Hawaii!

Day 0
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Well, it finally happened. We got so tired of the miserable weather in Bethlehem that we had to leave for 2 weeks. I mean, if it's going to be cold and rainy, why can't it just snow instead?

We didn't get in until very late last night (it was about 10:30 PM by the time we finally got to the hotel, which is about 3:30 as far as our internal clocks were concerned), so I didn't have time to write the first day's summary.

As it turns out, you can fly from Allentown to Honolulu, by way of Atlanta. What this means is that you have a nice quick flight from LVI to ATL, and then almost 10 hours on the next plane, half of which is spent over the Pacific Ocean. It was strange enough going from 12° in Bethlehem to 60° in Atlanta, but I felt really stupid carrying around a winter coat in the Honolulu airport.

The trip itself was uneventful; I got to speak with some random woman on the plane about how Macs are awesome, because she asked how it was possible that I watched an entire DVD on my laptop and had battery life to spare, but her Dell couldn't make it through one movie. I think I lost her when I dove into ripping a DVD onto the hard disk so that you don't have to spin a DVD for 2 hours....

Anyway, the sun was finally setting just as we were flying over the Rockies, so Sabrina took some pictures through the airplane window. And we got to eat dinner twice, basically, because they can't figure out what to feed you on a 10 hour flight that spans 5 time zones.






Day 1
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A nice side effect of being 5 time zones away is that we were up with the sun, literally, before 8 AM. Only then did I really first appreciate the ocean view from the 35th floor of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki.


We had a quick continental breakfast (the first time I've ever had guava juice with breakfast) and then set out to stroll east along the beaches of Waikiki. I think this is also the first time that I've ever applied SPF40 sunblock just to walk around town.

After what might have been a few miles, we came to the edge of Diamond Head park, and decided to turn around and head back to the hotel. I happened to have my trusty Garmin GPS (which, incidentally, has a pedestrian mode [don't care about one-way streets?] as well as map data for Hawaii), so we took the long road home, along the canal.


Walking around Waikiki is like being on another planet. A planet where men drive scooters with surfboards strapped to the side, there are always mountains in the distance, everyone has palm trees in their yards (and you thought cleaning your gutters was a pain), and there are more Japanese tourists than any other demographic. Anything that would have been written in English and Spanish in South Bethlehem is in English and Japanese here.

We made it back to the hotel in time for a beer (imported from New Zealand? How close are we to New Zealand?!) and a snack. After perusing written material about Oahu, Honolulu, etc., we decided to head for Pearl Harbor. The hotel concierge pointed out that the last tour was at 3 or 3:30, and that a) we might not make it in time, with the erratic bus schedule and traffic and that b) the tours were probably "sold out" for the day anyway. "Sold out" because, as far as I can tell, there's no charge for the USS Arizona activities.



We decided to get up early tomorrow and head to Pearl Harbor instead. This freed up the rest of the day, so we hopped on a bus and headed to Diamond Head park. The guide book listed this as a slight hike to the rim of a volcanic crater, or something like that, and it comes highly recommended from Oahu veterans.


So, when you get off the bus, you have almost a mile walk, including a tunnel through the wall of the crater to the "welcome center", or whatever it is. From there, it's about 8/10 of a mile hike to the top. See a more thorough description.


Some crazy people were trying to make this climb, including but not limited to: a pregnant woman, a woman with twin 18-month old girls, women in sandals / high heels / other inappropriate footwear, and a middle-aged man that appeared to have knee and/or ankle problems. Oh, and a chatting problem. And by that, I mean that he wouldn't shutup.


As it turns out, he mentioned being from Pittsburgh, and how nice it was to be in Hawaii instead of Pennsylvania, where it was currently sleeting/snowing/blizzarding. I mentioned that we could relate, since we're from Bethlehem. He stopped walking and said "I grew up there. Went to Freedom." That instance of me opening my mouth led to us learning half of this man's life story. Now, he was plodding along at a slow pace, but would catch up to us every time we stopped to take pictures.


(Lots and lots of pictures. The great thing about digital cameras is that you can just keep on taking pictures, content with the knowledge that you'll never fill that 2G memory card. And even if you do, you can just offload to a laptop that night and have a fresh start the next day. The bad thing, of course, is the same as the good thing.)


Anyway, we made it to the top, which was absolutely amazing. The way back down was much more pleasant. Especially the 99 stairs right near the top of the trail. I'll never again complain about walking back up all those stairs to the dorm during my undergrad days. We caught the bus back to Waikiki, near our hotel. Whoever is in charge of the bus system here... is less concerned with punctuality than I am. They refer to it as "Hawaii time", or something like that. I knew we were in trouble when we couldn't find an actual bus schedule anywhere.

After another pit stop on floor 35, we donned swim gear and headed across the street to the beach. The ocean here is somewhere around 75°. Apparently this is as cold as it gets, what with it being winter and all. As far as I know, that's warmer than any part of the Atlantic I've ever been in, ever. I'm sure that somewhere in the south-east continental US there is an example of 75° salt water, but it's probably during August, and you'd have to pay me to go to Florida during the summer.

As the sun was setting, some clouds rolled in (I'd almost forgotten what shade feels like), so we retreated to the Hyatt's pool and hot tub. I did indeed get that Mai Tai that I kept threatening to have.


Around 6:30, we explored some of the restaurants that are in the hotel, but didn't fine anything appealing (and by appealing, I mean "reasonably priced"). We foraged around for a bit and eventually came upon a combo Thai/American place. I finished dinner with a delightful concoction that they refer to as a "Lava Flow", but I would call a Strawberry Piña Colada Daiquiri. I sampled the local brew (Keoki Gold... not bad), and have decided that I could never live here. I think that they don't believe in dark beer. Every place we've been has only light, lite, and lighter beer available. I did see some cans of Guinness in a retail shop, but they're very expensive and under-represented.


We're going to get up with the sun again tomorrow, and take the bus to Pearl Harbor. The pictures aren't even close to being uploaded, so if you're reading this, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow for pictures. It takes a long time for files to transfer from here to PA. (Although... 23 hops, not bad!) The internet here is some crappy T-mobile hotspot (that I had to pay for! Ugh) and it's not exactly impressing me.

Couple that with the fact that Sabrina and I both have new cameras that take 7.1 megapixel shots, as opposed to our old 2-ish megapixel junkers. Also, I didn't think about this until just now, so I didn't bother to scale down the photos. If I had to estimate now, I'd say we're on track for at least 3 gigs of photos from this trip. Perhaps it's time to start deleting the less-than-amazing pictures....

UPDATE: photos (obviously) posted. See pages 1-19.