It doesn’t matter where you go or how long it takes to get there. That feeling of “we’re here!” is always such a welcome sensation.

Having been to Oahu once before, I had some expectations about our arrival: the tropical temperatures as soon as you step out of the plane, the long arrivals hall at the airport sans walls (unheard of in Canadian airports), the ubiquitous palm trees …

Collecting a rental car at the airport is not typical for me, and we were both surprised at the long queue ahead of us. But once we were inside our Mustang convertible, we were up and on our way.

Arriving at a home exchange always involves one surprise or another. You read the description of the home and your hosts’ instructions carefully, but not everything completely registers until you see it in person. Hotel rooms are generic and pretty much all the same; a home is personal. It can be quirky and not quite what you expected. It can wildly exceed your expectations. Or, it can be both.

This home exchange was in Lanikai, which is a suburb of the town of Kailua on the windward side of Oahu, about a half hour drive from Honolulu. Kailua means “two currents” and is so named because of the two currents that run through Kailua Bay.

From the deck on the upper floor of the hill house where we stayed, we had a view of that bay. Here’s the first photo I took, within minutes after our arrival.

And here is the photo of our first sunrise the next morning.

More or less by fluke, we ended up living on Vancouver time the entire week we were in Hawaii, which maximized our daylight hours, but also made it easy to get up every morning in time to see the rising sun peeking over the palm trees. The glorious thing about sunrises (or sunsets) is they are never the same.

Here’s another one.