Activity Summary
Thursday 9th March - Day 189 (reload)
Flight to Hawaii
Waikiki beach - chill & sleep
Waikiki market
Friday 10th March - Day 190
Tip: Walk to 7-11 to get Holo card & bus around island
Diamond head summit
Makapu’u point
Saturday 11th March - Day 191
East side day
Kualoa regional park
Kualoa ranch Jungle tour
Hoʻomaluhia Botanical Garden fail
Ala Moana regional park
Sunday 12th March - Day 192
Walk around Waikiki
Waikiki beach
Honolulu Festival:
Crossing Rain Kpop performance
Parade part 1
Parade part 2
Fireworks on the beach
Monday 13th March - Day 193
North shore
Haleiwa beach turtles
Pupukea & Sharks Cove
Banzai Pipeline
Haleiwa beach - Luke surfing
Tuesday 14th March - Day 194
Low key Waikiki day
Wednesday 15th March - Day 195
Flight to San Francisco
Summary
Oahu island
One of the main 8 islands in Hawaii. The island is clearly a hotspot for wealthy American tourists and this was pretty evident in Waikiki with all the designer brands and everything costing a fortune.
It was an interesting place to travel to, the only reason for us being here was it was cheap to have a stopover on our way to San Francisco. More challenging was trying to do it on a budget but with shopping at Walmart, having microwaved dinners and mainly just walking / relaxing we kept the cost down significantly (accomodation was half our daily budget). The 7 day Holo card that allowed us to get any bus around the island, on what was actually a half decent service, and also pretty cheaply albeit it took a long time to do so.
The beaches were pretty nice to relax on and it seemed like there were some decent walks along the ridge lines but were challenging to get to and potentially a bit sketch. Luke loved his surfing trip in the North shore but otherwise there weren't a whole lot of unique places to explore and arguably the island could be done in a much shorter time frame.
Conclusion was that it was probably overrated (likely by Americans) but was well worth the stop. If we were to return, it would be pretty expensive to see the other islands however.
Accommodation
Waikiki - Waikiki Beachside Hostel
Number of nights - 6
Price per night per person - £44
Super expensive for not much. 8 bed dorm rooms, microwave and kettle in reception to cook dinner and no indoor communal space. It was however 1 of only 5 hostels on the island and all that was available.
Having our bunks next to the window and door was pretty annoying but we had a lovely roommate in Amelie for the whole time we were there which made the stay that much nicer.
The hostel was incredibly central and therefore location wise was perfect for the beach and to get anywhere on the island.
Diary
The Hawaiian airlines plane was slightly unusual, only having the two seats on either end of the plane and 4 in the middle. Fortunately they didn’t try and Ryanair us so we got to have these 2 window seats all to ourselves. Turns out this isn’t enough space for Nicola to try and sleep in however and she spent the 8 hour flight practising her best contortionist in a box routine to get some sleep. The favoured position was quite unique; face down into the backrest with legs and arms tucked and rolled onto the seat. From Luke’s perspective this didn’t look comfortable, who opted for the more standard lean back, open mouth and drool approach.
Prior to setting off we were handed probably one or the worst inflight meals we’ve ever had. Nicola decided to go for the veggie option which turned out to be the ‘appropriate for all’ option. Aka it was absent of all known standard allergens and therefore enjoyment. The look of disgust when she got a dry coleslaw gluten free sandwich at midnight when she was getting grouchy tired was incredibly amusing to Luke. He did offer his chicken sandwich to her having already eaten a burger but she politely declined.
We both watched a film and tried our best to sleep, failing pretty dramatically in the latter. It was pretty choppy in parts that didn’t help either of us get some consistent shut eye. At least breakfast was alright for Luke.
Like a dirty drum and bass pull up, our 9th March 2023 essentially restarted from scratch. This time arriving in Hawai’i and Oahu at 9am having left Auckland just before midnight on the same day. Pretty savage time travelling differences.
Luke did fear the US immigration official somewhat after his first attempt to visit the U.S. with Akhil, at that time getting quizzed incessantly about everything and especially his friendship with Akhil who seemed to have been profiled. It was a bit scary for a younger naive Luke while Akhil just strolled right through without issue.
This time also had drama for Luke. Nicola again walked right through without issue. Luke was held up by the security official again by what seemed like standard questions. However, little did we know that the terms of our ESTA meant we needed onward travel out of NORTH AMERICA in 90 days and not just the USA. So our onward flights from San Fran to Mexico didn’t cut the mustard as we weren’t sure when we would be heading into Belize, but that it would be well shy of 90 days.
After a little palava of trying to find an already approved Nicola the security guard explained that he should be forcing Luke to book an onward flight in the naughty room but ended up being much nicer about the situation, instead lecturing him on how 90 days worked and going in and out of other countries to come back to the states would be ok. Luke decided to bite his tongue on this rather than say he had absolutely no desire to stay in this completely fucked country. The guy did take an interest into his existing countries however, probably much to the annoyance of everyone else in the queue.
Eventually he was through and Nicola was waiting at the bag drop. Lesson learned and thankfully no harm no foul, somehow.
We grabbed our bags and made our way out of the terminal to find the bus. This was pretty easy, the hardest part being that Luke had to run to a Starbucks a long way away from the stop to get the $3 each fare in change, which ended up coming from a customer rather than the coffee joint itself as they were just so goddamn slow.
Once back at the bus stop a random car pulled into the bus lane and offered us a lift along with another younger looking couple who were on the same flight. They said they were going to Waikiki, would do it for $5 each rather than the $3 for the much longer bus and we all jumped in. Nicola was far more hesitant than Luke but he had seen the woman in the front seat and thought fuck it. Turns out they were a married couple and were pretty friendly having an enjoyable chat with everyone until we were dropped off.
We were too early to check into our hostel so we dropped our bags, got changed and spent a few hours on Waikiki beach after getting some all American mcds. Which was hella expensive and the size of the drinks is actually disgusting.
The beach was very nice. Pretty busy and had an interesting rock wall creating an artificial shallow bay but with nice intermittent sunshine and getting a little bit of shut eye on the beach meant we had a bit more energy to face the rest of day 189 reloaded.
We checked into our 8 person room and grabbed the only free bunk, sadly next to the door, aircon unit and windows. Interestingly the room was split into two parts, separated by the bathroom, which very much gave a natural conversation flow divide. In our part was a very nice German girl called Amelie who we got along with very well.
The cooking facilities in the hostel were at their absolute minimum, aka a kettle and microwave. So we would have to get pretty simple with our dinner choices as we didn’t want to pay £20 each plus tax plus tip for a meal out which would blow our budget pretty quickly.
The closest supermarket equivalent we could find was a bougie place called the Waikiki market, which was essentially Waitrose in a posh part of the UK like Salisbury. The food was mad expensive so we didn’t get a whole lot, settling for a ramen dinner but it still came to $50. That was before Nicola tried to buy an $11 punnet of grapes which were rejected in disgust. There was a reasonably priced onigiri for Nicola however as she was shopping on empty - never a good idea.
We had a short walk down the Waikiki beach front to explore a little before turning back to the hostel for our ramen and salad dinner.
We spent the evening in our hostel talking with our roommate Amelie and then on consoles / iPads. We pretty much did this every night as we didn’t see the point of going to a bar. Luke had fortunately been provided with a free crate of beer by the hostel staff who had cleared out rooms during the day so he was set for a very reasonable tinny a night which suited him perfectly fine.
Being absolutely shattered from the prior day meant we both slept like logs, despite the noise, light & heat that would plague us going forward.
We had our granola, soy milk and banana breakfast before taking off to the nearest 7-11 to get a 7 day Holo card that would allow us unlimited bus travel around the island for $32. Pretty decent value and we got good use out of it, given it would usually take 2 busses to get across the island one way.
From there we bussed over to the Diamond head summit for a short walk. We had to pay a $5 entrance fee which was a little tough to take post NZ but the walk was nice enough. It was pretty busy even with the ticketed system in place but it was relatively easy to skip past the slower walkers.
There were some nice views of Honalulu and the surrounding ridge lines but we didn’t stay long up due to congestion and a flash downpour of rain.
To get to the Makapu’u point for our next walk we had to pick up the pace and only just made the once every hour bus. The bus network was ok, Google being the official timetable and the busses are very run down but they operated alright. Apparently this is the best bus network in the US…
The bus stop for this one was pretty annoying. We could ever under or overshoot it with a walk through a very unexciting shrub walk or along the road with no footpaths. So we opted for shrub and then back via the road.
Once at the official track, which was a fully concreted path up, the walk got a lot more exciting. Out to the sea we saw a number of humpback whales and even managed to see the tail end of a couple of breaches.
The view from the top was pretty nice although again was short lived as we were being chased by a ton of potentially bitey insects.
We got to the bus stop at sea life a little early so we had a short sit down by the coast with views of the walk we had just done. The sea life place looked like the bleakest of experiences $40 could buy. What reittetated this was a lone American who had apparently travelled 4 hours to swim with 2 dolphins - of which we only found out about because he was loudly and obnoxiously complaining to someone on the phone. Christ he sounded like a moron.
It was 2 busses back and we went via the Walmart closer to the CBD. Our first opportunity to get a Happy lemon for a while but we baulked somewhat at the $7 price tag. We did get to listen to some entertaining Hawaiian music performers in the mall.
Walmart was a much cheaper food shopping choice and managed to stock up for the rest of our time in Hawai’i for about $80. Ended up being $130 for the 7 days for our food and it wasn’t even great stuff. Hawai’i ain’t cheap.
An exciting chicken & broccoli alfredo frozen ready meal and salad for dinner then we were done for the evening.
A popular touristy thing to do is to head over to the Kuoloa ranch which is on the East side of the island. Here they had filmed various movies such as Jurassic park, Jumanji and Kong. We weren’t interested in any of the movie tours really but the jungle tour did give us easy access to some of the more remote parts of the island. A little expensive at $50 but supposed easy adventure.
To get there it would take us about 2 hours on the bus so we wanted to take off early. The problem with sharing a bathroom with 8 people is that the cumulative morning dump run tended to leave somewhat of a queue. Today we were very much at the back as two of the girls in the shit half of the room took absolutely forever.
When the reception pot of coffee was well and truly empty, it should have been a sign for us to reassess. But Nicola was determined and lovingly made Luke his morning coffee using the drip feed bean minus any filter paper as there was absolutely no other alternative and she clearly didn’t want to deal with him being tired and grouchy for the morning. Valid desire as he got very little sleep and spent the whole day feeling absolutely sapped of energy. He was chewing on that first sip of coffee for about 30 minutes before the beans finally moved on from his mouth but leaving the beans to settle and exercising caution worked alright.
The missed bus constituted the first of Nicola’s rage outs for the day.
We eventually got to the Kuoloa regional park and as we were early we had a short walk around. There were some absolutely cracking ridge line mountain view’s and the coast was pretty nice also. We could see various people having kayaked to and summited the small Mokoli’i island.
The tour required us to be there pretty early to check in so we spent a lot of time at the Kuoloa ranch.
There was only 8 of us on the Jungle tour and we had our first experience of over the top happy American tour guiding. It was downright painful. We must have got warned how bumpy it was going to be about 5 times, stopped what seemed to be about every 10m which was preceded by a ‘we’ll be going for a while now’ and then asked whether we were alright every time we stopped. And to top it off it felt like he needed crowd participation from us as tourists to woop and cheer to show we were having a great time. Luke was the leader of this response which says a lot about how little people wanted this kind of service. This element lf it was excruciating.
The rest of the tour itself howver was alright. Nice views of the coast, Mokoli’i island and Luke was loving the ridge line views. The actual tour information (maybe 30% of the talking was useful?) was interesting.
When we turned around the first bend and saw the coast, every single other tourist in our truck were awestruck as if they’d just seen the most beautiful thing in the world. Literally Ooohs and Aaaahs. We both just cracked up.
We got a very short walk up to a viewpoint that had decent views over the ranch. Before that peace and tranquility was ruined by the two little shits that wouldn’t shut up or stop coughing the whole time.
The second half was more of a movie tour drive so wasn’t all that interesting before we got back to the start. As we departed the truck we made a conscious effort to run away the other side the tour guide was standing, as we had taken note of the sign at the check in ‘tipping isn’t just for cows’. FUCK TIPPING CULTURE. We had paid far more than the whole experience was worth, just pay your employees better for fucks sake. Many more awkward moments over this to follow we’re sure.
Safe from prying ears, queue Nicola’s second rage out.
We quickly left the ranch to get the bus back towards the hostel with a planned stopover at the Hoʻomaluhia Botanical Garden. Probably the best part of the ranch trip was the view of the mountain ranges from the bus stop to be honest.
The bus took a long time to get to our stop for the gardens and by the time we had arrived there was only about 45 minutes left on the google advertised open time. The entrance of the gardens was a short walk from the bus stop but once again we found ourselves without any pavements and were pretty much just walking in the road. Like the appetiser to a main meal, this began to whet the appetite of some more displeasure.
Nicola’s third rage out was a biggy.
When we arrived we were so lovingly (lol jk) denied entry by the guard at the entrance as we were not a local and not in a car. This rule was completely perplexing to us and we let the guard know this, albeit not overly politely. This once again reiterated the ridiculous requirement that ‘cars are all’ here.
So after a minute of arguing and looking at each perplexed we turned and went back to catch our very infrequent bus. We got about 30 seconds down the road before the guard started shouting after us. Bemused, we turned around and went back up the hill to her booth where she then said we could go in but make sure that we told any other guards we are in fact locals and make sure we don’t take any photos.
We were pretty pissed off and as we started walking through the once again unpaved roads, we decided fuck this as we wouldn’t have enjoyed it and just took off back to the bus stop. On our way back some weirdos in a convertible shouted out the window ‘make sure you don’t take photos’. Turns out it's an insta famous spot for a picture in the middle of the road, of which we couldn’t have given less of a toss.
The one benefit was we only had to wait for the bus for a few minutes. Plenty of time for us to rage out however. It did also take an incredibly odd route back to the hostel that google did not predict but fortunately ended up where we needed to be.
Given it was still pretty early we stopped at the Ala Moana regional park for a de-stressing walk around before we got hungry. On our final bus for the day a girl hit Nicola with a beach chair and kicked off the 4th and final rage out. Luke was worried she was going to punch someone out.
A hearty microwave sweet potato, tuna and salad put us at peace with the world.
It wasn’t an overly pleasant night's sleep for either of us. Being right next to the hostel room door meant that we were always at risk of people going in and out if they were more socially inclined than us boring oldies.
The first of the irks was a group of loud ass German girls outside on the balcony talking to god knows who on their phones on loudspeaker. It was however close to 10pm so being immensely British Luke just silently seethed until they stopped at about 11pm. Not too dramatic, he just played on his phone until some semblance of peace could be established despite wearing earplugs.
What he couldn’t let slide was the same ordeal happening at 1am. The top bunk requires a fair amount of athleticism and this alone has been enough to stop him going to the toilet in the night, just to reiterate how annoying this was. Half asleep he opened the door, found a small blonde girl chatting away outside one of the rooms and he scolded her, pointing at his window next to his head just to reiterate her bad. She didn’t say a single word once Luke had told her to can it.
Nicola and Amelie did rise for 2 seconds but neither could remember the ordeal.
Nicola had her own fight on her hands however. The back room had a new lone male traveller this evening who spent about 3 hours going in and out of the room to smoke what appeared to be on his tod. We did catch snippets of him trying to chat to said German girls but failing miserably in striking up any conversation.
His smoking was irritating because he kept going in and out of the room, but mainly because he was again smoking so close to the window that this was engulfing us. Nicola was very PC in the situation and sure enough got him to stop. Nice win. More funny was that apparently the guy had been drinking in the room by himself, got absolutely twatted, went out for a couple hours or so and then came back to the room to christen the toilet all evening. We had no idea about this but the others in his half were less than impressed. The self professed ‘big night out’ made for a bit of a laugh on our end.
We had a slow start to the day which helped alleviate any potential long lasting sleep deprivation. Nicola chatted with her dad and Luke spent the morning with the hostel staff in reception until we were ready to spend the day in Waikiki as this was the big parade and fireworks day for the Honolulu festival, a celebration of Asian and Pacific Island culture we randomly managed to coincide our trip with.
We had a short walk around Waikiki around some malls and had a look at food ‘research’ where we basically window shopped, drooled and then turned away to protect the purse strings. So it was a pretty disappointing lunch at the hostel but cheap.
We spent the afternoon on Waikiki beach chilling, wading and watching the world go by. Being a weekend the beach was loaded with teenage boys hilariously acting up.
The parade was expected to start at around 4pm but we had no idea where this was expected to kick off so we walked along the main beach front street until finding what seemed to be some sort of live act about to kick off. With our front row seats, we were treated to a performance by Crossing Rain, a 5 member strong local Hawaii Kpop inspired group. In all honesty, they weren’t great but we absolutely loved it. Choreographed moves, boy band vibes melting the hearts of some clearly very dedicated fans (especially to the one young looking guy with the great hair) and a mix of singing and rapping. Great fun had all round.
Once our fangirling was done we parked up on the curbside and watched the parade for a bit. It was a bit odd, a lot of Miss somethings being paraded in fancy cars that seemed to be promoting companies more than anything to do with culture but there were some marching bands to appreciate. The gun twirling teens was a bit much however.
We went back to the hostel for our microwave dinner and chilled in the room until the fireworks were due to go off at 8pm. We went down to the beachfront with Amelie and caught the back end of the parade of which they absolutely saved the best till last. A giant dragon, dudes twirling Samurai swords and guys lighting firecrackers on top of a mega vehicle were pretty jokes.
On the beach we chatted away until the fireworks kicked off for a fairly short but still fun show. The smoke did linger a lot in the sky but it seemed they knew this was the case and held short intermitions to allow this to dissipate a bit.
We got up and onto the two buses it required for us to get to and explore the north shore of Oahu. The journeys themselves aren’t particularly bad and we had been able to time these buses fairly well so there wasn’t much waiting around. The main bus that bisects the island wasn’t particularly exciting, seemling to go through flat farmland for the most part until the mountain range of the West side of the island comes into focus. The road is still pretty far however and although Luke was wanting to and could quite easily climb the highest peak of the island Mt Ka’ala (1,227m), the bus connection over there was so long that he would spend more time commuting than hiking so sacked that off.
On the north shore we stopped off first at Haleiwa beach where we had a sit down for a nib and see a ton of turtles chilling in the shallow waters. The surf was also excellent for Luke’s skill level so was pinned as a save for later activity.
We got back on the bus heading east along the north shore which made a very impromptu stop along the way, the driver getting out of his seat to shout something in our direction. We were confused and looked over for him then to kick off a woman at the back of the bus who casually started using. She didn’t even seem remotely annoyed at the ordeal and calmly disembarked.
We stopped at Pupukea & Sharks Cove to continue the rest of our lunch. It was a nice spot for a dip but we decided that we might as well save it for Haleiwa. We passed the Waimea valley but both didn’t want to pay $25 to get in but it is supposed to be nice.
Luke was keen to see the Banzai Pipeline which at the right times of year has some monster surf. We had a fairly long walk along the road and beach to get there, but it was a really nice beach and we stopped to watch a number of decent surfers riding the pipe, albeit much smaller than the big wave surfing competitions. Still impressive for Luke however.
There was pretty much standstill traffic going around the North shore to the east so this is where we called our exploration. Waiting at the bus stop was pretty painful in the heat however as the bus was running pretty late.
Luke got off the bus early to go to Blue Planet near Haleiwa beach and picked up a surfboard. 2 hours for $25 is pretty steep but was a lot cheaper than the $40 at the beachfront in Waikiki. It was also his first time surfing a hardboard - they gave him wax with it and he professed he had absolutely no idea what he was doing with it so the kind lady at the store did it for him.
Nicola was kind enough to stay with our day bags at the beach under some shade while Luke went out for his surf. He had a great time, and was arguably the most successful surf session he has had to date. The board was unreal (Blue Planet 9ft x 22.5 x 3 x 79L) and was catching some decent greenys that would run for an age back to the beachfront. Paddling out had some decent channels and the waves were not coming in hard and fast so there was time to rest, relax and for him to wait his turn. There weren’t many surfers out and certainly no pros who scare Luke with their agyness. It was a great surfing session, the one drawback being his left nipple got some serious chafe as he forgot his rash vest. At least he looked shredded when out on his board.
Luke dropped his board back after a few hours and we got the long bus back to our hostel where we spent the evening doing very little.
Luke was supposed to get up early in order to go for a hike up to one of the ridgelines east of Waikiki (Kuliouou ridge trail) but the weather for the day was less than ideal so he ended up sacking it. Turned out to be a good idea as it rained on and off pretty much all day with quite low cloud cover. He would have also liked to have done the Olomana trail, which has some proper sketchy rope climbs, but the lack of equally stupid hiking companion put him off.
So the both of us had a nice chill morning walking around Waikiki doing some shopping for Nicola who needed to replace some worn clothing and then went out to other areas of the town we hadn’t explored.
Once eating lunch at the hostel we attempted to relax on the beach, despite being grey and cloudy, but it started raining about 10 minutes into our arrival so we sacked that off and ran away back to the hostel for the rest of the afternoon where we packed, planned and socialised with Amelie.
We checked out of our hostel reasonably early to time and get the hour-long bus over to the airport. It was all pretty easy, having to stack our bags into the seats next to Nicola in order to allow other people to sit. Nowhere near as bad as commuting in London with the same bags mind.
We weren’t able to use the ‘smart’ bag tag machines so we joined the 30 minute long queue to check in manually which only had 2 or 3 people for a long line of those in a similar situation. Pretty inefficient but we had arrived plenty early.
Once our bags were checked in we went through security without a hitch. Luke had an overpriced burger king while Nicola got a pretty decent chinese platter. She won this battle.
Our flight was slightly delayed taking off but on our way to mainland USA and San Francisco we went.
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