We had a very relaxed start to the day today as we have booked a helicopter ride around the island and over to the next island of Molokai. Although the flight wasn’t until 12:30 we had to check in at 12:00 and it was about an hour and a half away so after breakfast we went to the business centre to checkin for tomorrows flight and find a post box to post the postcards then we came back to the room and sat on the balcony looking at the surf which is quite high today. we had received a message to take care on the beach today and not to go into the sea as the surf is so strong although as we sat watching not many people seemed to be paying attention to this! Finally it was time to leave and we drove over to the heliport, we made quite good time as we didn’t encounter any traffic jams today, we found the heliport okay then went and checked in. After the safety video we put our life jackets on and were put in line to go out to the helicopter. Chris and I had the front seat so we had a fantastic view. Although it was overcast and slightly rainy today that is actually a good thing as the waterfalls are only fed by rain water and without it a lot of them don’t flow. We started with a trip over the west of Maui and got a fantastic view of the coast line, some of the valleys were used in the filming of the Jurassic park movies then we flew into a canyon and saw some waterfalls. The problem with seeing them from the air is you don’t really have a view of how high they are, as Cameron our pilot said we were flying at 1,000 above sea level and the waterfalls were above us! We followed the coast for a while and Cameron described the single track road that you can drive but if you meet anyone on route one of you has to reverse back for normally quite some distance. As he was describing this we saw 3 cars in each direction facing each other, I am not sure who ended up backing up but it looked like it was going to take a while. We flew into a couple of valleys – Maui is called the valley island and from the air you can see why and we saw the tallest constantly flowing waterfall on the island, interestingly next to it there was another one flowing but this only flows when it is raining, it looked a little bit higher but Cameron said that it was actually 300 feet higher than the other one which again puts things into perspective. We then set off for Molokai and flew over an island that looks like a turtle but is actually called Elephant Island and eventually when you look at it from just the right angle you can see the elephant. Molokai only has a population of about 5,000 people and is mostly farmland either arable or cattle but on the far side of the island – the north there are tremendous cliffs which were created because a bit of the mountain fell away and have now created the cliffs. There is also an enormous reef that runs most of the way along the west side of the island. Unfortunately all too soon it was time to head back but on the way back we flew across the part of the island where our hotel is and we had a great view of it. We then flew along the route we have driven pretty much every day which was really interesting and finally back to the heliport where we had to leave the helicopter and return to the hotel. We decided to buy the video of the trip as it was difficult to take pictures from the helicopter. We drove back to the hotel and decided to go and get something to eat which was a bit of a challenge as it was almost 3pm, in our hotel lunch had finished and the evening service hadn’t begun so we walked down to Whalers village which is a retail outlet just down the road and found a nice restaurant to have something to eat in. We had a walk round a few of the shops then went back to the hotel as it was gone 5pm by then and sat on the balcony watching the surf and relaxing before our early start tomorrow when we head off to the Big Island.
