Waikiki Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

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“Hawaii Five-O”or is it “Hawaii O-no“? Thursday 2nd October 2008

Waikiki, Oahu

I know that we are spoilt, living in Spain close to beautiful big sandy beaches and that last week we were on the stunning Pacific coast of California, but to say that Waikiki beach is a disappointment is an understatement. Due to overdevelopment and hotels built too close to the beach, what is left is narrow, overcrowded (and this is ’low season’) and now has imported sand from the Philippines!!! Having driven 2,821 miles across California and in to Nevada and Arizona, we got here on Tuesday expecting some “chill time” by the kind of tropical beach that we chilled by in the Caribbean last year. On arrival Tuesday morning we were greeted by “Chill out! You are in Hawaii!” We are still awaiting the chill. Hawaii doesn’t seem to do ‘chill’. Everything is frantic and noisy. There is no spirit of ‘manana’ here; they need an influx of Spanish tourists to teach them all about ‘chill’. It is also very restrictive, for example you cannot drink alcohol in public places, like the street or the park (or loiter in the park, walk your dog, skateboard or cycle), you cannot smoke hardly anywhere and jaywalking is taboo. You cannot take drinks onto public transport and when you are on a bus for a few hours you have to sneak a sip of water out of your backpack! We overheard an English tourist who was crossing an empty street yesterday saying to his wife “Yes but by crossing the road now, we’ll probably get a fine for f…ing jaywalking!” Our sympathies mate. So, so far Hawaii is only half filling the beer bottle (we won’t allow half empty). Today, however, we managed to get better accommodation so things are improving.

Before we arrived we went online and booked a hotel room for one night (which we extended to two) because we had read on a blog that there are all sorts of hassles if you haven’t got anywhere to stay (as we found when we flew in to San Francisco). Flight was good and transfer to Waikiki by bus was easy. When we checked in at SF the comment was “Goodness! You travel light!” which was the same comment as when we got bags weighed at Heathrow. Well, we are glad that we are doing so, having seen a lot of people struggle with massive bags. The entry forms are amazing. They want a full life history! Anyway, got to the hotel to discover that we were booked on the forty-first floor! We got it changed to the seventh floor; so glad that we did, because the lift situation was a joke. Yesterday (Wednesday) we got up early and spent the day travelling half the island by bus looking for good budget accommodation by a nice beach. Basically there isn’t any. The good beaches are flanked by car parks, condominiums and expensive ‘resorts’ or they are miles from anywhere. Most of them are “beach parks” and they are beautiful but intended for a day trip. Oahu isn’t traveller friendly and budget accommodation is extremely limited (as our ‘Lonely Planet‘ guide indicates). Everything here is a lot more expensive than in California. The car is king so this means that a lot of places are not accessible on foot or by public transport; excursion tour operators do good business here! Having said all of this (and doing quite a lot on foot yesterday) although we saw places nicer than Waikiki there wasn’t anywhere absolutely stunning other than the beach parks. Today we have moved to a nice friendly little family-run place down the other end of the beach and plan to stay here until next Tuesday when we are flying to Hawaii Big Island to see some volcanoes. We booked our flights this morning, going Tuesday 7th and returning Tuesday 14th to connect with our flight on to Fiji (where we hope to find the tropical beaches and the chill). In the meantime, Waikiki is ok as a base and the bus service here is good and goes all over the island so we’ll see more of it between now and next Tuesday when we are moving on. The weather is superb; ranges between 20 and 30 degrees but with cooling ocean breezes and the odd refreshing shower of rain. Tomorrow we plan to go to Pearl Harbour. Let’s see if we can make this bottle more than half full!

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Photos

Waikiki Beach
OK but over-rated

Kailua Beach
Beautiful but nowhere to stay here. day trippers with cars ok