Notes from the road 2: Los Angeles and Hawaii

Packing for a trip that covers areas with wildly different climates is never easy, and after the first week in New York we were casting off our coldest winter layers, not expecting to use them again until our return to Heathrow.

Los Angeles was our next stop, or more precisely Claremont where we had the chance to catch up with our travel friends John and Carolyn, who we first met in northern Canada over 13 years ago. I’ll cover one of the exciting places we visited in a later post; it was also good to discover that there is a part of downtown LA where people wander happily by night – another stereotype challenged.

From there it was on to Hawaii where we spent four days, for one reason and one reason only: in 2001 we had stopped here and hiked across the rocks of Kilauea volcano to see molten lava at close hand. We were determined to do it again – little did we know that we would see not only flowing lava (I’d even get to poke a stick in it this time), but also watch in amazement as lava poured into the Pacific Ocean.

For the first time in our lives we flew westwards across the International Date Line to Micronesia. Friday Dec 14th was a forgettable day in every sense. We woke at 2am, got the shuttle to the  airport for a pre-dawn flight and landed a few hours later, soon after sunrise on Saturday.

Downtown Los Angeles (well, the bit where the middle-class folks hang out)

After several failed attempts over the years we finally made it to In-n-Out Burger – they’re pretty good, although you can get much better in London (if you know where to go)

8 out of 10 cats love American fast food

Sunrise just off the LA coast

We were very lucky to spy an Airbus 380 on test flight over Hawaii

Rainbow Falls, Hilo, Hawaii

The garden of our hotel in Volcano, Hawaii

Published Stories

Following our first week in NYC I had the following story published on the National Geographic Traveller blog: Brooklyn’s Christmas Lights – here’s one of Sam’s photos that helps tell the story.