Tales from Hiroshima: We lived the same day twice

All packed up and buzzing with excitement we left our apartment at 8:30am on 19/12/06 and arrived jet lagged and tired in Hawaii on 19/12/06 at 8am. How weird is that?! Initially I thought that I would get to live a day longer than everyone else but then we missed out on 03/01/07 travelling back so I guess it's all swings and roundabouts.

We had an absolutely wonderful time and I managed to take a whopping 473 pictures in between sunning, reading, eating and drinking a few Mai Tais. First stop was Kauai which is the oldest and northernmost of the Hawaiian Islands and is also home to the wettest place on earth at Mt Wai'al'ale. Whoever made that claim clearly hasn't been to Strabane in Northern Ireland.

When we got to Honolulu we had to board an inter island flight to Kauai. The plane was so small and there were so few passengers that we had to be moved around in our seats to balance out the plane. As we took off the pilot shouted "yee hah" and when we landed he rallied the plane around the runway like it was a Ford Escort and even tried some manoeuvre that was suspiciously like a handbrake turn ! I appear to be prone to these runway adventures and endured a frightening road rage incident between the luggage carrier and the shuttle bus on the runway at Venice airport.

We made it safely off the plane and had a thrilling time exploring the island.

The Waimea Canyon may be dubiously nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the Pacific but it holds some pretty cool vistas and it's hard to believe such an immense canyon can be tucked away inside such a small island - the canyon alone is 3000ft deep.

If you come to Hawaii the Napali Coast on Kauai is a must see so we booked a rafting adventure to get a good look, in fact the only way you can see it is by boat anyway. We arrived at the harbour and saw a small rubber raft tied to the dock where our Captain told us this was "the boat" and not a boat used to transport us to another boat. The sea was quite rough that morning so for the next five hours we held on for grim life as we surfed 25ft waves and took in some amazing sights. Just as we left the harbour we were met by a pod of spinner dolphins, there were loads of them and they were so playful as they swam alongside the boat.

One of the big draws into going to Hawaii was being able to see whales and shortly after the dolphins we spotted a humpback whale. It was so amazing to see 50ft and 40 tonne of whale breach into the air that I will never forget it. It kept waving its pectoral fin at us which was really cool and before it went down for a dive it blew 15ft of water in the air.This is why the whalers coined the famous term "thar' she blows". Fortunately this was the first of many whale sightings throughout the holiday since humpbacks come to Hawaii to give birth and nurse their calves in the winter.

Being on a raft made it hard to get steady pictures but the coast looked really magical with the mist rolling in and I can see why they filmed Jurassic Park there, you half expect a dinosaur to appear any moment it looks so mythical. It's hard to imagine that up to 1,500 Hawaiians lived in the valleys between those cliffs at any one time and the last ones left in the 1930's - a school teacher had to be shipped out to the children every Monday and he was picked up again on Friday.

Driving through the island there was always something to stop off and look at like the patchwork of taro fields and meandering river at Hanalei.

As always we like to try out the local eateries and we had a beautiful lunch at the hotel on Hanalei bay. Curiously, Martin came all the way from Japan and still had to have a bento box!

This is where Mitzi Gaynor washed that man right out of her hair in the movie South Pacific and it was my favourite beach of the whole holiday. We practically had the place to ourselves for the whole afternoon barring a few surfers and one lazy monk seal who was wise enough to lie there until the tide came in and washed him right back out to sea. Talk about an easy life!