Sorry for the Group Email

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There’s just time to mention Qantas. The next time a flight attendant barks, “Chicken or beef?” at you, I’d like you to bear in mind that Qantas gives out pre-dinner menus. The choices are exactly the same, of course, but it’s a tiny touch that makes the whole thing more pleasant.

That and the fact that they dish out free booze the entire flight. By the time we landed I was - sorry - quite drunk. It was the perfect condition in which to face America’s infamously surly immigration officers.

I presume things went well, because an indeterminate amount of time I later I found myself, swaying gently, in my sister’s office. My sister’s an astronomer, you see, which meant I kept my hands well clear of her computer, lest I inadvertently remotely send a multi-billion-dollar telescope swinging into its housing dome, or some other catastrophe.

Shortly afterwards we were at my sister’s house, where the fridge was stocked, the bed was made, and the TV was playing its uniquely American trick of showing everything and nothing all at once. It was, in short, nice to be back with a familiar face; particularly a familiar face that kept Marmite in the kitchen. Amid much protestation, we were given the only spare bed, fed frequently, and driven everywhere we wanted to go. My sister’s nice like that.

A lot is made of how little Americans leave their own country. This is an easy missile for Europeans to sling: we once visited Italy for an afternoon from Nice in France. If you flew for the same amount it time to reach Nice from London, but left instead from New York, you’d either land in Indiana, or crash in the Atlantic ocean, barely a third of the way towards Europe.

The other thing that stops American venturing out much is that most of the things you’d leave England for - snow, warm weather, edible food - are already within the USA’s capacious borders. Hawaii, for instance, has mountains, beaches, and even a scattering of volcanoes, for the geologically-minded.

We headed, after a few days (to be covered in Hawaii the second, which will be along in a few days, SFTGE watchers), to the Big Island. The Big Island may not have an inspired name, but there’s plenty to do. For $500 we got return flights and an economy car rental, and were delighted to find that our economy car had been upgraded to a bright blue convertible.

My dad has a convertible. It’s a 1977 MG Midget and I love it. But, robotics and whatnot being what they were at a time when flares were the height of fashion, getting the roof down was a manual affair that required careful planning, even more diligent folding, and a Masters’ degree in thermonuclear physics to make sure it would all come out again the right way. Ever since I got my fingers trapped in it at some point in the mid-nineties I’ve been cautious of folding roofs.

Our car had a button. A simple, single prod and the roof was neatly devoured by the boot, with a solid whirring noise and a ding at the end to let you know everything had gone as planned. There were foibles, of course: if you inadvertently started the car moving while the roof was halfway through opening or closing, it would freeze, acting as a kind of giant parachute.

Still, we were in Hawaii, in a convertible we’d barely paid for.
Hawaii’s Big Island contains – and not many people know this – the world’s tallest mountain. Not the world’s highest mountain, that is. Still, from its base on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea stretches thirty three thousand feet. You’d just drown climbing it. You can drive nearly all the way to the top: my sister’s excuse for living in Hawaii is its world-class collection of telescopes, many of which are nestled on top of Mauna Kea. The trouble is that Saddleback Road, which takes you there, is a twisting, heaving ribbon of torn-up tarmac which is technically closed to rental cars. There isn’t a sign, but we read it in a few guide books, and after I accidentally made the tyres bark in protest after flying over a hidden tip, prompting a frank discussion of my adherence to the speed limit, we decided to turn back.

We snorkelled again, and as I mentioned when we went snorkelling in Indonesia, seeing actual fish never gets old. We even managed to see sea turtles, which are apparently rather rare, but were nonetheless crowding Richardson Beach en masse. We saw lava flows which had swallowed entire roads and villages, and have added hundreds of acres to the Big Island’s land mass and which, every so often, break off and abruptly fall into the sea, to the sometimes fatal surprise of tourists standing about on them. These days there are signs everywhere: if you did manage to kill yourself courtesy of lava it wouldn’t be because no-one warned you.

We camped for a few nights, pleased for once to be able to curl up in our sleeping bags without wearing the full complement of survival gear we’d needed in New Zealand. We tried Loco Moco, which is fun to say, besides being a traditional Hawaiian dish with an almost heart-stopping fat content.

Delicious, though.

Dave recommends Loco Moco. No idea what it means though. Thoughts?