Michael You can drive up a now-dormant volcano called Mauna Kea by car. The only way up is a rather steep, unpaved road, and only one local car rental company (Harper) allows you to take on the tour with their rented "Toyota Four-Runners" (four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicles). All other car rental companies known in America (Dollar, Alamo, Avis) prohibit the use of this road in their rental agreements. This turned out to be totally ridiculous because, although the road was indeed unpaved, it was in excellent condition, as wide as a highway, and compared to the 2,000 miles of Australian dirt roads we covered a few years ago in a Land Cruiser, it was a piece of cake. The car rental company also charged us an additional $22 per day for full insurance coverage, which had a deductible of $5,000. Sometimes Americans are really crazy.

What's interesting, of course, is that you go from sea level to 12,000 feet in half an hour. The sunscreen bottle in the car inflated like a balloon! Why? Here comes the answer from "Children Ask, Nobel Laureates Answer": So, children... it comes from the, um, molecules. The sunscreen molecules are in an airtight container, the sunscreen bottle. And the air at 4000 meters is much thinner than at sea level because we're almost in space, right! That's why the air molecules from outside no longer press firmly on the sunscreen bottle. But in the half-empty sunscreen bottle, there are also other air molecules that got in there when we applied sunscreen down at the bottom. Because the bottle is hermetically sealed, the stronger sea-level air pressure inside still prevails at the summit. That's why the air molecules in the bottle act like warm wheat beer, shouting "Wow, it's tight in here!" and inflate the bottle. When you open the cap, everything equalizes with a hissing noise.

We were told to also vent the car's gas tank once if it's less than half full. Why? Our schoolchildren are supposed to find that out as homework. However, we didn't see any exploding cars. At the top of the mountain, there are some impressive observatories from NASA and such, because above the clouds in the totally clear Hawaiian air, you can enjoy looking at the stars without much obstruction. Additionally, there are only dim yellow streetlights across the entire island to avoid disturbing the stargazers. Okay, I guess I'm gladly paying taxes for that...

Back down at sea level, Hawaiian vegetation naturally goes completely wild due to the warm and at the same time humid climate: jungle-like trees, giant ferns (the movie "Jurassic Park" was filmed on the island of Kauai), and tropical fruits hanging from the trees. At a market, we bought small, freshly picked bananas and my favorite food: passion fruit, sweet and at the same time so sour that they make your eyes pop. Of course, there were also pineapples, mangoes, guavas, and avocados. Back home, we rented the movie "Molokai" from the video store. It it set on the neighboring island, which we had visited two years ago. We were quite amazed when we saw that one of the actors in the film was our tour guide back then! (For those interested, the guy's name is Richard Marx).

By the way, Hawaiians don't pronounce Hawaii as "Hawaii," but rather as "Hawa-i." First, they say "Hawa," then there's a tenth of a second pause, and then comes the "ee." During the pause, there's actually silence, and the "a" is interrupted. The same goes for the other islands; it's "Moloka-i," "Kawa-i," and so on. But when the stewardess announced our flight, she said "Hawaiian Airlines" without a pause! Angelika barely stopped me from saying, "Excuse me, actually it's pronounced 'Hawa-ii-an Airlines'!

• More topics you might be interested in:

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Hawaii: Big Island
  	South Point
  	Supermarket Chains
  	Kona Coffee
  	Tellme