Aloha!

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What a week! A real whirlwind tour of one of the eight magnificent islands that make up Hawai'i.

Yet again I am passing the time on a long haul flight by writing another entry. We have been in the air for about 3 hours now and are somewhere near the international date line over the Pacific Ocean on our way to Sydney for an overnight stay before a relatively short 3.5 hour flight to Auckland, where we shall begin our four week Campervan adventure!
We took off from Honolulu at 10.45am on Sunday 29th August and despite the fact that the flight is 10 hours, we shall be landing at 5.45pm on MONDAY 30th August in Sydney! We lose a whole day of our lives! It feels crazy but because the time difference is almost 24 hours, we shouldn’t be too jet lagged as we will be able to go to bed at our usual time etc.

We almost had a disaster at the airport this morning which would have led to us spending a bit more time in Hawai’i. When we got to the Qantas check in desk, we began to play the usual ‘honeymooners’ card to try and get an upgrade and the lady told us the cost would be $1600 each, so we lowered our sights and asked for an emergency exit seat where the legroom is a bit better. $140 for that! So we decided to just get what we were given and run the risks of Deep Vein Thrombosis and whatever else results from sitting in a space which would make a two year old feel cramped. As she processed our passports and luggage, a look of horror crossed the lady’s face, (I don’t want to see a look of horror on anyones face connected with an aeroplane or airport!) and she told us we hadn’t got a visa to enter Australia! In our stupidity/ignorance/married bliss (delete as appropriate) we figured that as this was a connecting flight we wouldn’t need a visa. We had already talked about sorting the visa out for our full visit to Australia at the end of the month but didn’t think it applied for now! Thankfully, the lady could process this for us at a cost of $50 (which she told us was the usual price to do it ourselves online.) and we managed to get on the flight. Having got the visa sorted she then proceeded to take another 30 mintues going from one computer to the next before coming back to us and saying originally we weren’t sat next to each other but she had managed to shuffle a few people around. As a bonus, we managed to bag the seats just behind Business Class, which have a lot of leg room, a large tv right in front of us and no one needing you to move so they can get out of their seat. It’s like being in our living room at home on my recliner watching telly. Just swap the view out of the window from drizzly Stoke to the clouds above the Pacific Ocean and instead of Dizzee farting, it’s the 200 odd other passengers on here!

Anyway, Rachel is merrily solving puzzles on her Nintendo DS while I type this, and as luck would have it, Shrek: Forever After is on the television again, so I have zoned out of that and got my iPod for company instead. What a hectic and thoroughly enjoyable week we have had since leaving the relative peace and serenity of Emerald Seas.
We landed Honolulu Airport on the island of O’ahu at sunset last Sunday and the view from the tiny windows on the plane was fantastic. We rounded Diamond Head crater and flew along the length of Waikiki Beach before touching down safely at about 7.30pm (12.30am Jamaican time) which was 20 hours after we had woken up in the Caribbean! To say we were tired is a huge understatement and by the time we got to our hotel room in Waikiki we were like zombies and went to bed without even unpacking.

Determined to make the most of our short time in Hawaii and also the fact that our bodies were still on Jamaican time, we got up at 6am on Monday (Rachel had been awake since 3am!) and decided that we would get the menial tasks such as unpacking, adjusting the car hire, breakfast and planning our activities for the week done by 9am so we could have a full day exploring Honolulu. We planned on visiting the biggest museum on Polynesian history and culture in the world, but having 2 separate couples asking him for directions obviously confused the bus driver and we were told the next stop was the correct one for us all. This wasn’t the problem that we thought it was as we disembarked in the center of downtown Honolulu along with an Australian couple who were on their way to the I’olani Palace. Not ones to admit we were wrong, we decided to tag along with them and then go to the museum afterwards. Every guide book we have read about Hawaii states I’olani Palace as a ’must see’ and they are not wrong. We bought the guided audio tour and spent a few hours looking around the magnificent palace which has been restored to look how it did during the reign of the last King and Queen of Hawai’I in the late 1800’s. Before entering the Palace we were told to sit on the benches outside and put the shower cap type cloths garments over our shoes so not to mark the polished wood flooring. After having our photos taken with our new Australian friends and the volunteers working at the Palace we entered.

The palace was very grand (unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures so we can’t show you just how nice it was inside) and we were told that it had electric chandeliers and other things such as telephones before they were used at Buckingham Palace. The Hawaiians were an advanced culture who had settled into a unified nation of eight islands and the palace reflected this. We toured bedrooms, the King’s stateroom, the dining room and a room called the Blue Room. This is where the audio tour told us about one of the worst moments in Hawaiian history. In the late 1890’s, when the benevolent and popular Queen Liliukolani was on the throne, the Americans decided that they wished to annex the Hawaiian Islands. Wishing to avoid any bloodshed for her people (the Hawaiian population was declining rapidly), the Queen stood aside and registered her protest officially. The American’s occupied the islands and imprisoned the Queen in her own bedroom for five years. In the 1950s, Hawai’I became the 50th American state. Neither Rachel and I knew anything about the history of Hawai’i so it was great and really interesting to hear about how this small group of islands had developed through the last couple of centuries.

2 hours later (and too late to go to the museum originally planned), we said goodbye to our Australian friends and walked around the grounds of the palace where we saw another famous Hawaiian landmark: the statue of King Kamehameha, made from gold and extending a hand of welcome to visitors to Hawai’i. Near the statue was a museum which we had a quick look round. It detailed judicial history on the islands and included a replica of a 1913 courtroom and also the chambers in which the current Supreme Court of Hawai’I sits when in session. We had a brief walk around the markets of Chinatown and down to the harbor edge where we stopped for a brief bite (sushi) and discovered a couple of strange delicacies that are enjoyed by the people of O’ahu. Both are ‘sushi’ and one is Spam and rice and the other is Corned Beef and rice. How exotic!

We picked up our hire car on Tuesday morning and made our way straight to Pearl Harbor (spelt the American way). We were both really looking forward to the day, but certainly for me, my sympathy for the American nation was tempered somewhat by what I had learnt about the Americans and Hawai’I the day before. Whilst I felt sadness and compassion towards the servicemen who perished on December 7th 1941 and their families, it was hard to feel sorry for the nation after they had ‘invaded’ the peaceful islands of Hawai’I less than 50 years before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The tour at the Harbor started with a film about the Japanese attack and then a boat ride to the USS Arizona Memorial just off Ford Island. The Arizona was sunk on that fateful Sunday morning and over 900 sailors went down on the ship and their bodies are still entombed in the hull of the ship as it rests on the harbor bottom. The memorial is a stark white ‘bridge’ over the site of which the ship lies. Parts of the Arizona are protruding from the water and large parts can be seen just under the surface. It was very strange to be standing at what is essentially a graveyard, taking photos and videos amongst hundreds of tourists. Any sailor who served on the Arizona who didn’t pass away on the day of the attack can still rejoin their comrades when they die by being cremated and having their urn lowered into the hull. There are still a few drops of oil escaping from the ship every day and despite calls for it to be stopped, it was pointed out to us that this was a cemetery and therefore shouldn’t be interfered with. A local legend says that when the last sailor who served on the Arizona passes away, the tears of the ship (the oil) will finally stop leaking.

Next up on the tour was a visit to Submarine Park where the USS Bowfin sits in the harbor and we spent time looking round the submarine museum. When we toured the submarine, it became very apparent that the space afforded to the submariners is minimal. It was so cramped down there and I don’t think either of us would like to serve on a submarine in the Navy! It must have been horrible to be inside the sub for months on end deep in enemy waters! The museum was ok, but certainly not the most interesting that we have visited so far on our travels.

We caught a shuttle across to Ford Island for the other two stages of our day, the first being a tour of Mighty Mo’, the USS Missouri. This battleship was absolutely enormous! It served during World War 2 and also in the Desert Storm campaign of 1991, but it is most famous for the fact it is the sight of the signing of the declaration of surrender by the Japanese in September 1945. We stood in the exact spot that the war ended for America (although the ship was in the Bay of Tokyo when the document was signed). It meant that at the same time, we were in the place where World War 2 started and ended for the U.S.A. We had a light hearted and informative tour of the ship by an ex member of the Navy. We also saw the area of the ship where the film Battleship is going to be filmed later this year.

Our final stop at Pearl Harbor was the Pacific Aviation Museum at an airfield on Ford Island which still bore the pock marks and bullet holes from the Japanese attack. It detailed the aircraft and stories behind both the attack on the harbor, the daring Dolittle raid on Japan and other parts of World War 2 in the Pacific. The whole day was very interesting and we learnt a lot about how the war started and the devastation caused by the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Before we got home, we stopped at Honolulu Harbor and took a quick elevator ride up the Aloha Tower, where we had great views of the island. We could see the airport, the lush green mountains that surround Honolulu and run down the spine of O’ahu, the crystal aquamarine waters of the Pacific Ocean and Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head crater (a volcanic crater that sits to the east end of the south part of the island.)

On Wednesday, after handing in our computer for repair after it had gone completely tits up, we took a drive out around the South Eastern coast of the island and were treated to the best scenery and most beautiful vistas we have ever seen. Zion, Grand Canyon, north coast of Jamaica, The Roaches (!) all have work to do to match up to what we saw. It was stunning. We saw huge mountain ridges shrouded in mist, beautiful beaches with golden sand, huge rocks with large white waves crashing into them, small and artistically arranged islets set away from the coast and a huge bay with shallow, clear water lapping gently against the shore. It was such a treat to see all that and more in the space of an afternoon. Our first stop was Hanauma Bay, which was formed when the ocean eroded one side of a volcano, and is now an almost perfect crescent shape. The bay was crowded with paddleboarders and snorkellers but it didn't stop us from enjoying the magnificent views. Our next stop was to watch some big waves crashing against the rocks a short way along the coast, but the best was saved until last when we stopped at Makapu'u Point.

Makapu'u Point is the eastern most part of O'ahu and it has a small beach below some enormous and very imposing cliffs. We were amazed at the view from our first vantage point, which was along from the beach and at the foot of the cliffs. As we looked along the coast and and out towards the two small islands out from the shore, a handglider soared above us in the sunny sky and we were both commenting on how beautiful it was. We then decided to climb the half an hour trail to the top of the cliffs and we were rewarded with the most amazing views. We could see the active lighthouse, many deserted small islands, mountains and the vast expanse of Pacific Ocean stretching as far as we could see. There was something really unique about the atnosphere of the place and what we were seeing. I tried to describe what I meant to Rachel and the best I can do is that the it seemed very primitive, spiritual and 'alive'. It was almost as if you could close your eyes and be in a time where Polynesian people were fighting to control these lands, climbing into the mist shrouded mountains to offer sacrifices to their gods and sailing the rough ocean in their double hulled canoes in search of food. There seems to be a rich history to Hawai'i that is just below the surface. If that was a bit 'weird' then sorry, its just hard to describe the feeling of standing on an isolated cliff top in such an amazing setting!

I'll have to stop the blog for now, its getting late, we're in Sydney now and have got to be up in 8 hours to go to the airport for the flight to New Zealand. I'll get the second half of the week in Hawai'i up when I can. Internet access in New Zealand might be a bit sketchy, not sure what the campsites are like.

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Photos

View from Makapu'u Point
before we climbed to thetop

The Mighty Mo
as seen from the Arizona Memorial, parts of the Arizona can be seen in the water

Comments

[terry]

Fortenberry
I think I saw a man's name on the wall there in Hawaii, his last name was Fortenberry could you give me the entire name...My grandma was a Fortenberry