Hawaii: a swim with the sea turtles, a visit to Pearl Harbour, a luau, a drive…

We arrived at Hawaii at 6:30 am Friday morning after having left Sydney at 4:30pm on Friday afternoon. As a result, I have no idea what day it is anymore. We could not get into our hotel room, so we dropped the bags into the care of the concierge and went for a long walk around the beach and lagoon that was opposite our hotel. Sounds better than it is, as the beach and lagoon were part of the Hilton village, but still pretty nevertheless. Finally checked in a had a much needed power nap.

The next morning we were up early for a cruise to swim with the turtles.

This was great fun and an awesome introduction to Hawaii. We spent about an hour in the water near a reef just off the shore from Waikiki Beach. The water was warmer that I expected. The turtles come here because the local fish like to eat the growth on their shells. Kind of a car wash for turtles.

The water was a little murky near the reef, but clearer (and deeper) away from it. That made getting good photos tricky as the better the water, the deeper the turtles go…

The next day, Sunday, we went to Pearl Harbour, to see the Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri. We had to be up early again ( I thought we were supposed to be on holidays! ). This was very interesting hearing all of the history of the Japanese attack and the entry of the US into WWII. As well as the Arizona and Missouri, Pearl Harbour is also home to an aviation museum focused on the Pacific. It contains relics from WWII as well as more modern aircraft such as a Russian MIG 15 that a defector presented the US with, and one of the old RAAF F-111 aircraft. It was good to see one at least being preserved outside of Australia. Also there was the Bowfin, a WWII submarine to explore.

Access to the actual Arizona memorial was not possible as the bridge from the landing pontoon to the memorial was under repair, so we had to settle for a couple of laps in the launch that takes you out to it.

After a couple of big days, on Monday we had a sleep in and then caught the local bus down to Waikiki Beach for a swim. Completely failed to see what the hoo-ha about Waikiki Beach is – there’s no surf to speak of, and the sand is more like grit, nowhere near as fine as our beaches. The tide was coming in, so the beach itself was also disappearing – it’s only a few metres wide for most of it.

That night we went to a luau, hosted by The Chief. This was a great event, lots to eat including pig roasted over the fire ( not in a pit, as that takes too long ) – to quote The Chief: “don’t eat until you are full, eat until you are tired”.

Lots of Polynesian singing and dancing, from other islands too not just Hawaii – The Chief is Samoan. Vanuatu was one notable exception.

The Chief is also a fire knife dancer, so the finale of the evening was a fire dance featuring The Chief and some of the group.

After a couple of days in Honolulu, we decided to see more of the less developed parts of the island. I booked a cheap mystery car online for 2 days, since the daily rate for the car was less than the transfer from our hotel to the airport, we figured that we would just drive the car to the airport. When I went to pick it up, I was expecting a Corolla or similar. However, when I got to the pickup bay, there was a bright red Chevrolet Camaro convertible sitting there. Surprisingly the key I had been given worked, so we spent the next 2 days driving around the island in a flashy convertible. It’s a tough job this holidaying!.

This was in the carpark for the Diamond Head crater. We arrived too late to do the walk up to the rim – you can drive through a tunnel to the bottom of the crater and walk from there.

The weather was overcast with a little rain, as there was a tropical cyclone passing a couple of hundred miles to the south, but at least it was still warm. Despite this, we still had a good time driving around the island.

The impracticality of the Camaro became apparent on the last day, when we had to load our suitcases into it. The hole in the boot was too small to fit them, and if we wanted the top down ( and who wouldn’t?), the usable space only just held our hand luggage. So we spent the last day with the 2 suitcases piled in the back seat, hoping that we did not have to brake suddenly and cop one in the back of our heads.

Fortunately, we survived and made it to the airport for our encounter with the TSA. The security for the domestic flight to Anchorage was worse than the international flight to Honolulu. If we could catch a train, we would have. Managed to get through ok, but they did confiscate the remainder of our sunblock.

Despite splashing out and booking first class, the flight was pretty ordinary. Alaska Airlines does not have a lounge at Honolulu, all of our other lounge options were closed at 6pm ( we had a 10:30 pm flight, and were not the last flight out, the airport was still very busy. Why the lounges close so early I don’t know). So, we were forced to eat dinner at the only proper restaurant near our gate, at an astronomical price ( which was high even by airport standards, for a pretty basic meal ) before the flight. At least we got a snack and a drink on the plane, and I was looking forward to breakfast. However, final approach to Anchorage was announced without any prior warning nor food service. Not even a coffee, which was not a pretty sight.