Hawaii January 2007

Flew Melbourne - Sydney - Honolulu on Qantas. Then Hawaiian Airlines to Maui and back. Stayed in Honolulu for 5 days then Maui for 5 days then back to Honolulu for 3 days before flying home.
Didn't bother ordering transfers, just hailed a cab at the airport which just happened to be a stretch Cadillac, which took us straight to our Hotel at Wakiki. The cab fare from the airport was about $30, they sting you even though you know the prices. The trip back to the airport was half the price.

Stayed at Ocean Resort Hotel on the corner of Paoakalani Ave and Kuhio Ave, Waikiki.(It's worth upgrading your room, for an extra $10 a night we got a much better room). It's not new but it suited us. Very short walk to beach, but there is not a lot of eating places nearby you have to walk a couple of blocks west to find some decent resteraunts.

Ocean Resort Hotel - view of the ocean	Ocean Resort Hotel	Ocean Resort Hotel - looking inland	Ocean Resort Hotel
	looking towards Diamond Head from the roof top pool

There is a local bus that runs down Kuhio Ave that will take you to the Swap Meet at the Aloha (Baseball) Stadium at Aiea and to Pearl Harbour. The Swap Meet is a good place to but souviners and hawaiian shirts, t-shirts etc and can be cheaper than the shops and malls.

Waikiki

Statue of the Duke	we got clipped getting our photos taken with these birds, but it was fun
		Jude and Emily on the breakwater
Judy and Emily just had to have a go in an outrigger canoe
International Market Place	International Market Place - lots of "junk" shops	Waikiki Beach	Waikiki Beach
Waikiki Beach	Waikiki Beach - west end looking back to Diamond Head	Waikiki Beach	Sheraton Hotel - Waikiki Beach
Where else would you see this?	Main drag - Waikiki Beach	Looking west	Walk past Kapolani Park
Walk past Kapolani Park	Walk past Kapolani Park	Walk past Kapolani Park	Walk past Kapolani Park
Walk past Kapolani Park	Walk past Kapolani Park		Diamond Head
Emily snorkling	lots of colourful fish	this is right in shore	spot the crab
if you stuck these all	together, they would make	a panorama of Waikiki

Sunsets

We would come down to the beach most nights for the sunset. Very pretty. As you can see we did get sucked in a bit. There is supposed to be a green flash just as the sun disappears from view

Free luau shows on the Beach

They had these free shows at Waikiki each night at sunset. They were quite good, all local singers from services organisations.

Diamond Head Walk

Get the taxi driver to take you to the bottom of the path. Very steep walk, lots of steps, but the view is definately worth it.

Pearl Harbor

There are heaps of tour companies that will take you on a tour of Pearl Harbor, but you can do it yourself, you dont even really need a car, as the local bus runs right by the door to the Visitors Centre.

At the entry to the museum you can by tickets for the museum and/or a boat ride to the Arizona Memorial. Then there is another additional tour to go on the Missouri Battleship exactly where it was on the day. We did the USS Arizona Memorial Tour which included an audio visual presentation of the day of the attack. To get tot the memorial is a boat trip across the harbour, you can only get the memorial from the water.

Offical Pearl Harbor site

This is a Google Earth map with the USS Arizona Memorial in the front and the USS Missori in the background. Note the Missori is a model you can do your own virtual tour.

Looking at the Arizona Memorial across Pearl Harbor from the visitors centre	Arizona Memorial	Visitors Centre	USS Bowfin submarine at the Visitors Centre
Arizona Memorial	Missori at dock in Pearl Harbor	Visitors Centre	Visitors Centre
Visitors Centre	Visitors Centre	Visitors Centre	Visitors Centre
		Visitors Centre	Arizona Memorial
Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial	Missori	Arizona Memorial
Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial
Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial
Arizona Memorial	Arizona Memorial		USS Bowfin submarine

We also did our own "round the island tour" on the local bus. I've always found this an interesting way yo get around as you get to meet the locals in their environment. It's definately worth the trip to get away from the commercialisim of Waikiki. On the north side of the island are the famous Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach and you will be amazed at how rural and under developed this area is, you almost drive through it before realising where you are. If the surf is working at Waimea you will be amazed at how big the waves are so close to the shore.

Maui

We also went to the island of Maui we stayed at the Maui Seaside Hotel in Kahului. The only reason we picked this was it was close to the airport and it was cheap. It was ok, but there was no reason to stay there, which was a good thing in hind sight as we hired a car and went to many other places on the island. (There are many other better places to stay).

Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel
Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel
Maui Seaside Hotel	Maui Seaside Hotel

Volcanoe

There is a Volcano in the Haleakala National Park that we drove up. Judy sat in the back with her eye's closed as she didn't like the windy road. A tour company offers bike rides, they take you up in a bus and then you come flying down on the bikes. There is a nominal fee to enter the park.

		very cold up here, and windy

Lahaina

There is a town called Lahaina on the west coast that we really liked the feel of. The main street runs next to the sea and there is lots of resteraunts and places to sit and admire the view. We all decided that we could easily live there.

first place we pulled into	stand up surfers	looking back to the hills	Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.
Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.	Main Street	no actual beach, but still beautiful	Hard Rock Cafe
Main Street	taxi	amazing wooden boats	these were for sale

Around the Island drive

You can almost drive around the island but the road runs out around the western tip. If your interested in golf there are heaps of courses for you to try.

these donkeys just stood in the middle of the road			until you gave them something to eat
			This is the car we hired
	new Chevrolet HHR	quite liked these

Whale Watching

We did a whale watching tour with Pacific Whale Foundation which was a bit of an adventure. It was meant to be a 4 hour tour and about 2 hours in the boat broke down and we were drifting closer and closer to the shore, you can imagine Judy at this stage, we ended up getting back about 2 hours late. We did see some whales but saw more whales and were a lot closer on a trip we did with Sea World off the Gold Coast in Australia.

We all set sail for a 3 hour cruise		The motors have just failed	Getting closer and closer to the rocks