We're off to Hawaii, in particular the Big Island, also called Hawaii (it's all to do with Kamehameha the Great) which is currently the southern-most of the Hawaiian chain. The Big Island is, as the name suggests, the largest of the islands and also includes the world's largest volcano Mauna Loa. It has the world's most active volcano, Mount Kilauea, which has been erupting since 1983. It has increased its activity in the last couple of months (video1, video2, video3) ) which should be exciting - although it does mean some of the walking trails will be closed.

Paula is flying out on the 25th July for the NASA Field Workshop which starts on the 26th July. I will be flying out a week later so, after an overnight in Honolulu, will arrive in Hilo on the 2nd.

We're planning to do an eleven day tour of the island staying on the Kona coast at Captain Cook; on the west side of the Kohala mountains; and finally 3 days in Volcano.

I'm starting my trip today. First a train to London and a night in a Heathrow hotel then on Friday I'll be on the 11.30 Virgin Atlantic flight to LA which lands eleven and a half hours later. I then have three hours in LA before my 17:55 flight to Honolulu which takes another five and a half hours landing at 20:30. I'll stop in Honolulu for a night before the short intra island flight to Hilo where I will meet up with Paula.

I phoned Paula on Tuesday night and she seemed to be having fun. They'd been looking at lava tubes and the gases coming from the volcano. They hadn't seen any fresh lava up close but they were due to do that the next day

After my overnight in Honolulu (or more accurately in a hotel at the airport), I caught the short hop to Hilo and met up with Paula. We spent an hour or so picking up provisions at the farmers' market before we drove north out of Hilo along the eastern coast of the island.

We were on a bit of a tight schedule since we were aiming to get to our first B&B the Ka'awa Loa Plantation by early evening. Consequently we didn't stop much on the drive figuring that we would be coming back this way in about a week. We did stop at the Waipio Valley overlook so that we could decide whether we are going to hike into the valley next week - although it is not a hugely long walk it is a 25% gradient so is probably quite hard going on the way back up.

We made it to the plantation early in the evening and, after the tour from Greg (one of the owners), unpacked all our stuff into the the cottage we are staying in. We decided to be sociable and so went back to the lounge of the main plantation house and ended up being invited to join Greg, Michael and friends for an excellent dinner.

We had a good night's sleep in the cottage once we eventually got to bed - first we had to deal with one of these which was running across the ceiling (arachnophobes beware of clicking the link).

This morning we went down to Kealakekua Bay and rented a kayak so we could get across the bay to the monument dedicated to Captain James Cook. Once there we did a couple of hours snorkelling with the huge amounts of fish and saw a Green Sea Turtle which was very cool. On the kayak back across the bay we encountered some pods of dolphins and so spent some time swimming with them as well, which was even cooler.

We had a bit of a lie in this morning before going up to the main plantation house for breakfast (lots more fruit - their mango trees are currently dropping 200 mangos a day each). Greg had just made some quiche so we took a few slices of that for our lunch and went to hire ourselves some snorkel kit.

Today the snorkelling was at Pu'uhonua O Hōnaunau, a bit further south than yesterday and with no kayaking involved. The snorkelling was good with a few fingers of coral extending into the bay harbouring lots of different fish.

After our swim we walked around the pu'uhonua, a place of refuge, which includes a 16th century great wall made from basalt (10ft high by 16ft wide). Places of refuge protected the innocent and also absolved the guilty. The idea was that any condemned criminal who reached a place of refuge would undergo a ritual which lasted a few hours and then they were free to leave. Since the places of refuge always stood next to heavily guarded royal enclaves the condemned had to either get past a host of warriors on land or slip by the sharks in the sea.

We then went to South Point at, logically, the south end of the island. This is the southernmost point of the USA and there were a few cars and people at the end of the rough road. We walked around the point and looked at the green sand which had been washed up into some of the small beaches - the green is because it contains large amounts of olivine.

On the drive back we drove about Ocean View which is a new development of houses. Basically, some developer built a grid of roads and is now selling off lots for people to build their own houses on. The only disadvantage is that this development stands on lava flows which have formed in the last 50 years and there is no guarantee that Mauna Loa will not erupt this way in the future.

With some regret we left the Ka'awa Loa Plantation today after yet another great breakfast created by Michael. We are now staying at the Hale Ho'onanea in Kohala in the north of the island near Kawaihae. We are inland and uphill a bit which means that it is slightly cooler than at the coast and we also get a great view of the sea from the lanai.

To get here we drove along the Kona and Kohala coast. This is where the vast majority of the island's resorts (i.e. the self contained hotels) are to be found. To satisfy our curiosity we stopped at the Waikoloa Beach Resort at 'Anaeho'omalu Bay. It wasn't really to our liking: the huge hotels and the shopping malls aren't really what we would find relaxing.

We also stopped off at a couple of beaches so we know where to go to in the next few days. The best of these was probably Hapuna which is a small expanse of white sand and turquoise water backed by palm trees. Although it is the largest beach on the island it is still a pretty small and would probably take 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other. It has bigger waves than we had down in the south of the island so we will be swapping our snorkels for body boards for the next couple of days.

We explored the area of North Kohala today. Starting with a drive up to Waimea then along the spine of Kohala Mountain which is the extinct remains of the oldest volcano on the island. The views of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea (with its summit telescopes sparkling in the sun) were excellent and as we drove over the top we got to see the fabulous sight of Maui across the sea ahead of us.

Once we reached the northern extent of the mountains we followed the highway eastwards to the Pololu Valley where we walked a short distance down the path to admire the awesome view. This is the sister valley of the Waipio Valley which we saw on my first day here but between this valley and that one there are no roads and another five equally steep sided valleys - apparently it is possible to walk it but takes a couple of days.

The two towns in this area, Kapa'au and Hāwī, were apparently quite run-down in the mid 1990s but since then they have become home to local artists and there are several galleries to visit so they are now on the tourist trail. We stopped for lunch at the Bamboo Restaurant and Gallery in Hāwī (mahimahi for Paula and a mixed platter of starters for me) before whiling away an hour or so at the cafe across the road (very good ice creams).

As I write the sun will be setting in about 30 minutes but is is still quite hot (around 28C) - might be in for another good sunset across the pacific...

We went to the east side of the island today so that we could walk the Waipi'o Valley. The original plan was to hike from Waimea to the head of the valley and then follow trails which skirted along the edge of the drop to the bottom. However, the trail across to the head of the valley was closed so instead we went back to the overlook on the east coast. On the way we stopped of at some lava tubes on the Old Mamalahoa Highway but didn't get very far into them as the torches we were carrying were extremely dim.

From the overlook to the floor of the valley is a short walk of less than a mile down a single track road - unfortunately it is also a 900 ft drop. We took our time walking down, keeping to the shade and avoiding the few 4x4s which were going up and down the road. At the base we followed the road inland for a while past the taro farms until we reached a view of Hi'ilawe Falls (1450 ft high) - there used to be two waterfalls here but the one on the left was shut off by a sugar company who diverted the water. Taking the road back to the shore we reached the beach where the surf was pounding onto the dark sand and a couple of wild horses were wandering around. There is a river that cuts across the beach which a few people were attempting to wade across but we decided to keep our feet dry for the walk back to the top. Just as we were about to set off up the road (which was looking very steep from the bottom) a passing 4x4 mini van offered us a lift which we gratefully accepted and so got to the top in a fraction of the time we thought :-)

This evening we've just been up to Waimea for dinner at Daniel Theibaut which was very good - ahi followed by ono for Paula, mahimahi followed by rack of lamb for me. We fell in to the usual trap of forgetting that the portion sizes are huge and so in the end could not finish the main courses (and definitely no room for desserts).

We are moving on from Kohala today and going to our final B&B, the Hale Ohia Cottages. This is in the village of Volcano which is right next to the volcano (the Kilauea Caldera) and at an elevation of 1143m so it should be slightly cooler than it has been here.

Yesterday we spent the morning on the beach at the Mauna Kea resort. This is a crescent of white sand backed by swaying palm trees. It also had the advantage that the car park only fits 30 cars and that the hotel itself is currently closed (due to the 2006 earthquake) which meant that the beach was very quiet compared to Hapuna.

Last night we drove up to the astronomy visitor information station on Mauna Kea (2800m elevation) to join in their stargazing program which they do every night from 6pm - 10pm. This started with a quick walk to the top of a nearby hill to watch the sunset. The visitor centre is above the clouds which means they are practically guaranteed clear skies. They had a number of telescopes set up including a couple of the bigger ones (up to 16") pointing at Jupiter. We could also see the eruption of lava (from the Pu'u O'o vent on Kilauea) glowing in the south east, so they trained a couple of scopes on that as well. It was a long, dark drive on rough roads back down to Waimea but well worth the effort.

On Sunday, to get from Kahola to Volcano we drove back down the east side of the island. This time we had more time though so we stopped to visit the Akaka Falls which are inland a bit and fall into the surrounding rain forest. The falls seem to be quite popular and there was a large bus load of Japanese tourists at the view point taking comedy photos. Lunch was at What's Shakin Smoothies just north of Hilo - a Bananarama for me and a Peanut Braddah for Paula.

We reached the Volcano National Park around 2pm and went to the straight to the overlook of the Halema'uma'u Crater at the Jagger Museum. It's very impressive with a large plume of steam and sulphur dioxide rising into the blue sky. The vent the plume is rising from is approximately 150 ft across and when it first happened it rained material down onto the overlook car park which is now closed (as is half the crater rim drive so that people don't drive into the poisonous cloud).

Today we did the short 4 mile Kilauea Iki trail. This skirts the edge of, and then crosses the Kilauea Iki crater. Until 1959 this was a deep crater containing lush rain forest and then the volcano erupted. During 17 eruptive events the crater was filled with a lake of molten lava with waves lapping the edges and at one point the fountain of lava from the vent was 580m high (which is the highest ever observed). It is now totally solid although it is still hot enough at depth that rain water seeping down is vapourised and issues as steam from the numerous cracks. We did the trail quite slowly (a little under 3 hours) as we kept stopping to look at stuff.

This evening we drove back down to the coast to Kalapana. This is where the lava from the current eruption is visible. For most of the distance from the Pu'u O'o vent the lava is travelling in lava tubes and so cannot be seen at the surface. Just south of the now destroyed village of Kalapana it comes into contact with the sea causing a large steam cloud (actually a pretty nasty mix of hydrochloric acid and small bits of volcanic glass). For the price of $200 a head you can get a space on the boat that you can see in the bottom left of the picture, but you would have to be slightly mad to do so. We stayed to watch the lava after the sunset with the clouds of vapour glowing orange in the night sky.

Today we drove down the Chain of Craters road in the national park. This road used to connect to where we were last night watching the lava at the ocean but has been cut off by the current eruption (i.e. since 1983).

We walked the trail to Pu'u Huluhulu Cinder Cone from which there were good views north-west to the plume coming out of Halema'uma'u Crater. We could also see a plume of vapour to the east which must have been Pu'u 'Ō'ō, the site where the lava is currently erupting. From Pu'u Huluhulu we went off the trail to walk up to the crater at the top of the Mauna Ulu Shield. This shield was formed during an eruption in 1969 which continued until 1974. The area around the crater is quite unstable and there was a lot of steam issuing from the deep cracks in the pahoehoe.

As we drove further down the road we went over the pali which is essentially a steep cliff formed by a large landslip - this took us basically down to sea level. Just after the drop there is the Pu'uloa Petroglyph Trail where the ancient Hawaiians have carved symbols into the surface of the lava.

The road continues eastward along the coast, quite close to the cliff edge, until it is abruptly stopped by a recent lava flow. From here we could see east to where a plume of vapour indicated the spot where we were last night watching the lava hit the sea. The wind was just about blowing the laze inland away from us but there was still a definite tang to the air.

Well the holiday is almost over. Today we caught an afternoon flight back to Honolulu so that we can catch an early morning flight tomorrow to LA.

Tonight we went to La Mariana Sailing Club, an authentic tiki bar (it claims to be one of the last authentic ones in Hawaii) on sand island. It was great, the food was good and there was live piano music and the vibe was nice and relaxed.

The trip back may be a bit disorientating as we leave tomorrow (Thursday) at 8.30am and then after about 20 hours travelling arrive back in London at 3.30pm on Friday. I think we'll probably try and sleep through as much of it as possible.