Hawaii Slide Show

I just discovered Picasa's wonderful "embedded slide show" feature. Enjoy...

Hawaii underwater (Sharks!)

The last set of photos from the underwater film cameras is now developed. Enjoy!
(I'll be posting the shark video soon, so stay tuned.)

Hanauma Bay:

North Shore:

Waikiki Beach:


Update: here's the video with the sharks (pay special attention around 1:25):

Honolulu 360°

A 360° view from Diamondhead Mountain in Oahu, stitched together (scroll horizontally to see the whole thing):

Hawaii, pt. 3

(Continued from here, full trip log here, photo album here.)

On Thursday, we went to Hanauma Bay, recommended by everyone for snorkeling. Formed by volcanic activity (an eruption or collapse, I'm not sure), it's full of coral and sea life and is now a protected "marine life conservation district." Visitors are required to watch an orientation video about the bay's history and protection before entering. About 100 feet out are rocks, beyond which the waves were too rough for swimming, so the available area was limited. We started snorkeling in the middle area and didn't see much - the coral was gray, there were some fish but nothing amazing. We got out and sat on the beach for a little while, then went back in on the left side, and this time there was a lot more to see. Overall I was disappointed with the coral, however: my mental image of coral is of many colors and shapes, but the Hanauma coral was all gray and uniform. Other snorkelers reported seeing turtles but we didn't see any. It was still very nice underwater, though, and I got some more good photos (also coming soon).

(I learned an interesting tip there for de-fogging a diving mask. The usual suggestion is to use spit, but that didn't work with these masks, so a park guide suggested I break off a leaf from the bushes there - I don't know what the plant is called, but the leaves are slightly thick, bright green and moist inside - grind up the leaf, and apply the liquid to the inside. It worked!)

For dinner Thursday night, we went to the Cheesecake Factory, always delicious, and with huge portions so every meal there basically includes another meal to bring home. I had one of their off-menu specials, salmon with a ginger crust top, and it was delicious. (Incidentally, we didn't get cheesecake.)

Friday morning we woke up very early and took the bus to Diamond Head, also the result of volcanic activity (like all of the Hawaiian islands, in fact), and with a peak that gives an amazing view of Honolulu. It's necessary to go early because by afternoon it's too hot to hike. There's a good walk from the bus stop to the start of the trail, and then another half hour or so to the top, including a long tunnel that was only recently fitted with lights, and several staircases and ladders. Around World War 1, I think, the site became part of a sea targeting system, and the concrete watch tower with its narrow viewing window overlooking the sea is still there. (I stitched together a 360° panorama of the city, which I'll post soon.)

Friday afternoon, we went to the Bishop Museum, reputed to have one of largest collections of Polynesian artifacts in the world. It's actually several museums in one: an interactive science museum for kids, another science pavillion with a planetarium, a Polynesian art/history/culture museum, a Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame, a pavillion of Hawaiian royal lineage, and a kids' science exhibit (probably temporary) called "Grossology," which we got a kick out of.


On Saturday we planned to check out before noon, go to the airport, check in our luggage and go back to Waikiki for last-minute souvenier shopping. I had called US Airways and they assured us we could check in any time on the day of departure. So we get there at noon, and find out (after being directed back and forth across the terminals) that the US Airways terminal doesn't open until 8 PM. Of course there is no more airport luggage storage ("post-9/11" and all), and we hadn't thought it necessary to use the hotel's. So we were stuck with three heavy suitcases outside the airport for the whole day, and airport food is such a ripoff. The weather was perfect, though, and we got a lot of reading done, so it wasn't a total waste. It was also good we got there early because we discovered that our flight - scheduled for 10:55 PM - was delayed til 1:30 AM, possibly later (due to maintenance, same as the first leg of our flight going there). Anyway I was on the phone with US Airways' horrible customer service people - in the Philippines, of course - and while they wouldn't compensate us for being wrong about the checkin time (lying about frequent-flyer mile rules and probably lying about first class being full), they did move us to the earlier 10:30 PM flight, which was on time.

Long story short...Honolulu to Phoenix to Washington D.C. to Boston...basically two days in airports or airplanes, and we got back to Boston. Home sweet home. Of course they had to lose one of my suitcases somewhere - another point for US Airways - so I'm hoping they'll find it and deliver it tomorrow. After a week of essentially perfect weather, the weather back home will take some getting used to again, (and I'll surely lose my tan before the summer). Tomorrow classes start again, with a giant pile of reading and work that I mostly neglected on vacation awaits me, but I feel quite refreshed.



Check out the full photo album here.

Hawaii, pt. 2

(Continued from here, full trip log here, photo album here.)

On Monday, we went across the street to the Hilton's beach to swim and read. We took some photos with disposable underwater cameras (which I'll develop soon in Boston). Then we went to dinner at Duke's Canoe Club, a restaurant-bar highly recommended in our guidebooks. Named for and decorated with memorabilia of Hawaiian Olympic athlete and surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku, the place was a little too loud for conversation, but the food was great and was followed with a live music duo.

On Tuesday, we rented a Jeep Wrangler and drove up the H1 freeway to the town of Haleiwa on Oahu's North Shore. There we went to the Coffee Gallery for some freshly roasted Hawaiian-grown coffee and brunch. Then we drove to the beach and boarded a boat with a cage on back, which took us a few miles out into shark-infested waters. We put on snorkels, the cage was lowered and let off the boat, bloody fish bait was thrown into the water, and we climbed into the cage to swim with the sharks. There were dozens of them all around, big Galapagos sharks and smaller reef sharks. Four people went in the cage at a time, for 20 minutes or so, and the sharks mostly ignored us, except when one snapped its head in at the bottom, hit the bars and snapped it back out. (Lots of underwater photos and a video with the sharks coming soon.)

Despite much sunscreen before and after swimming, we got sunburned on the boat back to shore. We drove back to the shopping plaza in the center of Haleiwa (which, despite being the "capital" of the North Shore, seemed to be comprised of two streets), and had lunch at a Mexican place called Cholo's. Chickens strolled around our outdoor table and inside the restaurant. We also visited some art galleries, including one with beautiful glass sculptures. Then we got back in the Wrangler and drove east along the shore to the Polynesian Cultural Center, which supposed to be a must-see attraction that can take all day to experience. The closing time listed in our guidebook was unclear, however, and the park had already closed, with only the [overpriced] dinner show still available. It was already getting dark, and we wanted to take the long route back to Honolulu (clockwise around the island instead of back down H1), so we started back. As it turned out, it got dark too early to see most of the way back, which included H3, a beautiful elevated highway and the most expensive highway per mile in the country.


Wednesday morning, before returning the car, we went to the flea market ("swap meet") at the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. It had tent shops full of cheap Hawaiian shirts, souveniers, produce, etc. We returned the car with a few minutes to spare, and as we walked back to the hotel, we bumped into a breakfast joint with pancakes, eggs, and bacon for $2.99, not the greatest food in the world but definitely the cheapest meal of the week (except the hotel's "free" continental breakfasts). Continuing through Waikiki, we stopped at another tourist-trap flea market, where I was harassed by a Chinese stand keeper who spoke just enough English to try to force me to buy an overpriced Zippo lighter with a Hawaii/motorcycle design. (The tag said $65, I might have bought it for $10, I bargained it down to $30, said it was still too high and walked away, she grabbed my arm and wouldn't let me go...so I had Tristyn pulling me on one side telling me to walk away and this woman on the other...anyway the stall next to hers had a tag price of $25, so it's good I didn't buy it.)

We were soon picked up by a very fancy minibus, which took us to the outskirts of Hololulu Airport for a 45-minute helicopter tour of Oahu. Our pilot alternated between radioing various flight signals (many more than I expected) and narrating the tour. This was my first time on a helicopter, and I found it feeling much less stable than an airplane, as if it would drop out of the sky if the rotors stopped, unlike a plane which has natural lift. Helicopters are more conducive to slow, low-altitude sightseeing, however - especially with the 360° canopy - and it was a lot of fun. We covered much of the same ground from the air as we had already seen on the ground, including the H3 highway which we had missed the night before, and the USS Arizona memorial. We also flew over Sacred Falls, a beautiful waterfall and mountain pass that has been closed on the ground due to a lawsuit against the state for a hiking death there. Naturally I took many photos. (See the full album here.)


Back at the hotel, we set out on foot in search of a pizza place - pizza apparently being scarce in Hawaii - and reached the distant location only to find that it was closed for the mid-afternoon. So we walked back to Waikiki and had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen, which was probably better than the first place we were looking for anyway.

To be continued...

Hawaii, pt. 1

Tristyn and I are spending our spring break on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. We arrived late Friday night after 28 hours of traveling. Our hotel is on the western side of Waikiki (in Honolulu), near downtown. Yesterday, after a late start and a big brunch, we walked along the Waikiki beach, trying to find a "historic trail" mentioned in our guidebook that even the information desk had never heard of. We found the first of the bronze surf boards that mark the trail, but there was no indication of how to get to the next one. So we meandered around and found the Honolulu Zoo, and it being on our to-do list anyway, we spent the afternoon there. We got back in the evening and fell asleep for the night.

Today we set out early for Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona memorial. The audio tour goes through a museum, out by the water where the Pearl Harbor attack happened, then to a movie, and finally a shuttle boat to the memorial. The Arizona's ammunition stores took a direct hit and the huge destroyer sunk in nine minutes, with 1,177 sailors and marines aboard. Most of the ships damaged or sunk that day were (amazingly) repaired and returned to service in the Pacific war, but the Arizona and two others were unsalvageable, and the ship, buried in shallow waters with the hull visible only a few feet under the surface, remains a tomb for most of its crew. A few quarts of oil still seep out every day from the Arizona, an apt metaphor for the ship "weeping for its lost crew."

From Pearl Harbor, we took TheBus (that's what it's called) to Chinatown, where we followed another guided historical tour - this one with the directions thankfully written in the book - but it, too, was rather disappointing. After looping around the neighborhood, we took a bus back to the Ala Moana (ah-lah mo-ah-nah) shopping center, got lunch, and walked back to the hotel. We're resting now and will probably head to the beach to swim and watch the sunset.

The history of Hawaii is fascinating: in a nutshell, missionaries came in the early 19th century to replace the traditional culture with puritanical Christianity, in the process banning hula dancing and creating the Hawaiian alphabet of 12 Latin letters (ah, progress...); American cotton and fruit growers moved in and increased their clout over time until they were able to call in U.S. Marines to support a coup, deposing the queen and installing Sanford Dole (of pineapple fame) as governor in 1898; the islands were annexed, the navy (having earlier realized its strategic potential) increased its presence; the Japanese attacked; martial law; statehood in 1959. (One interesting anecdote: the Japanese and German populations were both detained during WW2, according to our guidebook; that's the only case of German [civilian] internment in the US during the war as far as I know.)

Some general observations. Honolulu is a big sprawling city, (called "Los Angeles West" by critics), so it has the charms of a tropical paradise as well as the drawbacks of an industrial tourist trap. It is the most isolated populated land mass in the world (or something like that), but its consumer goods, cars and industries are just like anywhere in the U.S., a testament, I suppose, to maritime transportation and the "flatness" of the world (oh how I hate that cliché). I did notice some Asian-model cars, however, and the population's ethnic/racial makeup is a real mishmash. As a strategic outpost it certainly makes sense, and outpost is probably a good way to think of Hawaii (from America's perspective), albeit not undeveloped like frontier outposts of old. Place and street names are mostly in Hawaiian; aloha (hello/goodbye) and mahalo (thank you) are used instead of the English. Tourism, a major industry here, is heavily dependent on air travel, and consequently dropped in the early-90s and post-9/11 recessions, but is now close to peak levels. The weather is perfect - 70s-80s now and most of the year, according to the guidebook - the humidity level is pleasant, the air is clear, the people are friendly.

I'm putting some photos here; the full trip album can be found here.



Update: see the full Hawaii trip log here, and the full trip album here.