From Hawaii to LA

G'day!

I would like to give you a short interim report on what happened recently.

After “the kids” left, my older ones and I spent about a week on the Big Island.

Among other things, we went to see the sunrise at Kilauea Crater a second time.

We lived near Hilo at the time. Just around the corner from Akaka Falls.

From there we went back to the west side of the island. We spent four more days in dear Kate's house.

We really felt very comfortable there.

Kate has a lovely garden with lots of tropical fruits. That might have been delicious, I tell you!

The garden not only had delicious fruit, but also lots of birds.

And the view from far above was nothing to sneeze at either!

My older ones finally managed to snorkel with the manta rays at night. This had been canceled several times before because of the high seas. My older one has already told you something about it, but I still want to show you at least one of the cool pictures here again.

That was really a special experience!

My older ones also went snorkeling a few times and they really enjoyed it. They said if we came to the Big Island again, we'd go diving.

And then we actually had to leave the Big Island and Hawaii again. We were all a little sad then. It's a really beautiful and special place.

It went via Honolulu to Los Angeles. We had an overnight stay (in San Clemente, a little south) and basically two full days. But because of a pretty bad storm - my oldest says it hasn't rained so much at once there in over 100 years or so - there were lots of severe weather warnings and we were a bit limited in what we could do.

That's why my two older ones went "to the sauna". I waited in the car. So I don't know exactly what you do in the sauna. When they came back they at least looked more relaxed than before.

In any case, my oldest met someone in the area who she has known for a long time, but has only ever seen on television or rather on the screen. That's called online.

That was a nice get-together.

After spending the night we went back to LA and went to the California ScienCenter. It's a play on words, you know. Because Science and Center end and begin with the same letters, they only used them once. Good, right?

It was pretty exciting there. Various exhibitions on life, ecosystems and also aerospace.

We were also in a film there that was shown in a special cinema and when you were in there you had to put on special glasses. Then everything looked like it did in real life! It's called 3D, my oldest said.

And then we watched this film about the blue whales. Very fitting for the many humpback whales we had seen in Hawaii. Wooaaahhh, those were great pictures. Hopefully these gentle giants will continue to appear in increasing numbers in the seas after they were almost wiped out by whaling.

And there was a camera that could make temperatures visible. That's called infrared, says my oldest. Look, I'm really cool:

My oldest had a bottle of cold water in her bag.

Well, now we're in LA at the airport. From here we continue to Guayaqil in Ecuador and then after an overnight stay there on to the Galapagos. I'm soooo excited about what there will be to see.

I will definitely tell you about it!

Until then, best wishes from Travis, the buddy bear, and his two big ones