Another island, and another 20-something-minute plane ride to get there.

Poorly dressed.

We landed in the incredibly lush northern island of Kauai, collected yet another Dodge, and headed to our final digs on the southeast cost of the island. Kauai is the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (i.e. it was the first to surface from the undersea magma source I mentioned earlier) with lava flows dated back to about five million years ago. It's the fourth largest of the main islands and has a population of around 70,000.

Before long we noticed stray chickens wandering around everywhere hahaha! They're found throughout the island. The story goes that a hurricane back in the 70s destroyed a lot of chicken coops on the island and a lot of the birds escaped. They have no natural predators on the island, and apparently don't taste too great. As such, they're thriving here!

The view from our apartment hotel in Poipu out to the beach on the right there. Not bad, not bad ;)

We spent the rest of the day right here, and Jared and I got another good pummelling from the waves. Good times!

Day I don't know - I've lost count now, we checked out the cute little shops near our hotel before heading up to the northern coast. By the way, President Obama was born and raised in Honolulu. Clearly he had large aspirations and got out ;)

Here we go - Kauai in a nutshell. Bloody beautiful! This is Hanalei Valley on the central north coast.

And right across from it - Hanalei Bay.

During our few stops en route we checked out some beaches, scoffed some coconut, and explored these roadside caves. I assume these were dug out by the ocean at some point in the distant past when sea levels were higher.

Once again, I left the crew on a beach while I went exploring.

This is part of the Kalalau Trail in Haena State Park. The trail runs approximately 18km (11 miles) along the jaw-dropping Na Pali Coast on the west of Kauai. It's a decent climb to begin with, but I wanted to hike about a mile in to get a view of the coast, featured prominently in Jurassic Park.

And this is about as good as it gets from this angle. The terrain is so extreme that no roads exist along the Na Pali Coast. The only way to really see it properly is by helicopter or boat. There are several little beaches along the way which again are only accessible by boast. One day when I'm a rich man I may just come back for this (and the lava flows on the Big Island) with a boat :) Better images of the Na Pali Coast here.

With that I headed back to the beach to cool off!

Hahaha chickens on the beach - never seen that before.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped in for a nosey at the Kilauea Lighthouse, the northern-most point of the main islands. Lovely.

And that was the end of that for whatever day that was.

The next day was rainy and miserable which completely ruined my plans. We instead had a fairly quiet one and visited this blowhole...

This waterfall (Wailua Falls)...

This river (Wailua River) with the Kamokila Hawaiian Village along its bank...

And this little shopping centre, that offers shrimp.

The sun did emerge in time for sunset though, which we spent back down on the beach. I didn't get a photo of it but we did spot what appeared to be a manta ray in the water. Given it looked like a group of fins at first, and given shark attacks have been on the rise in Hawaii lately, everyone got the hell out of there hehe.

The next day was our final day together before going our separate ways that night. After a rousing lunch at the weirdest Subway I've ever seen, we started on the steep drive to the so-called "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" - the incredible Waimea Canyon.

The Waimea Canyon is approximately 16km (10 miles) long and up to 900m (3,000 feet) deep, and sits adjacent to the Na Pali Coast. It was created by a combination of the steady process of erosion from the Waimea River (which can be seen above), and the collapse of the volcano that created Kauai which is estimated to have taken place around four million years ago.

It's quite an amazing sight, but I'm sure it doesn't impress as much as the Grand Canyon which I'm yet to see (though that is on the cards for about this time next year).

This was the final stop on what had been a very busy trip! We were all pretty exhausted, but at the same time we'd seen much of what Hawaii has to offer and loved every moment of it.

We flew back into Honolulu later that afternoon, said our very sad goodbyes, and got on our respective planes for home.

Some hours later Kristina and I were back over mainland USA. That night (Saturday) we slept for 13 straight hours, finally getting out of bed at 3pm on the Sunday hahaha! I thought the clock was busted when I first looked it.