Aloha

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We left Hawaii a few days ago now, been a little lazy with updating this. We stayed in there for a week and both of us loved it. I have to say that it wasn't exactly what we expected, but it was still awesome. We arrived in Hawaii on Thursday the 22nd June, and it was easily the longest day of my life. From midnight New Zealand time to midnight Hawaii time took 45 hours! We crossed over the international dateline on the way, and the time difference meant that we arrived in Hawaii about 11 hours before we left New Zealand, crazy stuff. The first thing that we did in Hawaii was go to the beach, our hostel was definitely not the nicest we have been to... but it was only one block from Waikiki Beach, we made sure that for at least some time every day we hung out on the beach. Waikiki was a nice beach, but very, very touristy, Josh and I preferred to take bus rides to less busy beaches. The nicest beaches were found on the North Shore of Oahu, unfortunately the Hawaiian bus service was shocking, and the buses could take up to 2 hours to get to the North Shore and the buses were very irregular, so on the days we did head up to the North Shore we had less time on the beach. The best beach we went to was Waimea Bay, but we found some other great ones, unfortunately we stumbled on them by accident and I don't know thier names. On a couple of days we aimed to go to certain beaches we had read about or been recommended but failed to find them, and ended up at these other beaches.

There was a lot more to do on the island than we expected, we thought it would just be beaches (and they are the main attraction) but the city of Waikiki was quite a lively place, there were loads of things going on at night, lots of street entertainers and stuff... it wasn't how I expected a Hawaiian city to be though, it seemed pretty rough, and there was a lot of homeless people. On our first full day there we orientated ourselves by hiking up to this point called Diamond Head, a peak formed next to a giant, dormant volcanic crater, and got spectacular views back over the city of Waikiki... that day was so hot, and almost unbearable after the coldness of NZ!! We also toured around Kua Loa, a ranch that is used in many films and tv shows... the most famous of which is Jurassic Park, it was the place where everyone ran away from the velocoraptors and hid under a log. It also had scenes from Peal Harbour, Lost, Godzilla, and many others filmed there. We got a bit of history in as well, visiting Pearl Harbour, that place was so busy, it was ridiculous, you have to start queuing at 6am to get tickets to go to the memorials, but we got there at 2pm, so we just wandered around the museum and looked at it all from a distance. Still very interesting though. The best thing we did on Oahu though was a skydive, we went to an airfield on the North Shore, they took us up 14000 feet, and we jumped out of the plane! It was a tandem dive, we did a one minute free fall and then floated down with a parachute for about 5 minutes, it was such an amazing rush, followed by great views over the beaches... definitely something well worth doing! Shame we only had a week there, we could have easily stayed a couple of weeks.

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Photos

Waikiki
View from Diamond head

Diamond Head
Looking into the Crater

Waikiki Beach
At dusk, our hostel was 2 blocks from here

Waimea Bay
Sunset

Waimea Bay
On the North Shore

Airfield
Where we landed after the skydive

USS Arizona Memorial
At Pearl Harbour

Jurassic Park
Kua Loa, where the 1st Jurassic Park was filmed

Bus Stop
Where we spent far too much time in Hawaii

Comments

[Mum]

Hmmmm, Hawaii does look very touristy. Glad you told me about the sky dive after the event! You should have carried your camera,haha! So, after a hectic week catching up with friends in Newport, it's 3 days in NY, then home to exotic Guildford. Can't wait to see you on Wednesday. Safe travels, Mum xxxx