washing up, the toilet didn’t flush properly and it had a slight aroma of sweaty feet! Needless to say we decided to throw caution to the wind and take a private room. So off we trotted back up the road to check out the rooms. Arh, you definitely get what you pay for! The room was in a sort of apartment, with open kitchen, balcony, living room and decent bathroom with each individual room off the main area. It was an oldish wooden building that oozed character and the balcony also had wicked views over towards the ocean. It was immediately relaxing and we said hello to the other people who were around, it turns out that these people weren’t guests but workers. Neither of us could actually work out what they did, but they were friendly all the same. In fact there seemed to be more workers than guests but it seemed they were on to a good thing whatever there job was!

We settled onto the balcony

and spied a laptop on the kitchen bench, so Rob immediately went to get ours and to our delight we had free internet, which was top as I think we were both getting email withdrawal symptoms and we also had loads of stuff we wanted to check out. We had a very chilled couple of hours, revelling in our homely surroundings, then we decided that we should head out and check out the local area. North Shore is very beautiful and very unspoiled which was good to see. There was a local petition to try and boycott the local McDonalds into closing, as all of the residents wanted to keep things local. We were very impressed with their attitude and love for their surroundings. It was a gorgeous day and the cool breeze off the ocean kept the temperatures at a reasonable level. At last we had found the tropical paradise of Oahu. We headed back to the hostel, got changed then headed straight over the road and into the inviting looking waters of the very calm pacific ocean! Wow it was good water, it was so clear and so