Well I arrived okay 
Before I get started; I can thouroughly recommend the late night flight from Sydney to Oahu – every other time I’ve had the flight it’s been either an early morning or midday flight. Instead, you leave at about 9pm, sleep on the plane, and arrive semi-fresh at 11:30am.
The first thing we wanted to secure was a table at Davey Jones’ Ribs (a great local haunt) for that night. Driving past the block it’s on though, we realised that that we’d be eating elsewhere. Outrigger have demolished the entire block for construction of a more modern, $800 million hotel. Truly sad to see Davey’s go, but it was merely one of the eighty nine businesses closed due to the development.
After the obligatory shopping and stocking up of various (and plentiful) varieties of alcohol we took a two day sojourn to the ‘big island’, Hawaii. There we took a trip to the top of Mauna Kea (pronounced Moan-ah Key-ah) which was incredible to say the least. Rising to 14,000 feet, the mountain is actually the highest in the world if you count it’s base at the bottom of the ocean. Don’t get any images of a terrible climb at Everest though; we were in the heated comfort of a van the whole way.
Which was a good thing, because even with the main temperature of the island being a comfortable 25 degrees, half way seemed around the 5 degree mark, and the summit was around the -15 mark. Shifting from one temperature to another so quick knocks you around a bit to say the least (and walking into the frozen food aisle just doesn’t compare).
I’d never suffered from altitiude sickness, and was fortunate (certainly more so than some of the others) to not be that affected by it. I was lucky to only have minor dizziness, a slight headache, and the occasional “optic flash” as the guide put it, where blinking tricks you into seeing a bright white flash. Our guide said that it’s not at all bad until around the third hour at that height, where it starts to get “a little uncomfortable” as he put it. To gauge that, falling to your death from one of the many cliffs would be “not so good” and being left up there overnight would be “uncomfortable”.
After taking a whole bunch of photos and walking around in a daze for god knows how long (the guide enjoyed herding us like rebellious sheep around the summit) we descended, discarded multiple layers of clothing then stopped to use his brand new $5000 telescope to peer at some stars and planets. With that done (and tomorrow rapidly approaching) we were dropped off and made our way back to the Kona Resort.
I’m sitting right now in my hotel room, using a wifi isp that I managed to find out of the blue – the price is a little steep ($10US for 24 hours) but it sure beats walking a couple blocks to use some old computer with horrific speeds.
In a couple days I’ll be in Primm/Vegas, but I’ll probably not find time to post until I get to San Francisco.
I really could write a whole lot more, but it’s 1am already and I have to be up way too early to continue, so do excuse the rough writing
