We just got back from two weeks in Hawaii…a wonderful, first time vacation there for the two of us.  What a beautiful state!  The long plane ride was at the upper limits of my tolerance for tight spaces (claustropobia, anyone?!) but every minute was worth it. The incredible flowers, the ocean, and those yummy coffee glazed macadamia nuts made every day a joy.

We spent two nights on Oahu so we could have a day at Pearl Harbor as my husband is a real WW II history buff, then four nights each on Maui and Kauai. Because it will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime trip for us–there are still so many places we want to see–we were busy sightseeing every day.  Volcanoes, waterfalls,  whale watching, a couple of luaus, a helicopter tour of Kauai and a day in catamaran going up Kauai’s inaccessible coast… wonderful memories, now, which will remembered through the 1000+ digital photos I took.  But some of the most vivid memories are the animals!

That lovely snout, above, belongs to one of Kaua’s wild hogs.  Isn’t he sweet?  (LOL!)  And the chickens–oh, my.  They are beautiful, and  they are everywhere–in the parking lots, the roadside ditches, around the beautiful pools at every hotel we stayed at.  Everyone we asked said that they are treated as sort of a state pet–no one eats them; they are just on the loose.  We loved the chickens!

And the humpback whales…oh, my.  This was still the season for them to be lingering around the warm waters of Hawaii before heading up to Alaska’s rich feeding waters for the summer, and we saw dozens of them while on a whale watching boat—not to mention all of the ones  we could see from the beach in front of the hotels we stayed at.  Take a close look at this photo and tell me—do you think that guy in the water is even aware of how close those two whales are?!  The humpbacks wouldn’t eat him–they consume vast quantities of krill (tiny shrimp) once they get back to Alaska, and don’t eat anything at all while wintering in Hawaiian waters.  But, I still wouldn’t want to be close if one of them decided to breech or start tail slapping!

The animals in Hawaii  surprised and fascinated me.  What are some of your interesting animal discoveries while traveling?

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