Hawaii

Hawaii’s Big Island has – and not many people know this – the world’s tallest mountain. Not the world’s highest mountain, that is, but tallest. You just need to be wearing a pressure suit when you start at Mauna Kea’s base, 33,000 feed down.

You might not be able to get the bottom, but 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. Saddleback Road takes you there, a twisting, heaving ribbon of torn-up tarmac which is closed to rental cars.

We snorkelled again, which I love more and more. Sea turtles abounded, which resulted in this very pleasing little composition.

The lava flows 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 needing 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.