Topic: Oahu, Hawaii

[D-cal]

We just got back from a couple of weeks on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. We dove (10 times), hiked (4 times), flew in a helicopter, drove down every road we could find and took a ton of pics (9G+). What a fantastic adventure. It will take me a while to sort through them all, so this might be a somewhat episodic posting.

We rented a condo on Waikiki beach, right next to Fort DeRussey park, which belongs to the US Army. This was the view from our lanai (balcony).


We had an AH-1 Cobra helicopter for a neighbour.


The first hike we did was a trail called "Manoa Falls". It's basically a rainforest tucked back in a valley between two spines of the mountain range that backs up Honolulu. This area gets something like 120" of rain a year. It was actually raining just as we arrived in the parking lot at the trail head, but knowing how island "weather" works, we waited 15 minutes and sure enough it stopped.

You know you're on the way to see something cool when the trees look like this:


Because it had just rained, the trail was pretty muddy. We saw tons of people with nothing more than slippers (Hawaiian word for flip-flops) on their feet heading down the trail. It mostly looked like this:


This was a branch - yes branch - that had fallen across the trail. It's hard to get a sense of scale from this pic, but the diameter of the branch is about 3 feet across. They cut a section out of it so people could continue to pass by. The span between these two sections is about seven feet. The branch must have grown so heavy over time that it just sheared away from the trunk one day (what a racket).


Someone had woven together several of the trees into this eldrich looking doorway, mid-trail:


Lots of bamboo growing in thickets at various points along the trail. This freaky looking tree was right in the middle of one:


A few places along the trail opened up into these fantastic glens where the surrounding trees were 40 feet tall or more. I tried really hard to capture the feeling you got standing there dwarfed by these amazon monsters, and I utterly failed. The pictures don't do the area justice at all, but nevertheless, here they are:


My wife said that in many places it was like being in "Avatar". I agreed. Another:


Finally you reach the falls themselves as your reward. They were fairly tall, although nowhere near as tall as the one we saw in Dominica.


Adjacent to the falls trail is the "Harold L. Lyon" arboretum. We stopped and had lunch in a fantastic glade with 7-8 different types of tropical trees, but we had to cut our tour short because we were bushed from hiking to the falls and back already. I did snap a few pics, starting with a really peaceful little Japanese fountain area.


Some of the trees growing there were fantastic looking:


Deity in the woods, she had lots of sacrificial goods at her feet:


Some fantastic flowers growing on a tree:


Freaky looking pods. On this one segment alone you can see the how the flowers emerge from the pods.


They even had some wild pineapple growing in a bush, just on the side of the road:


More pics later as I sort through them and stitch up the panoramas.

[bigdl]

That is amazing, I really miss being there.   Next time I go there I will explore the island a lot more.

[D-cal]

Diamond Head is considered a "must see" tourist thing for Honolulu, a dominating feature of the skyline on Waikiki beach. It's basically a large volcanic crater with a flat floor in the middle. During WW2, the US Army put coastal artillery lookouts up on the lip of the crater because they have a commanding view of most of the eastern shore of Oahu (as you will see). The concrete building you saw in the panorama below our lanai was one of those artillery emplacements, now a museum (where the Cobra is kept). If you want to read more about Diamond Head, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Head,_Hawaii.

It's a pretty abrupt/bizarre environmental change, when you drive into the interior of the cone and emerge in the center.


You go from lush tropical island environment outside... to an arid desert landscape inside. It's hot, there's zero breeze and the vegetation is all desert scrub. This is an aerial view of the trail we're going to climb up to a coastal artillery observation pillbox. The trail winds up the inside crater face, switching back and forth.


At the visitor center there are a couple of signs showing you what you're in for. Another view of the trail, this time an artist rendering that also shows the staircases and spiral stairs built inside the rim wall.


It might be a tourist attraction, but this is definitely a hike, not a Disney ride. It's about an hour up and an hour down, plus whatever time you spend at the top. Nevertheless we saw tons of elderly people with mobility issues, mothers carrying infants and pushing strollers, etc. all heading out for the trail. This sign was the last attempt to give them a dose of reality. There's zero shade until you hit the tunnels, no bathrooms, water, nothing on the trail.


We started up the trail, which is basically an old donkey track cut into the side of the crater, now fenced to keep people from falling off.


The crater wall shows it's volcanic origins clearly. They believe the sea levels were much higher when Diamond Head erupted, and most of the action may have happened underwater, on top of an existing coral reef.


It's definitely a blessing when you transition from the hot exterior to the interior sections - until you hit the stairs that is. There were sections of tunnel that were in utter darkness, except for some dim lights at floor level to keep people from tripping and killing themselves. The lights are a recent addition I understand, people used to have to BYO flashlight.


I shot some video while walking the trail. Apologies for the shaky cam. Note the shirtless dick and his gf running down the trail. Too bad someone didn't clothesline the idiots. The view at the end is pretty typical of what you see at each switchback until you reach the top.


The interior view:


Lots of stairs... and they're all at the top, when you're tired. First flight was 75 stairs, then 99 stairs, then a spiral stair inside. The view at the end is worth it though, trust me.


You emerge in the pillbox at the top, looking out over the ocean and Waikiki on one side, and Hawaii Kai on the other. Fantastic! There's a dude at a table here selling certificates for a couple bucks that say "I survived Diamond Head" or something like that, LOL. You might take pity on him, he has to climb this thing once a day to get to work.


From the pillbox, you climb up this ladder that forces you to bend over double (not elderly friendly at all) then you walk a short trail,


climb some more stairs (grooooan)... and you're at the top.


Lighthouse down below, sure looks small from up here. I think my GPS showed something like 815 ft above sea level.


Aerial view of some of the other pillboxes near the one we climbed.


Finally, some panoramas looking north and south from the very top lookout point.

[bigdl]

Love the pictures from on top of diamond head.  I am quite mad at myself for not properly backing up my SD card from after that climb.  That day was the only day that I have pictures missing.  Did you get a chance to visit the Polynesian cultural center?

[Claw]

Nice pano's!   We went for our honeymoon, but the day we wanted to do your first hike it was raining.

Did you go for a drive around the island and check out the Kapiolani Farmers market?

[D-cal]

Did you get a chance to visit the Polynesian cultural center?

Yep, coming up.

Did you go for a drive around the island and check out the Kapiolani Farmers market?

Drive around, yes, pretty much everywhere. Nope, never got to the market.

[jutes]

If anyone doesn't like doing the tourist thing, Oahu has some the nicest beaches and golf courses.

Hope you don't slice.

[D-cal]

Or you could go party with the locals on the sandbar in Kaneohe Bay on the weekend...
(insert link to girl in skimpy bikini here - which I can't post because WSC considers bikinis NSFW)

[D-cal]

You can't really visit Oahu without doing the Pearl Harbor tour.

This is the USS Bowfin. This was my second time touring a WW2 sub (there's another tied up in San Francisco Bay near Fisherman's Wharf, if you're ever in the area) and again I marvel at how a group of people can crawl into a relatively tiny tin can like this and go to war, particularly with the casualty rates the submariners suffered in WW2.


Typical sleeping arrangements for enlisted men (officers quarters weren't much larger, but at least they had the semblance of privacy!). These were "hot bunks", meaning that the men slept in shifts and as soon as someone left the bunk, someone else took his place.


The business end of the sub, torpedo room. Incredibly hard to maneuver in here, let alone take a clean photo. They used a chain hoist to load a 3300lb torpedo into the tube, close the hatch, flood it and send it on it's way. Sound carries 25 times farther under water, so you pretty much knew whether you had hit something or not in a few minutes.


On deck, you'd be watching out for targets or anti-submarine vessels.


Hmmm, the view they had when spotting a new victim? (OK, it probably wouldn't be right across the harbor, but you get the idea - was fun trying to take a decent pic with P&S through binocs)


Beside the Bowfin are several examples of armaments - torpedos, Tomahawk missiles, mines, you name it.


Next to the Bowfin is a maritime museum full of fantastic stuff, we actually spent more than an hour in this small building just walking around, looking at wartime paraphenalia and relics from more than sixty years ago.

One of the more fascinating (for me anyway) items was a scale model of the Japanese aircraft carrier that was the flagship for the attack on Pearl, the IMS Akagi.


It's a long model, about 10-12 feet total. The level of detail on it is stunning, there is lots to see. I stood there for several minutes photographing and marvelling.


They have an old diving suit in pristine condition on display. Being a dive buff I was interested. Ever see the Mythbusters episode where they show what happens when pressure enters the suit? Yeah. Yikes.


Here's an illustration of pressure at depth. The oil well spewing away madly in the Gulf is at a depth of 5000 feet. The coffee cup on the left was put in a tool storage locker of a deep sea submersible, then sent down to  4000 feet and returned later to the surface. The pressure at that depth is 1500psi, enough to crush the air in the foam cells of the cup down to 1/4 original size. Normal cup on the right for reference.


Across the harbor is the memorial for the Arizona. When you enter the park you're given a ticket with a boarding time for a shuttle boat, operated by active duty Navy personnel. The shuttle takes you across the harbor and you dock beside the memorial. Inside is a giant wall with the names of the people killed in the raid.

An interesting factoid is that names continue to be added to this wall. There were a couple from the 80s and one from 2009. How? Servicemen who were at Pearl when the attack happened are offered the option to have their ashes interred inside the ship, so they can be laid to rest with their shipmates. A special ceremony is held, during which a diver takes the cannister down and releases the contents inside the hull.


A few parts of the Arizona jut above the water. The ship is actually leaking oil into the harbor, and has been for sixty some years. You can see globs of it surfacing from the memorial deck, one every few seconds. They say it leaks a couple of gallons a day, referred to as "black tears".


The Arizona and memorial dock, seen from the air during our helicopter ride. The thin blue trail you see to the right of the sunken ship is the leaking oil.


The USS Missouri is moored inside an active marine base - you take a shuttle bus from the Bowfin site through the base gates and photography is forbidden until you exit the bus. Her deck was the site of the Japanese surrender signing of WW2 in Tokyo Bay. She was the last battleship built by the US, last seeing action in Desert Storm before being mothballed here as a museum.


These deck guns shelled two Kuwaiti targets from offshore that Saddam had rolled into. They also fired Tomahawk cruise missiles. We wandered around the bowels of this thing for quite a while, fascinating stuff. There were several members of the local museum association on hand to talk about anything you wanted. On the deck at the spot where the surrender was signed were plaques denoting the countries who were present to witness the signing, the Dominion of Canada among those represented.


There are still some active ships tied up at Pearl, although according to our pilot, a lot of them are in the Gulf right now.


There is also an air museum, but we ran out of time. If you go to Pearl, I recommend you get there very early and plan to spend about 1.5 days if you want to take your time and see absolutely everything.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

Wow, I love military history.. Thanks for those pics!

[STI 2NV]

Awesome set. I really want to go to Hawaii now.

[jackal]

I just got back from 10 days on both the big Island and Oahu.  I preffer the Kailua side of Oahu,  it's a little quieter.  The one place I suggest everyone go eat in Honolulu is the Hula grill.  Our last night there,  we went to the Sheriton before dinner and visited the wine bar on the 30th floor to watch the sunset.

[D-cal]

I preffer the Kailua side of Oahu,  it's a little quieter.

Same with my wife and I, the dive shop we went to is in Kailua. We drove around looking at houses for a bit too. The ones next to Kailua bay are in the $2-4 million price range, and 3-4 lots up the same road are tumbledown shacks selling for $400K. LOL!

Did you go up to Tantalus Drive? EPIC views up there (I have some pics later). Housing up there is an affordable $1.5M for a bare lot, and ranges up to $12M. A bargain!

[jackal]

Yeah,  Kailua is very expensive.  I like it there though.  The beaches are gorgeous and very empty for the most part.

[D-cal]

So we were talking earlier about the Polynesian Cultural Club (PCC). We did indeed visit there, and it was a very interesting day. If you enjoy learning about cultures other than your own, this place is for you (otherwise you'd be stone bored, it's not an amusement park). PCC is run by the Mormons/LDS who founded the nearby Brigham Young Hawaii University, and it employs mostly students to give them a way to earn tuition money while attending classes.

Hawaii is thought to have been populated in waves, most originating from Pacific Rim areas like the Marquesas and Tahiti. The first migrant groups to settle Hawaii are referred to simply as "Hawaiians". People continue to come to Hawaii from other Polynesian cultures to earn an education, seek jobs - the usual reasons people up-sticks and go. PCC is a showcase for those Polynesian cultures.

The park itself is gorgeous, many huge palm trees, a canal running through the middle. It's a different kind of hand-sculpted beauty from the rainforests, but still wonderful to experience.


Each of the island nations has a "village" within the park where they hold demonstrations of their culture. First stop was Samoa, where we were shown how to start a fire with nothing more than a coconut and a stick. These guys wove in a lot of comedy elements into their banter, making it fun for the crowd as well as educational.


We weren't very far from the sea, and the wind was blowing something fierce that day. This guy scampered up the swaying trunk of this tree like it was nothing.


He hung out for a while, made funny faces, monkey motions - the kids all loved his antics.


This little guy stole the show in Tahiti! They did a dance to music that was telling the story of a warrior king coming of age. He danced his heart out.


I suspect he was probably the son of one of the other dancers, there was a group of about 10 total. There were a bunch of young girls his age sitting in the front row, and they just went gaga over him. He was shyly-mobbed after the show.


The Hawaiian pavillion had a demonstration of native instruments - sticks, gourds, rocks used as castanets, and of course the ukulele (pronounced correctly we were told as "ooh koo lay lay"). The young lady danced a few different hula selections playing instruments while he played accompaniment. 


The Tongan guys put on a good show, featuring showed several styles of drumming. They called up three guys from the audience to participate, one from LA, one from New York, one from Japan. All three were good sports and pretty funny besides.


As I mentioned, the middle of the park features a series of lagoons linked by canals.


Depending on what level of park ticket you purchase, you might get a ride in one of their canoes.


They had a replica war canoe near one of the villages. The level of detail on this carving is insane!


Let's go crack some skulls on the next island over, shall we?


Nearby a carver was giving a live demonstration on making masks and other decorative items. They had a lot of stuff for sale as well, all hand made.


Every day at 3pm they hold a floating pageant in the lagoon at either end of the park. The different cultural groups dress up in royal attire and float out for a tour around the waterways.


The boats are labelled by group, and usually stopped for several minutes to perform either a dance or singing number. Dancing on these canoes must be pretty challenging (particularly for the Tongan guys who purposely rocked the boat).


At the end of the night we did the luau. I had visions of sitting cross legged in the sand while eating from a bowl with my fingers. Nuh-uh. It's basically a big banquet hall where you sit at row tables and fill your plate from a so-so buffet. They did have a band playing, as well as a pageant towards the end and several hula dances. Both men and women danced - the men's parts looking something like a vicious tai-chi while the women were more graceful and flowing.


Finally we attended a big stage production called "Ha - The Breath of Life". You've probably heard "aloha!" from movies and TV, it's said a lot on the island as both hello and goodbye. "Alo" means presence, "ha" means breath, taken all together it means "breath of life", so by saying it you're trying to send someone good kharma. Anyway, the stage show is held at night in a giant bowl theater on the PCC grounds. It features about 100 actors representing the various islands you saw during the day. There's big explosive fire effects, music, dance, you name it. The story is a family who leave home, get adopted by a village where they have their son. He grows up into a warrior, defends the village from invaders, woos and finally marries his own wife, and the circle closes.

It was a great production number, but my tiny little P&S camera typically just wasn't up to taking anything that would turn out in those lighting conditions. You can google it if you're curious. Overall, PCC was a bit on the expensive side (and we only bought the second tier tickets!) and was fairly entertaining. It's one of those touristy things you should probably do once. Get there early, there's a lot to see and the shows are at specific times so you have to schedule your wanderings around them.