05.06.2009

Hawaii

Hah, I lied.
The Hawaii blog is coming before I leave for Oahu tomorrow.

It all started in the 'Waikiki Beachside Hostel' where you can spend a night in a crammed room with no AC for thirty bucks a night. There I met good people, like Greg from Scotland and bad people like Hollywood from Idaho and everything in between.
We had lots of fun and I didn't go swimming once.

After a couple of days our crew took the public bus for 2$ and randomly stopped somewhere on the north shore, and we found a nice place!

More and more people left and in the end only Greg and me were left but others had joined us at that time already.

Then Greg headed to Canada and I flew to Maui for 40$.

That's where I got my car and conquered the island myself. Slept in the car at a beach in Hana, after the spectacular 600 curves and 43 one lane bridges drive there, and went on to the camping grounds of the Haleakala volcano. There I gave a ride to Gale and Jordan, a couple who lives here since they wanted to do a hike and needed to park their car (with big Obama bumper stickers) elsewhere. When I met them again on the camping ground where I intended to sleep they invited me over to stay at the place the next night (after watching sunrise on the summit the next morning). And that's where I've been the last three days.

The pictures are not in any specific order.


Wa'a valley hike





Lahaina; I'd go there too if I had the choice


Maui West Coast


View after iao valley hike, Kahului in the distance


Iao Needle


My Pontiac in the clouds on my way up the serpentines of Mt. Haleakala


sunrise, 5:30AM, 47 °F



Mt. Kea on Hilo as seen from Mt. Haleakala, approx. 100 miles


Haleakala summit


hike down in the crater


crater from above


Road to Hana



sunrise at Hana beach


Waikiki


Honolulu


Sunset, taken out of the car




Chinaman's Hat


Beachside Hostel Crew
f.r.t.l. Joe (USA), Marcus (Switzerland), Bonny (USA), G.I. Joe aka Todd (USA), Greg (Scotland), Chad (USA), me


Sandy Beach, east of Waikiki


See you soon!

03.06.2009

Sydney + Auckland

Porbably one of the longes breaks so far.
In the following post you'll see a couple of pictures from Sydney and 1 from Auckalnd.

Hmm, what could that be? The Walmart in Eromanga?


Blue Mountains


Darling Harbour


Hereby I declare the Elantra diaries for finished. Stay tuned for part II: 'The Insurance Odyssey'


Auckland, as seen from my Air New Zealand Boeing 767-300 whilst sipping a Steinlager.


The first Hawaii update will follow as soon as I'm back on Oahu.

Stay sound.

Relaxing at the moment on Maui with a rented 3.5l V6 Pontiac G6 GT.