Hello everyone!

28th February - just to let you know that the Hawaii photos are now mostly on here, Fiji and NZ are totally uploaded and we're nearly up to date! We're in San Fran at the moment ... will start our USA mainland page sometime soon! Hope you're all ok,xxx

Well, as you may have guessed, the last internet place we were in was not too fast (the local library kindly let us use their computer for free though so we're not complaining) which meant we could only upload five pictures from Fiji ... just a taster! :)

So, today I'm trying to upload the remaining Fiji photos (take a look back, it really is a beautiful place). The Hawaii ones will have to be uploaded another time as they are in a different place... all very complex!!

We are leaving Hawaii tomorrow, we have had a really wonderful time here. We spent one night in Waikiki and then headed straight up to the North Shore where we had our very own little grass shack at Maelakahana Campsite - it was awesome! Literally right next to the beach, we fell asleep to the sound of the ocean every night. We met some really nice Canadian people: Jason, Margaret, Marty and Derrylee and we spent a lot of time with them which was fun!

We went on a lovely (steep) hike one day to a place called Mani------ Falls (my memory is bad and Conrad isn't here at the moment as he is at Pearl Harbour - I've been before so agreed that I should have an 'admin day' at the internet cafe!). We spent a nice day at Shark's Cove snorkelling and sunbathing and then had the most amazing burgers followed by yummy ice cream - the diet starts tomorrow! :)

GUESS WHAT - We saw whales!!!!!!!!!!! (yes, it does deserve that many exclamation marks) They are amazing, we've seen quite a few from the shore, the first one we saw did a full jump out of the water which is apparently quite unusual so we were privileged. When we were at Sharks Cove there were two swimming together really close to the shore and we watched them for ages - it was SO cool!

I think I may have forgotten to mention in the Fiji blog that on our second to last dive in Fiji, we saw FIVE sharks - I was so excited, that's the first time I've ever seen sharks except for on the television!! We saw three White Tip Reef sharks and two big (at least 2.5 metres) Bronze Whaler sharks feeding, they were really close to us and we just floated above the coral watching them - WOW! On our last dive in Fiji, Conrad's regulator broke which was slightly scary for a minute - he had to use my octopus until I got his ready for him to use!! At least we know we're good diving buddies!

Well, I'd better stop writing and start uploading! Hope you are all well, mum said it was freezing in the UK last weekend so I won't tell you how sunny it has been here for the last week! It did rain yesterday though - we felt right at home! :)

Lots of love,
xxxxxxxxx

P.S. ESPECIALLY NZ FAMILY: There are a load of new (nice) pics (mainly from our leaving party) on the NZ-North Island section. The new ones are the ones without captions because I haven't got enough time today but I think everyone knows who they are - if not, it can be a guessing game!! Hopefully you'll all meet each other at the wedding anyway! :)