Oahu
Honolulu
February 16, 2005. We moved to Oahu island – Honolulu on Wednesday night. It is a 25-40 minutes flight from one island to the other. I guess it is the shortest flight that we had ever made with a commercial airline. Honolulu has a population of ~900,000. We heard that 80,000 tourists come to the island every day. This is a very well kept, clean and pretty touristic city. People seem to come from all parts of the US to work and live here. Taylan started to talk about finding a job here… There are a ton of tourists from Japan, maybe more than Americans.
Waikiki
We stayed in the Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel in Waikiki. It was a nice 3* hotel but there was no Sci-fi channel in the rooms. I guess Nevin was happy since she would not take the torture of watching science fiction movies until 2.00 am in the morning with me!!! Most of the luxury hotels, shopping areas and restaurants seem to be in Waikiki. Hotels border the famous Waikiki beach. The beach is perfect but very crowded. The sea is not wavy at all. It seems to be protected by coral reefs.
Kailua Beach
February 18, 2005 - Kailua beach was defined as one of the most beautiful beaches in Oahu. When we went there it was so windy that people were kite surfing. A residential area with individual houses was bordering the beach. We figured we would be a bit bored but live ~20/30 years longer if we woke up here in the mornings with the sound and smell of the ocean, compared to living in New York/Chicago.
On the way to Kailua Beach
Downtown Honolulu
February 17, 2005 - We had a tour of downtown Honolulu before going to a whale watching tour at 3 pm in the afternoon. We went to the royal palace and got some information about the history of Hawaii. The kingdom and how it became a US state in late 19th century.
There is a China town in Honolulu like in a lot of other big US cities. We went there to eat some lunch and also got some delicious candied fruits.
Palace
Banyan Tree
Whale watching tour
The whale watching tour was OK, but we didn’t get lucky enough to see a whale breaching. We saw humpback whales a couple of times, but they never breached so we only saw their back fins... There seem to be ~5000 humpback whales in the northern hemisphere and a couple of thousand of them come to Hawaii every year for reproduction. Fortunately for the whales, there are strict rules and regulations for the boats. They can not come closer than 100 yards to any whale. Then they have to stop their engines and wait until the whale has a safe distance of more than 100 yards from the boat. We took a lot of bird pictures instead of the whales…
Spinner dolphins
Whales
Taylan & Nevin
Snorkel & sail tour
February 19, 2005 - We attended a snorkeling tour and power sailing. Turtles were great we took a lot of underwater pictures. But I believe that the power sailing experience was more exciting after snorkeling in the turtle bay. We were in a quite fast catamaran which once set a record by crossing between south California and Hawaii in 7 days and 10 hours.
Plenty of turtles!
Surfers outside of Waikiki Beach
Pearl Harbor - Battleship Missouri (“Mighty Mo”)
February 18, 2005 - We did not miss the opportunity to see Pearl Harbor and the battleship Missouri. Missouri is the battleship which hosted the surrender of Japan in the Second World War.
USS Missouri
View on the Arizona Memorial
Hanauma Bay
February 20, 2005 - If you leave Hawaii without going to Hanauma bay we believe that you did not see Hawaii. It was a great event and one of the best beaches that we have ever been in our travels around the world. This is a fantastic beach. It is a volcano crater that formed 30,000 years ago. The beach is under protection since 1967. We believe it is one of the most beautiful snorkeling sites in the world with a beautiful beach. Since we were leaving for Chicago, we could not spend a lot of time in this beautiful beach. Go early in the morning, as it is much much quiter then (See first pictures)...
Hawaii, we will come back!