I had a pretty disturbed night, waking about 4 times in quite a lot of discomfort, partly from wind and party from my hip. Nevertheless, I did manage to get comfortable each time and got a reasonable amount of sleep.

By the time I got up around 8am, I had lots of aches and pains, but a hot shower worked wonders.

We met a few others and got a cable car a few blocks to a local cafe for breakfast. I started the day feeling pretty rough, but gradually both my digestive system and my hip eased. After breakfast, we bid farewell to our Open Group member friends and set out on a mission.

When I increased my dose of laxative on Thursday, I created a problem. I would run out before we leave for home. We visited a local drug store to try to get more. That proved difficult, so we postponed the problem until next week.

We were more successful in our second task .. getting a hold-all to take some of the weight out of our large suitcases.

We left the hotel just after noon and went to San Francisco airport for the short flight to Los Angeles. We were slightly delayed by a "minor maintenance issue", but still made the onward flight to Hawaii comfortably.

This time, there was to be no upgrade, but my Executive Platinum card still produced benefits. On a pretty full flight, Sue and I got three seats with the middle one vacant.

5:43pm and the wheels left the tarmac on flight AA247 to Kona on the big island of Hawaii, the culmination of the trip, and I was feeling more comfortable than at any time all day.

This was the first flight segment of the week in economy, and although I did have a spare sear next to me, I was far from comfortable. Getting up and walking around about every hour helped. We arrived almost exactly on time, at 9pm Hawaii time, meaning a little over 5 hours flying time. Kona is an open air airport. We were in SpeediShuttle heading towards our hotel by 9:30.

Arrival at the hotel in the dark was rather underwhelming. The welcome at the front desk was subdued and the hotel seemed to closed down for the night. We did find a bar to serve us Mai-Tais and more importantly to provide bottles of water, but at 10:30pm, the barman was closing for the night.