Reflections of My Travel

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Another bright and early flight morning. This was our fourth flight to Oahu and we’re finally sticking around to see some of the island. Once we got our car, we headed straight up to the North Shore. It was very pretty and the waves were large at some of the beaches. We stopped for a while at Turtle Bay and watched the surfers there. We continued around the coast, stopping occasionally to watch the water and finally made our way down to Waikiki to check into our hotel. After troubleshooting some problems encountered while testing our internet connection, we walked down to Waikiki Beach. Let me begin by saying that I don’t really enjoy cities. At least not big cities with nothing but one-way streets and traffic and huge buildings. That’s all waikiki is. In no way is it Hawaii. I feel sorry for all the people who come to Hawaii and all they see is Waikiki. It’s basically a scaled-down Atlanta with a beach. And the beach itself is not a great one. It was small beach with huge crowds. Finding room to put a towel down would be a chore. I’m not saying that it’s not worth staying, but I certainly would not recommend centering a vacation around it. There are much prettier towns and much prettier beaches to visit on the four islands we’ve seen. Alright, enough preaching for now. Anyhow, we walked down to the beach and walked around a bit. We caught a little bit of a hula demonstration kind of show which was neat. Then we walked down to where they were having Sunset on the Beach. This is where they set up a huge movie screen right on the beach and play a movie on weekends. There were food booths and all that jazz too. We found a table at the pier and sat and watched about half of Ghostbusters before deciding that it was past our bedtime. Work comes early. Not as early as the last two weeks, but still early.

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This morning we got to sleep in until 0300 since time changed back home but not here. It was nice to be able to get that extra hour of sleep but having to work until 1200 cut into my after-work, pre-play nap time. After working, we got our stuff together and headed for Hanauma Bay to snorkel. I was a little bit worried that it was going to be a disappointing tourist trap after paying and having to wait to watch a safety video before being allowed down to the bay. I was pleased to be wrong. The bay was beautiful. The snorkeling was terrific. It was a little shallow over the coral in places but still manageable and since it was so shallow, fish viewing was excellent. The waves were pretty mild. The only problem was that there was no sun out (a little rainy) so after about an hour and a half we had to get out and try to warm up a little because I had lost all feeling in my right thumb and pinky and left thumb. It was very painful and then there was just no feeling at all. Scary. When we got out, I was told my lips were quite blue. We got out and walked around (in the cold wind with no sun) for a half hour or so until I was able to get the feeling back. We then went in for another hour and a half or so (yes, the problem did repeat). When we got out again, they were closing the bay and calling for everyone to make their way out. On the way out, we finally saw some mongoose that were not trying to run and hide. We stopped to grab something to eat and thawed out while watching trick-or-treaters make their way around the shopping center.

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Today was more or less a rest day. After work we napped a bit and then we walked around town and went down to Waikiki Beach for a bit. I managed to find two inches of beach where I could lay my towel down and lay in the sun for a few minutes. I hoped to try to get a little color on the front of me to even out with the lots of color on the back of me. I didn’t succeed very much. And I’ve still got the wonderful farmer’s tan sleeves from our rafting trip over Memorial Day weekend. I’ve determined I’m going to have those sleeves forever. Randal played in the waves a bit with his boogie board and gave his board to some kid when he was done. He layed with me for a few minutes but he’s not very good at being still for long so we soon got up and started walking around again. We got great seats for the little beach-front hula show. It was a terrific show. I think they did a great job and greatly appreciated that they do these free shows every night. It’s a wonderful thing for tourists to do. As we were leaving the beach, we managed to run into a very large Quizno’s cup who was kindly handing out coupons for free sandwhiches so that answered the “what’s for dinner” question. Gotta love it when that happens.