Hawaii

Fiji or Hawaii? Hmmm.... Such a tough decision to make... In the end the flight prices determined that we would break our journey to Canada Hawaii! So we said goodbye to Australia and said a bleary eyed Aloha to Oahu after our 9.5 hour flight. Luckily we could check-in straight away so we had a quick refreshing shower before heading out for an All-American breakfast with the much required endless refills of coffee :-)

Waikiki beach is in the middle of being restored as the sand erosion is pretty bad - hence the really attractive dredger in the middle of the ocean and a lot of the beach area was fenced off, but we found a wee area for our towel, plonked ourselves down, smothered ourselves in sunscreen and spent a few hours lazing on the beach interspersed with dips in the unbelievably blue ocean.

We headed back to the hotel for a cheeky nap by the pool and then had our first (of many) cocktails at the pool bar as it had just ticked over into Happy Hour!

There are so many restaurants and bars in Waikiki, that our sleep deprived addled brains took a while to decide where to eat so we headed back down to the beach to watch the sunset and then headed to fill our faces at a bbq restaurant with all you can eat salad bar nomnomnom.

We booked onto a tour of Pearl Harbor the next day, so we had a brekkie of fresh pineapple and croissants in our room before joining our coach tour - we had booked the tour without really knowing what we were going to be doing and it ended up being much more of a coach tour (i.e. driving past places without getting off the bus and exploring) than we thought but we saw some places we wouldn't have otherwise such as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on a hill overlooking Honolulu and the old palace buildings where the Hawaiin kings and queens lived.

The bus driver was really informative about the history etc so although we felt like proper tourists, it was really worthwhile. We had signed up for the tour mostly to visit the Pearl Harbor visitor centre and the USS Arizona memorial. I realised when we were in Australia how little I knew about the Pacific War, and again I didn't really know much about Pearl Harbor (haven't even seen the film!). It was a really interesting place to visit and there are a couple of exhibitions about the history behind the attack and the actual details. Included in the visit is a short boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial which sits like a bridge over the site where the sunken ship lies on the shallow harbour floor.

The over enthusiastic hotel travel desk girl who signed us up for the Pearl Harbor tour, had also convinced us to do a boat trip - although we didn’t take too much convincing when there was the chance to see dolphins, turtles and possibly whales. We didn’t ask quite enough questions so the hour and a half bus ride to get to the boat was an unexpected start to the day. The bus driver did his tour guide spiel to keep us entertained but there was a lot of cross over from the previous day’s tour. The boat trip left from the west coast of the island where they get the driest weather so we had a beautiful sunny afternoon on the boat. It was a very swanky catamaran and cruised along at quite a speed to head over to where the dolphins hang out.

The scenery along the west coast was wild, rugged extinct volcano slopes down to the coast - some of the valleys have been used for filming films and tv shows such as Jurassic Park and Lost. After about an hour and a half from the dock, we arrived at a bay to see a pod of spinner dolphins jumping about in the water - it was hard to get a good photo but it’s so peaceful watching them dance around in the waves.

We then headed over to a reef about 200m off shore and had an hour snorkelling - it was quite deep water so I kept diving down to get a closer look at the reef and saw all the usual tropical fishies including trigger fish whose Hawaiian name is humuhumunukunukuāpua. Try saying that after a few Mai Tais :-) We saw a few sea turtles too and I dived down to follow one until he disappeared under the reef. We tucked into a tasty lunch and some blue cocktails on the journey back to the dock.

That evening we treated ourselves to some posh cocktails in the beach bar at the Moana Surfrider - one of the posher hotels on Waikiki Beach. Most of the hotels have hawaiian music and dancing in the evenings to entertain the cocktail drinkers - there are a lot of resorts offering buffet dinner luaus with big music and dancing shows but they are pretty expensive, so the little shows in the hotels are a nice taster and it’s pretty nice to watch the sunset over the beach, Mai Tai in hand listening to the cheerful Hawaiian music.

We had dinner at Tiki’s Grill and Bar - I had very tasty Macadamia crusted swordfish and Chris had Japanese style short rib nomnomnom.

We managed to not get signed up to another tour so we took ourselves on the public bus to Kailua on the North Eastern cost of the island. The road goes up an over a mountain pass and there were some great views down to Kailua from the top. After a bit of a hike from the bus stop, we reached Kailua beach and it was worth every minute of the journey - perfect white sand and the bluest ocean framed by palm trees.

After jostling to find a space for our towels on Waikiki, there were hardly any people on Kailua beach. The beach is a popular spot for kite- and wind-surfing and watching the people learning to kite-surf is very entertaining :-) We were also entertained by a couple having their wedding pictures taken - the things the photographer was getting them to do were funny and reminded us of our photographer at our wedding - “little bit kiss now!” :-) We wiled away a few hours lazing on the beach with a break for lunch from the deli (macadamia flavoured coffee mmmm) where some cheeky birds kept us entertained.

Chris was on a hunt for some new sunglasses so we thought we’d have a look in the duty free mall in Waikiki. It was a scary experience. The whole place was lit like the beauty section in a department store and the perfume in the air made my eyes water. The whole place was aimed at the rich Japanese and Chinese tourists on a mission to save money on the lastest Dior or Chloe handbag and also designed to be really hard to leave - we circled the whole place before we could find an exit. And they didn’t have the right sunglasses. We were in need of a cocktail after that experience so we headed to the Halekulani resort for some more posh cocktails, free kettle chips and Hawaiian musicians and dancers. Chris thinks he saw William Baldwin also enjoying the drinks and show - our little brush with fame (if it was actually him...) :-)

I had wanted to eat at Roy’s since reading the recommendation in the Lonely Planet, but we hadn’t been able to get a table the previous couple of nights so we sensibly made a reservation for our final night. It was a lovely last dinner in Hawaii and it was worth the wait for the chocolate souffle alone... I’m drooling thinking about it now :-)

Our flight to Canada left in the evening, so we spent the whole of the next day chilling on the beach after filling our faces with a proper American breakfast at Eggs n Things - a very popular spot judging by the queue to order.

To burn off some of the pancakes and syrup, I hired a surfboard for an hour. After a long paddle out, the waves were perfect for a beginner and I actually managed to stand up properly and be in control of the board until the wave died down. As there were so many surfers and quite far off the beach, there is no photographic evidence of my success! Chris had a little paddle but didn’t have enough time to catch a good wave before we had to return the board. It was a great end to a great trip to Hawaii.