M2M ULTRA 2017

It has rained constantly all night and sleep has been more a series of catnaps than a full blown gonk. The rain does give some measure of comfort knowing that I am nice and snug in my bag. Everyone else seems to be of the same volition and again there has been no obvious snoring. We are supposed to be awakened at 06:00 by the Hawaiian drum beat but one of the volunteer tents has other ideas. They have to be up at 05:00 each morning and on this particular morning they are letting everyone else know about it. We all lie awake and pass the time with some idle chatter before the official wake up noise kicks in. Fortuitously, the rain that has belted down all night stops for just long enough to allow us to get hot water for breakfast and stay dry doing it. Many people are taking no chances though and there are a number of unwrapped ponchos on show. My drying plan has not borne fruit so I am forced to dress in wet clothes. This turns out not to be as bad as expected. Both my ...

We are woken by a Hawai’ian drum beat which, for a very brief moment, reminds me of Jesus Walks by Kanye West. A surreal thought at 0430 in the morning! It is a nice sound to wake up to and is infinitely better than 500 Miles by The Proclaimers! I have had a good, but not great, sleep. I have been bitten and the bites are annoyingly itchy. Tent mates have been moving around in the night, mainly to visit the toilet but, thankfully nobody snores!! Nobody else has complained that I snore so we are immediately off to a winner! It has rained during the night and, on first inspection, my dry bag plan doesn’t seem to have been too successful. They feel wet but not sodden; it may be just morning damp or even cold. In any case, once they are on my feet, they don’t feel too bad. For breakfast I tuck in to what, with one day exception, will be my breakfast of choice – dehydrated fruit muesli moistened with hot water. It is a meal I have sampled before and is tasty enough to convinc...

Despite the comment that the amended bus trip will be a lot shorter than the scenic route, it is still quite a journey.   We pass quite close to Hilo en route and see a number of pink flags alongside the road which give us an idea of at least one part of our near future. Camp 1 is sited close to the Volcano National Park where Kilauea, the World’s most active volcano is to be found. It is reported to have been continually in a state of eruption since 1983! Camp 1 is very pretty and gives no indication of the hell that awaits us. For now we are contented souls and our only gripe is that there are no fire pits a la G2G. Hawai’i has strict fire control rules so no unnecessary fires are allowed. There are 7 of us in tent 7, which is devoted to Mokuali – the God of canoe builders! It doesn’t roll of the tongue the same way that Hualapai did for G2G 2014 and there is not a great deal of background information on Google. Nevertheless, if we have an urge to build a canoe wh...