The next few days were spent on Big Island, and that’s where it all got a little bit more action packed. We went horse riding on the Parker Ranch, over land that looked a bit like how I picture Montana or Wyoming – flat, endless expanses of plain – except that Montana and Wyoming are not, as far as I know, surrounded by five volcanoes, one of them active. That’s Kilauea, and apparently a full scale eruption is long overdue.
For the moment, however, it was content to just smoke merrily away; actually when I say smoke, I mean ‘gush huge plumes of white ash in quite an alarming fashion that suggests a major eruption is imminent’. We got to see it up close on a tour of the National Volcanoes Park, where our guide, Warren, took us to steam holes (where you can get a kind of burning hot mini facial by sticking your head over it) and a ‘lava tube’ – a 400 ft underground passage formed many years ago by a gush of lava. That was spooky. Not helped by everyone turning their torches off at intervals and making references to films like The Hole and The Blair Witch Project. But the best thing was actually flying over the volcano in a helicopter. I’d never been in one before, and it was being flown by another man who looked about 100 years old; his name was Ray but I renamed him ‘Hurricane’ Ray as he seemed quite similar to ‘Hurricane’ Bob. He probably used to be a pilot in ‘Nam; I’m not entirely sure, I was too busy silently screaming as he banked the helicopter at horrifically frightening angles on a regular basis. However, through the hysteria, I managed to see some amazing sights of burning hot lava flowing down towards the sea, and open holes in the surface revealing the fire within.
For some light relief, we were staying in a hotel that looked like a cross between a Disney theme park and a Bond villain’s lair; the Hilton Waikiloa Village was so huge that you had to use a boat or the monorail to take you from one part to the other. It cost $360m to build, and $70m of that was spent on art and antiques. There were old wooden horses, Buddha statues and paintings of sail boats lying around all over the place. It probably concealed a volcano somewhere underneath it, too.
But it did have the best view of sunsets. 
I rest my case.
