Day 4 - Pearl Harbor, pool time

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We were up at 5:30am to be picked up at 6:25am.
Our tour was with Enoa Tours and our bus driver Shannon O'Brien was hilarious. Firstly, he took us through the streets of Waikiki and gave us a brief history about how it was originally supposed to be made into an island but when Wall Street crashed in 1929 they never finished the canal at the back of it to separate it. We also saw where Barry (President Barrack Obama) grew up. He then did an introduction of everyone on the bus (who everyone was, where they were from and what brought them to O’ahu).
He then gave us a history of World War I, World War II, and that fateful day of December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese and 2,403 US soldiers and marines perished, with an additional 1,178 wounded.

We had some free time to walk around for an hour or so taking it all in before going in and watching a video of the attack on Pearl Harbor. From there we got on a boat and ferried across to the USS Arizona Memorial.
The memorial was very tasteful. The memorial lays over the top of the still sunken USS Arizona at the bottom of the quite shallow harbor. You can see the ship through the water and can smell the fuel that still comes up to the surface. The oil still leaks from the hull and rises to the surface at a rate of 1 drop every 20 seconds, its estimated that its now about half full so has approximately 72-75 years still of it coming to the surface.
You can see it in small gatherings on the surface of the water and then the big slick that heads down past the Battleship Missouri Memorial and out toward the mouth of the harbor.
We then got back on the boat to head back to the mainland to get on the bus to head over the bridge to Ford Island for the USS Oklahoma Memorial and the Battleship Missouri memorial.
We got to go up on the Battleship Missouri Memorial where we did a 30minutes guided tour. Battleship Missouri was the last of Iowa class 'fast battleship' made.
Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned on 11 June, 1944. In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991.During the tour our guide asked Bec, myself and another girl to do a bit of role play where we had to pretend to be kamikaze bombers and how we would have responded when asked to take do various tasks.
After the tour we got to go below deck and go through the maze of well set up rooms as they were. Then, we went 5 levels above deck to have a look up there. We were stifling by this point so went down and made or way off the battleship in search of Hawaii's well known shaved ice. It's a great big cup of shaved ice which they then pour different flavourings on. It was just what I needed; liquid and sugar.
We met up with Shannon and our ‘cousins’ (because when you get to Hawai’i, you’re all family) to then head back to the first place for everyone to pick up their bags. While waiting for people to do that Shannon was telling us about places to go and eat at and he was like (while grabbing at his pot belly) "now clearly us Hawaiians like our food, remember chunky is funky, so go and enjoy the food here". Such a character.
We then headed back in the direction of Waikiki. I fell asleep for about 20mins only to wake up perfectly in time to be outside of the Police HQ building from Hawaii 5-0.
Then we went up to the punchbowl which is an old volcano that they have now turned into a cemetery for soldiers. From the top the view over Waikiki was spectacular.
We then headed back down the hill and drove past where ‘Barry’ and singer Bruno Mars went to school, Shannon also telling us about the police in Hawai’i. He said that while they are rookies for the first five years they drive the police cars, then after that, as an incentive to stay in the force, they are given money to purchase their dream car. Then they can drive that round after it has the police lights added to it. Pretty cool. Back to Waikiki we went and we dropped each group off at their hotels; we were last to get off and thanked Shannon for his fantastic guidance.
We came in, checked our sunburn we'd managed in the morning, had a brief nap then headed down to the pool. It was a bit overcast though but it was still warm. Bec had stayed in bed and by this time it was about 3:00pm and Marnee and I ordered some food from the hotel restaurant so we could eat by the pool. I got some ribs and they were fantastic. Marnee got some fries and we got some garlic bread to share.
From there we decided to go shower and get changed and head to try and book a hire car for tomorrow. Well, we went to Enterprise, Alamo and Thrifty and they all said they were out. So Marnee and I went to check out some shops and Bec managed to find a place called Dollar Car Rentals that, thank goodness, had a car for us.
After our shopping expedition we made our way to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Marnee got pizza, Bec got a three cheese ravioli and I got the pulled port tacos which were delightful.
From there we did a little more shopping and walking around before finally heading back to the hotel. We still didn’t get to bed until after 12:30am.



Total steps for the day: 20,041
Total kms for the day: 13.91

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