Erwin and Dorits' Endless Summer

The last 10 days on Hawaii –after Torben left- we stayed in a hotel in Waikiki and finally got our boards out of the bag. The surf wasn’t so good, but after all we had some fun sessions. Two days we hired longboards to do some funky crosstepping and noseriding.

From O’ahu we flew to Los Angeles. We stayed at a cheap hotel in downtown for 5 nights. The city center is full of banks and offices.

The first thing we went to see is a famous stretch of coastline: Venice Beach. In Venice Beach everything happens on the promenade alongside the beach. Artist in a big variaty are proforming ther acts, people move on rollerblades, bikes, skateboards. Most impressing were the rollerblade dancing and high level pool skating.

An other day we went to Santa Monica. Also a famous beachside suburb of L.A. We loved walking through a full and cosy promanade and end up at the famous SantaMonica Pear.

On our last day we checked out Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The clouds were moving in and we just caught a last glimps of the big Hollywood sign higher up in the mountains befor the “curten” closed. The rest of Hollywood isn’t as stylish and neat as it apaers on TV. So we walked a lap over the star covered pavement and took the bus to Beverly Hills. In Beverly Hills we took a strol on Redeo Dive. The street with fashion boutiques way to expansive for our standards, so we enjoyed the sun and a cup of coffee befor we took the bus back to downtown.

Our next flight to Panama was supposed to leave today very early in the morning. At the check in things were going slow and we already heard rumours around us about a cancelled flight. When writing this blog we are still in L.A. and we’ve been taken to a hotel near the airport. So we will fly tonight at 2 am to arrive in Panama tomorrow morning, where we will spend 1 week in Venao before we move to our last destination on this 10 month trip: Santa Catalina. Here we booked a house for 1 month and Philip, Jörn and Eva will join us soon.

While we enjoyed the company of Chris, Tanja, Jaime and Martha during our last month on Bali, after 3 month we were ready for a change. On the 4th of june we flew to Honolulu, Island of Oahu, Hawaii. Our flight took 30 hours including 2 stop overs in Melbourne and Sydney.

The first days we stayed in a hostel in the capital city Honolulu. The first days of our stay we had to get used to the prices, fast food chains on every corner, big cars and everything else America has to offer. One day trip to Waikiki revealed that Hawaii is the most popluar tourist destination for Japanese as there are more Japanese peolpe than anyone else on the street of Waikiki which is very touristy.

We decided that this is nothing for us and went to a surfer hostel on the “North Shore” , famous for its monsterous waves in winter time. In winters it gets very crowded on this prestine stretch of coast line because ‚”Banzai Pipeline”, Sunset Beach and Waimea Bay can produce waves over 20 meters high. Today, in summer though, the wild ocean transforms into a peacefull flat lake. Which is terrific for snorkeling, but not for surfing.

It was a really nice suprice to us that Torben (Dorit’s brother) made a quick decision to come over for a 2 week holiday. We already saw some bits of Oahu so we decided to hop on a plane to an other island after Torbens first 2 days in Waikiki. To our disappointment, there are no ferrys between the Islands, so you have to fly, and there is a no terrific public transport on the Islands itself to travel. So we ended up renting cars.

The 3 of us flew to Hawai’i The Big Island. The biggest one and the most eastern island. It is the newest and the vulcan is still active. It is still erupting and sometimes lava is to be seen. Most of the island is covert with lava rock, which results in a lot of black sand beaches. After a while the ground covers itself with plants and trees again but a big area is still new lava rock. At some places there is even steam coming out of the ground and after sunset you can see a red glow over a big crater. On “The Big Island” is the highest vulcano of the world with over 4000 meters. We violated our car rental contract and reached the summit over a steep dirt road where 4 wheel drive was requierd ;o)