Hawaii – Camping

There is a lot to be said for camping – getting you outdoors, the fresh air, waking up with nature on your doorstep and in our case saving you lots of money on pricey hotels. However, it can have its down sides too – uncomfortable floors, waves sounding like they are breaking right outside your tent, insects invading and basic living amenities at times (we got very good at taking quick washes at some beaches where they actually had outside cold showers, but we also took a shower in our underwear in a carpark filling up a litre bottle of water from a small tap and pouring it over one another!). All in all it was a fantastic 2 weeks of camping… BUT and its a big but (bit like the locals have, sorry that was mean!) the last few nights made you ask yourself if it is all worth it at times. Firstly, we managed to pick the weirdest and spookiest campsite on the northwest coast to spend the night at. We set up the tent in a completely empty campsite with only a few local kids hanging around drinking but there was about 200 wild cats roaming the area! They were everywhere, stalking around in the little copse next to the site and strutting around the campsite as if they owned it. The site itself was off the main road by about 3 miles and down a small lane with nothing around it, locals came and went regularly but no-one hung about. At around 10pm another couple turned up and set up their tent which made us feel a little happier knowing that we weren’t the only stupid fools to be camping here. Come 3am they had left, they had taken down their tent and scarpered. The cats had been whining, crying and generally making the strangest noises all night, sounded like babies crying, then added to that the general spooky feel to the place and well, it was a little frightening to say the least. We looked out at one point to see what we going on and all you could see was little eyes in bushes and things moving in the darkness, but weirder still was a flashing light coming from the copse area. This was a place where no flashing light should be, but it was there just flashing every 2 seconds or so. Shona’s overactive imagination got the better of her so was thinking all sorts of spooky things and was suddenly convinced that cats hung out in haunted areas! But for some reason I just had an image of a cat sitting on an old record player going round and round with a torch in its paws like a lighthouse!! Does that make me strange?!? Anyway bright and early, I’m talking about 5:30am we decided enough was enough too and very bleary eyed ran away from the crying cats and not returning (we were planning to camp here 2 nights)! Later that day we headed back to Spencer park and the nice little swimming spot from a few days ago… but come the evening the wind had picked up to almost gale force levels and we found our tent flapping around from the 2 remaining pegs about to take off! We spent the rest of the night constantly trying to keep it pinned down (rock hard floor was impossible to get pegs into) and stopping it flapping about, so if the stones underneath the tent didn’t keep you awake, the sound of the wind and the fact the tent was slapping the side of our faces did! We left for the airport the following morning having not slept for 2 nights looking extremely worse for wear!