Day four in O'ahu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

As I did not get to sleep until around 2am last night I barely managed to grab a breakfast for the cafe on the corner before being at the meeting place for the 8am pickup of my tour to Pearl Harbour, and here more than ever I found out that guides were not really necessary as they were no more than a glorified bus driver on this trip.

They picked us up at the rendezvous point and yet again chatted about what Honolulu meant ( sheltered or protected bay ) and made bad jokes until when we finally reached the actualy Pearl Harbour memorial where they then showed us where the entrance and toilets were before giving us a time to get back on the bus, reminded us not to make too much and then wandered off, very dissapointing.

However Pearl Harbour itself was not a dissapointment and the short 25 minute movie show about the build up and final attack on Pearl Harbour was quite emotional, made moreso by being on the big screen with surround sound.

It was here that I learned that the Japanese used 5 mini subs, each two men devices, over 130 planes flown from five carriers with the attack being planned for three waves, however the fact that the US carriers were out at sea at the time of the attack concerned the Japanese high command who then called off the third wave, which ultimately was a mistake.

Although a success in terms of damage inflicted verses received, the fact that the main carriers were not damaged and the aborted third strike, which was due to hit the town, port and repair facilities, meant that the US was still able to defend itself and mount counter attacks in later months and years.

That the Japanese left the repair facilities alone meant that over 75% of the ships damages in the attack were able to be repaired back to an operational level in itself shows how ineffectual the attack was on the overall scheme of the war, all it really did was crystalise the American public into supporting the war and the government ( many American people up to then sill felt that an isolationist policy was preferred to opposing the military might of Japan or Germany, who elsewhere were having huge victories in Europe and Asia respectively ).

After the screening we were directed to board the small launch that would take us on over to the floating platform that straddles the Arizona and here we could see the hull beneath us, its rusting metal superstructure and turrets barely piercing through the water in places and tiny oil slicks floating on the surface, locally referred to as the "tears of the Arizona", as she continues to slowly leak out the remaining half a million gallons of fuel onboard her sunken remains.

Once our alloted time was up another guard came to ferry us back across the port, back to the musuem and gift shop where we could watch more mini movies and buy just about anything on the subject you cared to remember. I know a guy back in the UK who will go nuts for some of this stuff, and although I don't normally get souveneirs for anyone, not even myself, on this occasion I decided to grab a authentic copy of the newspaper the day of the attach and also a copy of the signed peace treaty that was signed there in Pearl Harbour.

As as added bonus on the way out I spotted a desk where each morning a Pearl Harbour survivor will sit to greet visitors and sign autographs, so I wandered over to shake his hand and see how he was today.

As our tour group was due back at our mini-bus at 11am I didnt have time to go the second part of the museum across the parking lot, but I did spot my fellow english friend from last night just about to arrive, so I gave her the quick run down on what she was about to see and not to miss the old timer survivor or the other musuem before I had to dash back and then we were off to the second part of the mornings tour, a city tour of downtown Honolulu.

With only a little over an hour left of the tour we did not get to see that much, and in fact most of the places we passed at a slow rolling pause, rather than a full stop and get out, which meant that photo opportunities were scarce, however realising that my battery life was almost dead this was almost a blessing for me.

I learned that in its past history, the local government burnt down their own little Chinatown in an effort to prevent the spread of the bubonic plague as well as a few other bits and bobs about certain building here or there, but mainly it seemed to me like a way of killing time and beefing out the tour before we finally arrived back in Waikiki downtown and we all hoped off at our various stops.

In my bag I had been carrying a lot of stuff due for home since leaving Ecuador, and each time I came to a city I found it either impossible to find a post office or that the price to send something home was more than £80, which I was just not prepared to pay, so I was both glad and relieved that finally I found a post office where for a flat fee of a little under US $50 I could send home a fixed size box of any weight. So I dashed to my dorm room and filled the box with almost 6 kilos of brouchures, dvds, receipts, books and other nic nak due home.

After the trip to the post office I had a little tie to grab a shower before the afternoons tour started at 4pm, which was a cruise round Honolulu bay on the worlds largest Catamaran. Like all the other tours I was picked up just down the road from my actual hostel and again was the only guest not from a big names hotel, which was more proof that these tours are aimed at folk who are either rich, lazy or too short of time to research and make their own travel arrangements.

For a change it was nice to have a guide that was young and fun, and so much so that he insisted that we learn a made up haka that he had created for part of the later show, and also a counter haka for when the other buses shout out their own haka.

The other thing that he did right off the bat was go into a little detail that in Hawaii everyone is considered family, including us, so we should turn to our nearest unfamilar cousin and introduce ourselves, which was a nice spin on the old ice breaking technique.

As out bus had some Chinese tourists I didnt feel that we were going to do very well if it was a case of our bus verses their bus, but never the less we all sang and shouted our lungs out singing "bus number two, bus number two, looks better than you!", including the foot stamping, wild eyes, arm pulling and tongue pointing to stress our chant.

Once we arrived at the catamaran we had a chance to have our photo taken of us, but as they were trying to charge US $20 just for one photo, I knew before I even had it taken that I wasn't going to get one, and I just dont understand why they try to rip off the tourists quite that much, as I know I could probably have been talked into taken one if it was of a reasonable price like US $5!

Being one of the only two singletons on the bus I had noone to sit with, so our guide paired me off with the only other singleton, who turned out to be a pretty female from Sydney in Australia, which helped make the night feel a lot less awkward and lonely for the pair of us.

The cruise itself was good fun, with a buffet, live music and another mini polynesian show to round off the event, but with only a 50% discount on your first drink and all the other drinks were full priced ( at say US $6 each per cocktail ) I also knew that I wasn't going to get drunk onboard, and in fact I was a little miffed at how stingy they were being.

After the meal but before the show we were blessed with a glorious sunset and a whale came up along side and gave us a couple of nice funnel blasts before submerging and swimming off.

When it came to the Haka singing contest we made a lot more noise that I expected, and also our haka was a little more authentic and interesting that the others, one was nothing more than Queens "we will rock you" and hands clapping, and I think for that reason alone we were awarded the top place. For our prize we all had to stand up and hold our arms out, only to find that the prise was to dance the Macarena first, and as soon as that filtered through our groups subconcious plenty of people decided to subtly creep away and visit the observation deck.

All in all it was good fun, but I am not sure it was quite worth the money I paid, and so it was with mixed feelings that I headed on back to my hostel to try and sort out as much stuff as I could for the very early morning flight to Fiji.

Day three of O'ahu in Hawaii, U.S.A.

This morning I had a easy morning knowing that I was due to go to the Polynesian Culture Centre for a full days trip, with a pickup no earlier than 10am, which was good as I did not get back to the hostel until early this morning.

Hawaii is not cheap and although you can occasionally pick up some a bargain, most of the time you should either have to pay that little extra or be prepared for a bit of searching around in order to get he best deals.

By the end of tomorow I will have firmly decided that it is not worth going on most of the package trips, but before I jump ahead of myself let me start by saying that I did not do much in the morning and was met up at my pickup point on time and in yet another of the small mini -buses, not large luxury coaches that they displayed on their leaflets.

I am not sure if it is all Hawaiians have really bad sense of humours, or just the tour guides, as this driver too was as crazy as a loon and was forever telling us jokes that first made us groan, then moan and sad to say for me it put me off listening in the end as he was always starting off a story with things like "and the reason it got its name is ..." only to have a lame joke as the tagline, thus making me unsure if anything he said was true or just a joke that I didnt get.

The map we were given was taking an almost identical route up through to the north of the island, similar to the one that I had taken yesterday, and so for much of it I decided to doze as best I could, but again I could not help but take in some of his oration also. Thus it was that I overheard much of what I heard yesterday, including the origins for the names of the places we were going through, of some of the local legends of how the place was founded and sharpened up a few of the points I thought I had down pat the first time.

Hawaii is a group of 8 main islands, the 9th being in Las Vegas, O'ahu is the third largest island with a population of around 900,000 in its one city Hololulu, which is divided up in districts with Waikiki being just one of them. The largest of the 8 islands, locally called the big island, has a surface area great enough to emcompass all the other islands together however there are far more people living and working in Honolulu than in all the rest of Hawaii put together.

The U.S.A.'s second most exclusive and prestigious University is on the Island of O'ahu, making Yale the third but not quite knocking Harvard off its top spot, and in a quite normal looking building in downtown Honolulu is where Barak Obama grew up, his extended family being able to afford the costly tuition fees of said exclusive university..

Although Hawaii is an American state and English has the first language for over one hundred years, almost all the names of streets, places and greetings are in ancient Hawaiian and all those born here are taught it as a strong second language growing up, able to drop into it with each other as easily as anything.

The rest of the information sort of rolls up into a large mass of unrelated facts and jokes, so not worth retelling here, suffice to say that I arrived at the Polynesian Culture Centre a little around midday.

This place is made up of different lands showing the typical native houses, traditions and dances of the main cultures that made up Polynesia, being Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, Fiji, Tongo and New Zealand ( here called by its original name of Aotearoa, being the land of the long white cloud. ). Other smaller island groups are also given some lip service but do not feature as major attractions or lands here in the centre.

Just one of the many insane bits of info that I picked up is that the Samoan islands are divided into American and non-American controlled with locals needing a passport to cross over from one to the other regardless of whether they are born natives or not from either partition.

The sky did cloud over and rain throught the early afternoon, which seriously threatened the rest of the evenings live shows, but thankfully it stopped and dried out by around 4pm, which was a relief as otherwise the shows would have to be cancelled due to the authentic clothes not being waterproof or even decorated with fixed colours ( such modern technique's shunned with a view to keeping the displays as authentic as possible ).

Being with a small tour group not officially linked with the centre was a bit of a downer, as those who were seemed to have not only more time in the centre, but were able to schedule in more of the timed shows held in each of the lands, and by the end of the day I decided that it was better to come alone early than pay a secondary agent to give you only half a day and their own rushed tour of the place.

One example of this was that there were various sports and games on display, like the blunt point spear chucking or shuffle board games, where as we wandered we could see other groups joyfully playing the games, but on our visit to the places our guide showed us how it was played and then moved us quickly on without giving any of us the chance to try our hands at them.

Another minor disappointment was again that no food or drinks were included in the tour and we were just shown where we were to eat and then our guide would wander off, leaving us with the choice of having to pay for a limited selection of foods or go hungry. Being fair there was a main evening buffet that was inclusive but that was not until 6pm and none of us could wait that long.

The displays and shows themselves were very impressive and totally made all the other minor inconveniences not worth worrying about when thinking about the day as a whole. The guy who made fire with friction and a starting stick was very cool to watch, as he started just making a small amount of smoke and then rubbed a dry coconut shy against it til it too began to softly smoke. Then he just slowly held it in his hand while he talked to us, all the while allowing the embers to fully dry out the husk and the second he decided it was time to make the fire bright he just waved his hand quickly through the air and the sudden rush of air would ignite it and instant flames.

New Zealand's hakar dancers were also good to watch, thought the performers were not as tattooed or as dark skinned as the full bloodied Mauri's I have seen on my travels, but nonetheless there was plenty of shouting, crazy eyes, long rolled tongues and slapping of thighs, elbows and foreheads.

It was only when I got to the Tahitian land that I was to learn of the common misconception that the hula dancers with the grass skirts and the fast snaking hips were not Hawaiian. Firstly there were no grass skirts at all, only perhaps reeds, bamboo or long leaves of trees and plants like the coconut or Mango tree. Secondly in Hawaiian culture the Hula was originally a very mystical and revered dance performened only by the most important of male priests of witchdoctors, the women not really dancing until it became more for entertainment many centuries later. And thirdly that the fast snaking hip dance was Tahitian, a group of islands many thousands of miles away, iwith the Hawaiian Hula being instead a slow and controlled movements of their hands, arms and legs as they used their bodies to show visual representations of important concepts in the retelling of a story.

Around 4pm we were all very glad that the rain had stopped as it was time for the daily canoe pageant where each of the island groups put on a dance for us as they twisted and punted their way down a main canal. It was during this show that I took most of my video clips and was amazed that by the end of the day I had used up all of the 4GB memory card in my camera, such was the wonder and entertainment value of the show.

However during our little tour I got chatting to a couple of middle aged women, one Mexican and the other Russian, and the Russian lady who had came before was more than a little dissappointed as this was her second time here, the first being a few years ago and she said that during that visit the shows and displays were all longer and with many more performers, further evidence of the damages and continuing effects that the economic crisis is having on everything, even here on Hawaiian #1 paid attraction.

After the canoe pageant we made our way to the dinner hall, where we were able to get our huge plates filled with the buffet and watch a few more dancers, and the only thing that spoiled it for me was that all the cakes and deserts available were heavily based on coconut and thus I couldn't have any.

Finally around 7pm we sat down for the highlight of the day, which was the full scale dance show, featuring almost a hundred performers as they put on a visual show that matched anything I have seen advertised on broadway and each artist knew their cue and pulled everything off with a style and florish that was magical to watch. For a couple of hours, I along with the rest of the half packed audience were kept in rapt attention as each act outdid the last, which was no easy feat, but I think the one act that everyone wanted to see what the finale of the fire knive dancers.

Anyone who has seen jugglers and magic acts will have seen where the modern artists stole their ideas from, but here in their original setting with proper attire and stage they took on a truly magnificient aspect and when they added in the pratfalls and jokes just to lighten the mood I doubt there was a dry eye in the house. Again the only dissapointment was that despite the place being only half full the organisers seemed to try and fill the auditorium from the back forwards with the front 5 or 6 rows around the entire stage totally empty and yet there was not a single spare seat in the rear 7 or 8 rows.

Despite its few minor flaws, the day was hugely entertaining and being as interested in history as I am, and the fact that I have been to New Zealand and am just about to visit Fiji, I am so very glad that I chose to take this trip and although I suggest travelling up alone and getting their early I would hearily recommend it to everyone that plans to come to the Hawaii and spend more than a day on the island of O'ahu.

The bus driver was keen to get out early as the traffic got quite busy out of there after the show, so while everyone else on the bigger coaches was told to take their time we all rushed like mad fools to the mini-bus, only to be kept waiting by the three rather slow and rotund women who had decided to do a bit of souveneir shopping after the show instead of before and thus kept us behind many minutes.

Although the ride journey was over an hour long, our driver turned the lights off for the entire jouney and gave us nothing to see or do except doze, not the best thing at 9pm when you was just getting in the mood for a big night out on the town, making the most of the little time you had there, and is another reason for going solo rather than booking with a tour group.

Back at the hostel I switched on my laptop for a few minutes to check messages and while I was there I got chatting to the other guests and found out that the lady I was talking to was not only also from England but was sleeping on the opposite bunk to me in my dorm room. As the hostel owners chuck everyone out of the yard after 11pm, and there were not enough plug access points in the rooms to continue using our laptops I suggested that we went and go grab a bit to eat and chat instead as just trying to get to sleep despite not being tired, which she agreed to and so we took a bit of a stroll til we found a well lit diner and stayed there til around 2am shooting the breeze.

A full day in O'ahu, Hawaii, U.S.A.

Wow, what a day, what a day.

First off, I have to kick myself for not following my own advice and not putting my camera battery on charge the night before as I got the message of low battery about 10am in the morning and was paraoid all day that it was seconds away from totally dying on me and not taking any photos. As it was it took another 30, but I was picking my shots, setting it up and then only switching my camera on at the last second before snapping away and then switching it off again as soon as possible.

I was due to be picked up from the hotel along the road at 8:25am, so I had plenty of time to go along to the end of the road and have a quick breakfast, which was tasty but the waiters were too helpful and refilled my tea with fresh coffee before I could stop them, thus the tip I left was less than the 15% expected as after that he walked away before I could correct his error and thus lost half my drink.

The directions I had been given to pick up the bus were a little bit off and I ended up waiting at one end of the hotel while the bus was waiting at the other end of the hotel, although on my part I was also told that it would be a big luxury coach and it ended up being a tiny mini bus that seated no more than twenty people.

When we made our first stop and switched to the other mini-bus it was no bigger than the first but the driver and guide called Rongo, was a very friendly local who knew everything there was to know about everything and was able to keep up a monologue from 9am right through to 6pm when we got back to the bus.

He was all smiles, a dark tan rather than dark skin, and had a bit of a weird lisping accent that meant whenever he said "to day", "to do" or "to the" it always sounded like "titty", no matter how many times I tried to catch it, it always sounded the same.

His information ran from just about everything to do with the islands, the people, the history, world war II, food, culture and everything in between and it would take me a week to write up everything he told me as it was always short, informative and never on the same subject twice. I am not 100% sure of all his facts, but this is what he told me.

Honolulu is not actually on the Island of Hawaii at all, and they pronouce it very different to what you hear in most movies, sounding each vowel seperately with audible pauses between each letter.

Some of the highlights of his chat was that the bird of paradise is actually a flower, from the banana family and is so called because of its wild and vibrant coloured flower.

The pineapple is not actuall a fruit at all, instead it is a collection of fused berries growing from the stalk and each plant has up to three of these clumps rippen at once per season.

Over 90% of the vegetation is not native to the island, most brough originally by the Polynesian settlers from Fiji, Samoa, Patagonia and other nearby island, and they found it Hawaii after following short distance migrating birds.

The population of O'ahu is around 900,000 people, and almost all of them live in the southern half of the island, the north having only one main town, a leftover from the islands early whaling history days.

The Islands originally started up serious diplomatic links with with mainland America only so that it did not have to pay extortive taxes when trading with California, and it was only many years later that it became an official state.

The waves are biggest in the south of the island during the summer, in the north during the winter and major surfing contests will only be held if the wave crests are over 25 feet tall on the main beaches, although anything above 3 feet is technically surfable ( its just not dangerous or exciting enough to watch ).

Every beach on the island of O'ahu is fully public and no hotel chain, resort, mall or restaurant has any claim to the any beaches, with the same restriction to roads which lead everywhere over the Island. This means that anyone can drive just about anywhere and go to any beach ( except of course for the small military bases that are still in use today, and with the level of terrorist activities in the world they are still strict with who let onto and off their bases ).

Almost all of the Island was covered with thousands of sugar plantations before they became not cost efficient, so most were replaced with pineapple farms, many of which are still evident today, the biggest being the Dole plantation in the middle of the island, which also houses the officially recognised worlds largest maze.

The Hawaiian islands are the most remote islands in the world, being made not from an uprising of continental shelf but from a hot spot area of volcanic activity in the middle of the oceas, miles away from any plate boundaries and as such is one of the newest land masses on the planet, and this probably also explains why there were no original people evolving and originating from the island, not until it was found by travelling Polynesians.

The main island of Hawaii, locally called the big island, is also the site of the worlds most active volcano.

For the tour of the Island we set off from the hotel district in Waikiki and in a large loop toured the south east coast, all along the east coast and across the north coast to the centre before cutting straight down through the middle of the island, ignoring most of the uninhabited north and far west side of the Island.

Rongo, our guide, not only liked to talk ( a lot ) but he also liked to stop off and let us take photos of the beaches right along the coast and although I never once heard anyone actually ask to stop at any of them, we must have paused more than a dozen times so that he could give us chances to take our "national geographic" shots as it were.

I would have been happier if my camera battery was more full, as without it I did not feel confident that I could leave it switched on long enough to set up shots of have many taken of me, instead I shot off only a few when I saw something that realy caught my eye more than most.

Just before we were planned to stop for lunch we passed by and made a stop at a fabulous replica Japanese Temple just near the east coast and its bright red colours, authentic ( if a tiny but more basic than I was expecting ) designs including wood carvings, a great big buddha statue and a clensing bell with rope held bong that you were allowed to chime.

Most of the people of the bus stopped for photos on the very photogenic bridge leading up to it, which was a pain as I really wanted to take a photo of the whole place without too many tourists in the foreground, but soon enough they went off to ring the bell.

I am not sure if any of them actually stopped to read the signs, but you were not just meant to bang the bell and walk off but instead make a silent prayer and then offer a donatoin to buddha and his followers before you were clensed, but all of them just wanted to ring it and have their photo taken.

Just before I took my turn, being last by choice, this couple of middle aged American guys tried to big themselves up by ringing it as loud as they could, but I could tell by their stance that they had no idea of how, which was amusing in itself and although their chime was loud it was not defening. After their attempt, and failure to pray or donate, I could not help myself giving it a much louder and clearer ring than they did and even as they walked away I could hear them mutter dark curses to each other, totally against the whole nature of the clensing bell.


I was a bit surprised when we stopped to have dinner about half way through the day, surprised as we were not given free meals as I was had thought, but rather a US $2 discount voucher for the buffet if we chose it, but nothing else if not.

Up in the north we pretty much just drove around and made one or two stops for toilet breaks, and we learned that the locals have chosen not to include sidewalks for the roads in the only city in the north and also that they are not allowed to build anything with more than two levels there, as they are trying to discourage too many tourists or developers from taking an interest and destroying any more of the wildlife and nature than they already have.

By the time we were leaving out last beach only about three of us even bothered to get out of the bus to walk down to the coast for yet another photo opportunity, which was why I decided to take the opportunity of this virgin beach and using an bit of flotsome that I found I wrote out my name in the sand and smiled happily as I walked back to the bus, knowing that the sign would last a few hours before the tide washed it away.

After the beach we loved down to the inner part of the Island as we drove down from north to south, and midway we stopped off and spent an hour here in the Dole Plantation. I was keen to come here and run around the worlds largest maze, not to mention riding the train that I had seen on the brochure and was more than a bit miffed when Rongo told me that these two are no longer part of the inclusive tour package and instead he wanted to walk us round the plantatoin for an hour talking about Pineapples.

This was very much not on my agenda, so I made my exit early enough to still have an attempt at the maze and agreed to meet them back at the bus before it was due to leave. Over 3 miles of natural maze, all built with walls made of live pineapple trees was great, but instead of just having to get in or out, it was like a treasure hunt as you had to find little metal stations where you could then use the stensil to mark your maze card, collect all 8 before finally heading off towards the exit.

There is a map if you want it, but by accepting one you are forbidden from getting your time card marked and of course you are not meant to run or cut corners either, but I am sure you can if you want. I had a lot of fun and found 4 of the 8, but time prevented it and I personally feel that large families should be banned, as often the way would be narrow and I ended up having to wait for slow moving adults and OAP's in bottlenecks more than a few occasions.

The other thing that surprised me was the the other seekers were not very friendly or helpful, often allowing me to go past them to dead ends without even a hint that I was wasting my time or that I should just turn back and try another route.

With its record of about 14 minutes safe from my attempts, after almost the full hour I came back and had barely enough time to turn another 1 cent coin into a smiling pineapple person before then jumping back on the bus.

There was only one more stop before we were back in Waikiki and it was nice to get off the bus, collect my thoughts and tell my brain that it could stop trying to take in rambling monologue, which was a relief and then I walked back to my hostel.

After updating my blog and scanning in the photos I took myself off for a walk around the place, found a nice place for a fabulous lomi lomi massage, that felt great but was almost identical to many of the other oil massages I have had in my life ... is there meant to be a difference, I am not sure ) and then after stopping for a bite to eat went back and ignoring the noise from outside settled in for an early nights sleep ( around 10:50pm ).

As we were only given fifteen minutes at the temple ( I would have much preferred to spend an hour and miss some of the "extra" beach stops that Rongo had added for us on our behalf ) and so I could not see more, but the place also had live fish swimming around that were so huge it was nice just to watch them for a few minutes.

My own personal souveneir was a coin reshaping / engraving machine that for 50 cents would allow you to turn a normal 1 cent copper coin into a stretched and flattened plate with one of four images engraved onto it. I chose an image identical to the temple itself and after giving the machine handle a few cranks got my shiny coin.

More photos of O'ahu, Hawaii, U.S.A.