We had booked into a backpackers hostel and were due to be picked up at 11.45 a.m. Our lift arrived on time and we were soon waving goodbye (if only for a couple of days) to the concrete mass of Waikiki. Our lift was a stereotypical surfer dude who wasn’t a particular fan of Waikiki! He cranked up his tape (yeah they still use tapes here!) and had us kicking back and relaxing to some funky dub, whilst watching the scenery change from grey concrete to beautiful green valleys. As we neared North Shore, the guy driving opened the window as asked us all what we could smell. There was the most sensational smell of pineapples, it was a beautiful aroma. We were just passing the Dole pineapple plant, they do tours around the plantation and it would have been good to go on one, but they were quite pricey and we didn’t have transport so it kind of ruled it out. We were really starting to realise that without a car you were pretty much confined to the area you were in. The $2 bus that circled the island only

allowed it passengers to take carry on bags so unfortunately that ruled us out from using it, as we are pretty heavily loaded with all of our camping stuff.

We pulled up outside the hostel and it looked fine, there was some kind of confusion regarding the booking in, so I just left Rob to it. We had booked a dorm but wanted to check out the private rooms, for some reason we couldn’t look at the private room which was on this site but had to walk down the road, check out the dorm at the other site, then walk back to this site and check the room. Neither of us could understand this logic and guessed it was just another American oddity! Rob checked out one of the dorms and said it was OK, but when I had a look I wasn’t that fussed. The dorms were in wooden huts that included a bathroom and kitchen and 6 beds. The one we would have been in looked rather grotty, had a sink full of old looking