We are now in the tropics!

Well, 'one of the wettest places on Earth'. Which means it RAINS all the time! Fortunately the weather has been not so terrible so far, hopefully that keeps up.

The morning started off a couple of hundred kilometres away on the shores of Waikiki, for a final-day sunrise opportunity over the tall hotels of Waikiki Beach. There were several other tourists out on the pier waiting for the sun to rise, and it was pretty spectacular too:

Spectacular sunrise over Waikiki

Then packing. We will be spending the next week or so on the Big Island, and had booked ourselves on an afternoon flight to Hilo, on the north shore of the island and where all the rain supposedly ends up.

But first we had to get there! Cue a considerable wait for a shuttle, a stretch of roadworks holding up traffic, a huge queue outside the terminal for TSA security clearance, and what we thought was an enormous queue for the bag drop. Much squawking from my mother later, we arrived at the gate with plenty of time to spare.

Hawaiian flies 717s all around the islands, so I'll be getting used to these birds over the next few weeks. They're really, really skinny compared to their length, hence being known as one of the 'flying pencils' of the skies:

A regular fixture in Hawaii, the 717

Our takeoff runway was the 'Reef Runway', right out on the ocean. This meant a sharp right turn on takeoff and spectacular views out of the window towards downtown Honolulu:

Takeoff over Honolulu

Once that was complete, came the rest of a 35-minute hop to Hilo. As is customary on Hawaiian inter-island flights, there is a water or juice offering, which can be sat on your tiny tray table:

Hawaiian's tiny tray tables

Following was one of the fastest touchdowns I have ever seen, there must be a premium put on time for these short flights.

A couple of hours later we had a car, had gone to our hotel, a nearby supermarket and topped up on supplies. Tomorrow the weather looks to be decent and we should be heading out to some parks and waterfalls. Ciao!

Felicity says:

"Plenty of time to spare"???!!! Ten minutes is not plenty of time, it took me that time to get my blood pressure back to normal, I was convinced we were going to miss that flight. The only thing that saved us was the huge bag queue (100+ persons) was for mainland agricultural inspection... we found a much smaller queue for the inter-island flight. You don't think you have just a tad too much plane geek stuff in this blog Matthew? And you should be saying "Aloha", not "Ciao".