Aloha from Hawaii

---

Aloha!

I left Sydney in the evening for the nine hour flight to Honolulu on O'aho island, Hawaii. Because I crossed the International Date Line I got the same day twice so arrived in the morning of the same day. According to the captain of the plane (another Jetstar flight so I got more free meals while others had to pay for theirs), and it's a simple bit of maths, the fastest way to adjust clocks and watches etc was to simply put the time forward by three hours and the date back by a day. Hawaii was at the time, twenty one hours behind Sydney.

Hawaii is more or less exactly half way between Sydney and New York and my adventure is so much fun its a shame to think that I am heading back to England.

I had four nights on O'aho and thought there would be plenty to keep me occupied rather than rushing to visit any of the other islands... I was right :-) Although O'aho is a Hawaiian island, it is part of the US state of Hawaii. Within it there is also the island of Hawaii, 'the big island', where an active volcano is still errupting and has been since 1983!

After meeting some people at my accomodation, the nights out took care of themselves and we had some great times. Especially Nashvilles, a Country music club where they do line dancing! Apart from hanging around Waikiki, where I stayed (where Dennys diner makes bacon ice cream sundaes) and Honolulu, I visited Diamond Head, an exstinct volcano which last erruped about one hundred and fifty thousand years ago. From the top of the crater the rest of the perfectly round crater can clearly be seen, it's quite a view.

It was the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941 that got the USA involved in World War two. The USS Missuri warship and USS Bowfin submarine have been set aside as exhibits and the USS Arizona which was sunk during the attacks has a viewing platform over it. All of the vessels are available to visit. The attacks came early one Sunday morning when the Navy troops where rehersing a display and the Japanese, who sailed around behind the island over night in complete radio silence, attacked in two waives. The whole thing only lasted two hours but they attacked air bases on the island as well to try and disable the US air defence. About half the US Navy fleet was anchored there at the time, about 150 vessels.

A couple of us got the number 52 bus which took three and a half hours to do a lap of the island. We stopped off at Sunset Beach which is a fantasic spot that is big with surfers because of its big waves and surf. It has sand with the perfect colour and consistency and lots of good looking girls in bikinis! Obviously, it would have been rude not to have chatted any of them up :-) O'aho is home to a few prawn and shrimp farms so we also got off the bus to check one of them out as well. The shrimp was really tasty cooked in butter and garlic and serviced on rice. A bit ironic that we tried chatting some good looking girls in bikinis up at about the same time we had garlic...

I'm off to San Francisco next, and I'm informed that it's very much like Sydney. I will see :-) From there I've got a month to get to New York...

Mahalo :-)

---