoppings and decided to leave Rotorua as soon as possible as we all got quite sick of the sulphur smell.

From Rotorua we drove to the Coromandel Penisula. On the way to Hot Water Beach our next stop for the night, we stopped in Whangamata, to get Marja a new raincoat and to have a look at the beautiful beach there. When it was dark (it gets dark around 17.15 here) we arrived at the holiday park in Hot Water Beach.

4 June Auckland/Rotorua

After having some trouble picking up our rental campervan, we drove off to Matamata. This is the town where some of the Lord of the Rings scenes were shot. In fact here is the set for the scenes shot in the Hobbiton, the village of Bilbo and Frodo. We got a tour in the village of the Hobbits in the pouring rain, but unfortunately we can not put any of the pictures we took there on this blog, because we had to sign something to state that we would not do that and if we would we would be sued by New Line Cinema. The reason for this is that this is the new set for the next two Lord of the Rings movies. Also on the Hobbiton tour we saw how they in New Zealand shear sheep.

From Matamata we drove to Rotorua, the stinky city full of vulcanic wells. It really stinks in Rotorua, even when you are in the supermarket you all the time smell the sulphur (you were right, Juud, and we should have followed your advise and not have gone there. The main reason for this you will read in the next blog). We drove to Holdens Bay holiday park and put our campervan there for the night.

2 and 3 juni Traveling from Tasmania to NewZealand

2 Juni we drove back from Strahan to Hobart. Lots of nice views on this road. But the road was narrow so it was not easy to park the car and take a look.
We stayed at Hobart casino hotel for the night.

Next day we travelled to NewZealand via Sydney. We had to change our watches again and that is why it already was 10 o'clock in the evening before we came to our hotel Airport Manor Inn in Auckland.

1 June Strahan

Today we left early from Margo's place to take the Gordon River Cruise together with Margo and Marisa.

It took off from the Harbour of Strahan. We travelled first class again which ment that we could sit at the captains deck. We could have started with a glass of sparkling white Australian wine but even for me that was a bit much at 8.15 in the morning. So we took a coffee first and saved the wine for later. We also had some nice things to eat. Unfortunately for me the first snacks were fish and a selection of Tasmanian cheeses, but that only meant that I had more room for the rest of the nice food.

First we cruised to Hells Gate, which is the opening to the Pacific Ocean. It was quite rougher once we were on the Pacific, before that it was quite windstill. Then we went back again to stop at Heritage Landing and had a lecture from a guide about the Tasmanian rainforest which was interesting to listen to. We had a lunchbuffet on the boat and cruised on to Sarah Island. On the way to Sarah Island in a broad and quite area of the Gordon River I steered the boat for a while. It was funny because you steered the big boat with a really tiny sort of joystick. Unfortunately when the river got narrower the captain wouldn't let me anymore.


At Sarah Island we had a guided tour by a very good storyteller who made the story of Sarah Island fascinating. Sarah Island used to be an island second time convicts were sent to from 1822 untill 1833.



From Sarah Island we cruised back to Strahan and then Margo took us in her car to show us around Strahan and we finally ended up at Ocean Beach, a very beautiful broad deserted beach at the most South Western point of Tasmania.

Strahan 31th of may

Today we took the wilderness train from Strahan to King River Gorge. The day started a little bit cloudy, but later on it got more sunny.

It was a fine ride with nice views, good food and Tasmanian wine.
Actually we started to drink sparkling wine already at 10.30 hours.

We were back again at 15.00 hours and walked home again to Margo's.
We had a delicious lasagna for dinner.
After "Australia's got talent" we went to sleep.