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Published: September 29th 2011
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Seven nights on
Waikiki beach was the ideal way to wind down our five week holiday. There is always plenty going on at Waikiki and we loved every minute of our time here.
Our first day we decided to go check out a
Luau. We went to
Germaine's Luau, which is on the west coast of Oahu at an idyllic beach location. The weather, as it was every day we were in Oahu, was just perfect! It is about an hour drive out to the Luau, and our tour guide Matt was incredibly funny trying to get everyone in the mood to party. However, he wasn't having much luck because our bus seemed to be full of grumpy old Americans who for some reason were all a bit miserable. One guy even put his fingers in his ears to block out Matt's jokes. I think the Americans were just going for the buffet!
Once we got to the Luau, they dug up the pig that was to be the highlight of the buffet. To cook the pig they bury it in the ground with lava rocks at 5am, and by 7pm it is ready. It was delicious, very smoky
though! As the sun set we were eating dinner and watching the various Polynesian dance shows, with the Luau culminating with a fire sword dance in the dark. All in all, I couldn't help but think the Luau was a little tacky and perhaps an insult to the tradition of Luau, which was meant to be a celebration of something significant, not just something to keep fat American tourists entertained. It was worth doing nevertheless.
The next morning was the annual Aloha parade in Waikiki, so we watched all the school bands go by the main street and they had various cars go past with people that won various local awards. There were lots of tourists out to watch the parade but we didn't last long in the heat before hitting the beach.
We spent a lot of time at the beach and the pool and I gave stand-up paddleboarding a go. At first I didn't realise that you don't stand on it like a surfboard so was rather uncoordinated but I quickly got the hang of it. Stand up paddleboarding is actually a really cool way to hang out on the water.
We hired a car
for the day and drove right around the island. You could do it on a bus tour, but after our experience on the Luau we decided to do it on our own - which turned out to be a great idea. The island is very easy to drive around and it's very short driving - driving the entire island used only a quarter of a tank of petrol! Driving around Oahu is a pretty cool thing to do and I find it funny that the local radio stations seem to play a disproportionate amount of reggae music.
We started off at
Pearl Harbour, which was over-run with Japanese tourists (how ironic) and so we couldn't go out to the USS Arizona as it was a 2 hour wait, but we did get to wander around and check out the exhibitions which contained lots of interesting information about World War II and lots of photos and video. You could spend all day there, but we just spent an hour and a half.
From there we went to the
Dole Pineapple Plantation, named after it's founder, Jim Dole. The plantation is huge and contains information about pineapples, but more importantly
plenty of fresh pineapple to eat.
We drove around the North island beaches, stopping for a swim in the aggressive waves of
Waimea Bay. It was strange to take 3 steps out into the ocean and be above my head. We also stopped at the quieter
Laie Beach before heading to
Kualoa ranch, which is an amazing nature reserve with huge, sheer mountain ranges and wide green plains. It was where movies such as
Jurassic Park were filmed and TV shows such as
Lost. We went on a one hour jeep tour of the ranch which was great. From the high plains of the ranch you get a great view over the beach and there are some interestingly shaped islands (one called Chinaman's Hat and another that looks like a turtle).
On the way back we stopped off at the
Pila Lookout for a panoramic view of Oahu and the coral reef bay of
Hanauma Bay before returning the car.
On our last day, we returned to Hanauma Bay for a snorkelling trip. The bay is a really nice beach that is a volcano crater, so has sheer cliffs around it and is semi-circular shape. The bay
is full of rocky coral and amazing tropical fish as well as some fairly normal fish like travelly. Because it is quite shallow and small in parts, the fish literally swim right past your nose which is a bit freaky. However, the visibility wasn't as great as the snorkelling that we did at the big island, presumably because of the sand beach being washed into the water. The trip was great fun though anyway and this time we got an underwater camera and had fun trying to capture the fish on camera.
During the week we also did a lot of shopping and enjoyed the free entertainment in Waikiki such as the ukilele lessons and yoga classes. Some people say Waikiki is too hectic, but for people who get bored reading books by the beach all day, Waikiki is the perfect place for a vacation!
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