Category Archives: Honolulu

Meeting dolphins!

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When we visited South Africa last year, one of Oliver and Louisa’s favourite experiences was meeting monkeys. At World of Birds Sanctuary and Monkey Park in Hout Bay, on the Cape Penninsula, they met sweet little Squirrel Monkeys. They loved being face to face with these gorgeous and cheeky little monkeys.

 

Given how much Oliver and Louisa both love animals, they were really looking forward to our last major activity of this Hawaiin trip: swimming with dolphins. And it didn’t disappoint!

After some online research, I booked one hour Dolphin Adventures for Peter, Oliver and Louisa with Dolphin Quest in Waikiki. According to the website, a Dolphin Adventure involves:

Age: 5 and older (each child 5-9 must be accompanied by a paying adult)

Price: $310 per person (plus tax)

Duration: 1 hour (35 minutes with dolphins)

Spend quality time with your new dolphin friends in this premium Dolphin Adventure that features maximum togetherness and fun. You’ll love this intimate dolphin swim full of your favorite dolphin touch, feed, play and training activities.

    • Come on in! The water’s fine for an unforgettably fun peak life experience meeting and mingling with our incredible dolphins in their ocean lagoon environment
    • You’ll have dolphins at your fingertips as trainers introduce you to our dolphins in shallow water ‘get to know you’ sessions
    • Dive in and go for a swim – with dolphins alongside and underwater below you. Pull on your snorkel mask for fantastic underwater views!
    • Get to know our dolphins’ individual personalities, unique behaviors and splashy playfulness
    • No two Dolphin Adventure are exactly alike – our expert trainers and dolphins will personalize your up-close dolphin rendezvous
    • You will interact with dolphins in a small, intimate group of no more than 6 people and your trainer
    • Take home your big smile moments in picture perfect photos of you and your dolphin pals, available for purchase

After donning life jackets, Peter, Oliver and Louisa joined their trainer who started with some important facts about dolphins, what they eat, how they communicate and how to train them. They learned that the dolphins at Dolphin Quest were born in captivity and have close connections with their trainers, who certainly seemed extremely attached to and caring of the dolphins.

 

Then they jumped into the water to meet the dolphins and have some fun. The photos below speak for themselves!

 

Oliver said that his two favourite things from this trip have been: surfing and the dolphins. Louisa said: horseriding and the dolphins. So our Dolphin Adventure certainly was worth the time and money and a perfect end to our Hawaiian adventure!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hawaii bound!

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When I was a child my brothers and sister and I watched endless re-runs of the Brady Bunch. Apart from the episode where Marcia gets hit in the nose by a football or the episode where Davy Jones from the Monkees turns up, my next favourite episode was “Hawaii bound”, the episode where the whole family accompanies dad, Mike, to Hawaii on a business trip (because it’s pretty likely that his company is going to pay airfares and accommodation for a wife, six kids, and Alice the housekeeper; yeah, right!)brady bunch

Over the Easter holidays, Peter, Oliver, Louisa and I plan to follow in the footsteps of Mike, Carol, Greg, Marcia, Peter et al. and fly off to Hawaii for 10 days. Peter will be on his way to a conference in California. So we are helping him break the journey. He’ll fly on at the end of our holiday and I will bring the kids home … alone!

alice

Hawaii! So excited!

 

 

 

 

We are flying into Honolulu, the state capital of Hawaii, which is on the island of Oahu. The Hawaiian archipelago includes hundreds of islands spread across approximately 2,500 kms, but there are eight main islands. We’ll be visiting two of them: Oahu and Hawaii (the Big Island). We fly from Sydney to Honolulu then immediately fly from Honolulu to the Big Island. We’ll be staying there for a few days to explore its many extinct, dormant, and active volcanoes! Then we return to Oahu and stay at Turtle Bay Resort on the North Shore. Here Louisa will be able to ride horses and Oliver will be able to visit the beach to their hearts’ content. Finally, we move to downtown Waikiki for a few days of sightseeing and shopping.

The Hawaiian archipelago

The Hawaiian archipelago

I’m excited to see the geology and diversity of flora and fauna. Hawaii features heavily in one of my favourite books: The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen. dodoBecause it is so isolated from other major land masses and because it arose steaming from under the ocean (formed in the distant past and still being formed by volcanic activity), Hawaii boasts many species of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world (it also, unfortunately, has lost many species to extinction).

Louisa is excited to find out what kinds of animals live on Hawaii. I suspect they will be quite different to what she saw in Africa. Oliver is looking forward to the beach and Peter is looking forward to some relaxation!

So we will post what we learn about Hawaii as we prepare for our trip and we look forward to reading your suggestions about places to visit and things to do. Please post them in the comments below.

Aloha oukou!

lei