The Trip

Dear Readers

Last Saturday we arrived safely in Zurich, Switzerland, which marks the end of our wonderful trip. I hope you enjoyed reading our blog.

Cheers and take care!

Our last two nights of our trip we spend in Vancouver. We were not very motivated to do a lot of sightseeing, but one of us got quite exited nonetheless ;)

Anyway, we still have had awesome weather and went for a little walk through the city. Now we are at the hotel, preparing and packing our stuff, returning tents and car and tomorrow we will fly home.

This soiled looking head by the way is one of the highlights we found in Vancouver. Its a public art site and people are allowed and supposed to contribute using chewing gum… yummy!

First a few pictures which we actually took in our first week on a beautiful hiking trip into around Mount Arrowsmith. Marvelous scenery with mountains, lakes, the sea and – of course – forest:

From there we made our way to the northern shore of the Island and stayed in a very small but cute place named Telegraph Cove, which is mostly built on wooden stilts. Here we booked another whale watching tour on a boat, which was enormously successful (Dall Porpoise, Orcas and Humpback Whales) and another tour by kayak (Dall Porpoise and Orcas).

By now we had a bear-free vacation, but that changed on the forest campsite at Telegraph cove. We had a black bear sniffing around our tent during the night, its footprints marking its way:

So we finished that night in the car…

That was if from the island, we drove back south and took the ferry from Comox over to Powell River on the Sunshine Coast (Canadian Mainland) and ended up in a nice little place named Lund, from where we went on a one-day-trip to yet another island named Savary Island. This little gem is about 7 km long and just a few hundred metres wide, but we had the best view at lunch in all our 14 weeks. Also the water was relatively warm, and good for a swin. The sunset was taken from Lund itself.

After two nights in Lund we drove back on Wednesday to Vancouver to sleep in a real bed once more after 11 nights in a tent :)

This is our last step already. We arrived in Vancouver last Saturday and got us a car and a tent and went straight over to Vancouver Island.
Canada looks pretty much the same as Switzerland. Lakes, rivers, and trees. Except that there there is the sea, whales, bears, cougars, and an awful lot of trees, some of them enormous in size!

We have been to Victoria, Coombs, Ucluelet and Tofino so far. We came up with a lot of pictures, below is just a sneak peek:

And this, this is a humpback whale.

As boat drivers are allowed to approach only 100 metres to these impressive animals, here is a zoomed shot and a picture of some sea lions. We took these photos off the coast of Ucluelet during a morning whale watching tour.

Along with the tons of photos we took in the five countries we have visited so far, a lot are useless and some are even so bad we just have to show them here. Enjoy!

Nadine playing Minigolf

Worst Food Ever – Mac n Cheese

Tomorrow we are off to Vancouver Island, Canada. We really hope to provide increased quality in the next posts ;) so please stay with us. Cheers and Aloha!!

So… in our second week on Maui made a few one day trips. First of all, the Molokini Crater, which is a great location for snorkeling. The crater forms a crescent shaped Island which thus protects the inner side from the outer ocean and leaves perfectly clear water, with a visibility up to 50 metres!

Next we made our way to Hana to the east along the famous Hana Road (renowned for narrow roads, one lane bridges and hundreds of curves). We learned that this part of the island is the third wettest place of the entire planet and people are actually proud of it ;)

This trip took us all around the eastern side of the island and around Haleakala volcano. We came a long several awesome spots to see and probably missed as many due to – you guessed it – rain! But we did see Rainbow Eucalyptus trees, the harsh, lava-rock coast line and more.

And finally, today, we went around the western part of the island to Honolua Bay. Unfortunately the water was not as clear as the last time we’ve been there, but still we had a good time. This includes taking the north-western road back to Kihei, which provided more of those places you just have to stop and enjoy the view.

Oh, and guess who left his/her drivers license at home and is occasionally getting bored in the car?

yea, right :)

As there is more to Maui than sunsets and palm trees, here is a small add-on to the last post. We will stay on this island for 2 full weeks and got us a car, as public transport is poor and would not get us to the interesting places at all.

The underwater world is stunning. However, there is a lot of wind as well and the waters along the coast where we reside is murky most of the time. We found one bay with very clear water, but I forgot to bring the Gopro… I hope to deliver better pictures later, also from the sea turtles which seem to be quite abundant here.

There are rainforests as well, but we have not seen those yet, apart from some trees close to one of the bays. And there is this one big, currently inactive, volcano named Haleakala to the east. I must admit I love these volcanoes and the crude landscape they form. I hope these pictures give a bit of an insight on how enormous and special these places are.

We take it quite easy for once and we did not do or see that much on the first week here. We do have plans for our second week however so stay tuned for the next update. Cheers!

Maui!

Maui Sunset

Oh yea, volcano time!!

Unfortunately the lava flow to the sea stopped flowing a few month ago, so currently the only way to see the lava was by helicopter. That’s what we did; starting from Hilo on Big Island.
The view was quite impressive, some hot lava and many now cold lava flows and lava tubes could be seen.

Later that day we went up to the Kilauea main crater and were hiking through Kilauea Iki crater (‘iki’ means ‘small’ in Hawaiian).

All this after we witnessed the Dutch loose against Argentina. So Nadine Iki and I had quite a busy day which was also our last on Big Island. The next day we already flew over to Maui for some beach vacation. Updates will follow :)

Aloha!!

Hawaii, paradise on earth – with lots of wind and rain and scorched earth :)
Big Island is a little different from what one might expect (not as many coconut trees and hula girls), but it is a very cool island.

Mauna Kea, at 4200 metres above sea level is host of the only site for Astronomers to watch all of the northern hemisphere
and almost all (85%) of the southern hemisphere, which is unique in the world. We went there as well to have a look at some stars and planets.
Saturn provided quite a show :)

Today we did nothing, exept a lot of driving, more or less once around the island (Big Island is in fact pretty big), oh, and some snorkeling
with sea turtles. Awesome ;)

Tomorrow we’ll go to the volcano state park, hope to provide some cool pictures of that as well…
Cheers!