Getting out of this deep valley was one of the hardest hike we ever did...but the views were worth it.

The partially reconstituted remains of a 14th century Hawaiian village in the North Kohala District.

We spent most of yesterday driving around the Kohala District on the NW corner of Big Island. One of the highlight was highway 250 which snakes along the Kohala Mountains and which provided us with this amazing view of the Mauna Kea volcano 35 km away. What I never expected was for the many observatories perched on its summit to be so easy to distinguish.

Yesterday morning, the waves at White Sands Beach were enormous and attracted quite a posse of talented boogie boarders. I had my eye on this guy for a while and he didn't dissapoint by doing a 360 in the middle of a wave, immediately followed by a sharp salute to a fellow boarder.

Mauna Kea Beach, Hawaii.

Don't worry, they both came out ok but she...was...pissed.

...had some major unresolved issues.

Or maybe I simply have an overactive imagination.

We made it safe and sound in Kailua-Kona but, unfortunately, we were sitting on the wrong side of the plane and couldn't see anything.

If you ever need to buy tickets online may I suggest anybody else than expedia.ca. Although we bought our tickets 5 months ago, we nevertheless spent a 8.5 hrs flight sitting in the very last row of a 777. To make things even more fun, Hawaiian Airlines cancelled our Honolulu-Kona flight and we had to rush to make an earlier one. Needless to say, our checked luggage couldn't run. Fortunately they have been located and will be (hopefully) here soon which means that I had to make a very serious attempt at synchronizing my sleep patterns to the local time zone.

New pretty pictures of Hawaii are scheduled for tomorrow.

Yes, we're travelling again and going somewhere pretty.

Santa Monica, California.

I don't know how well these shots turned out, leave me a comment if you know who the designer is. Two of the three female models didn't know how to skate. Consequently, they looked stiff and uncomfortable.

Nice, France.

Canadian Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa.

Santa barbara, California.

Santa Barbara Zoo, California.

Nice, France.