A few short hours after leaving LAX, we touched down on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. We had all been looking forward to a brief pit stop in this tropical island paradise, and since we were only going to be here for a few days, we decided to use the Hotels.com reward nights we had been accumulating over the last 9 months to book a decent resort hotel on the beach in Waikiki, right in the heart of the action. It would be a nice treat for us all to have a little bit of luxury after spending 6 weeks together in the cramped confines of that RV.
I had also used some of the Avios airline points we had been racking up to pay for a hire car, so we wouldn’t have to worry about taxis and Ubers while making our way around the island. It’s a much more enjoyable experience to grab your luggage and head straight for your own car, without the usual rigmarole of waiting in line with two tired kids, for an inevitably extortionate taxi ride to your hotel. While the valet safely stowed our car, and the bellboy took care of our luggage, we found our way to the room. Talk about a change of scenery! The room had three times the square footage of the van we had called home for the last 42 nights. AND a huge balcony overlooking the pool. AND a flushing toilet that didn’t involve me having to empty it every two days! What luxury. I was going to enjoy these next few days!
After settling in, we headed out to grab some food and take a look at Waikiki. This is the lively epicentre of Honolulu, and is a hotbed of activity day and night. You don’t stay in Waikiki for deserted tropical beaches or peace and quiet. But we weren’t after peace and quiet, and this looked perfect for a 3 day stopover. There was no shortage of food options lining the torch-lit streets, and we eventually opted for a delicious Poké bowl before heading home for a good night’s sleep before our first day of Hawaii fun.
What’s the first thing you think of when somebody mentions Hawaii? Grass skirts and flower garlands perhaps? Maybe volcanos and lush mountains? For me, it’s the image of people surfing perfect rolling waves, on huge wooden longboards, along endless sandy beaches. Hawaiians have been surfing for hundreds of years, it is an integral part of their culture. In fact, Captain Cook wrote about the Hawaiian passion for surfing extensively in his diaries. Today, Hawaii hosts some of the biggest international surfing contests in the world, and is home to many world class breaks such as the infamous Banzai Pipeline.
Hunter and Bam have been squeezing in surfing lessons everywhere we go this year, and we couldn’t very well let them come to Hawaii and not partake now, could we! There’s a million surf schools in Waikiki alone, so we found one a stone’s throw from the hotel and sauntered on down after breakfast to get the kids in the water. Now, Waikiki is actually home to some professional level surfing itself, especially around Diamond Head just to our East. Luckily there is also a perfect little learner wave right in front of our hotel, and that’s where the kids headed for their lesson. Banzai Pipeline it was not, but you’ll see the breaks of Diamond Head in the background of the pictures.
Normally I get in the water with them, and bob around (un)gracefully with a GoPro snapping a few pics while trying not to get in the way. This time though, the break was about a quarter mile off shore, with a few sneaky reefs hiding below the waves ready to scupper any unwary bobbers such as myself. I can swim just fine, but treading water and filming, for an hour, a quarter mile from land, above sharp rocks? Nah, I’ll leave that thanks. So we opted to pay the extra sixty bucks and have a GoPro expert follow the kids for an hour while we watched from the beach, squinting our eyes while we attempted to pick our two out of the crowd of distant specks on the horizon. Guess we should have bought them neon coloured rash vests!
When I dropped in to pay for the videos later on, the cameraman offered to edit the raw footage into usable stills and cropped videos for an extra $120. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY BUCKS?! Nah, you’re alright bud, I’ll do it myself over a cocktail by the pool thanks. I should be able to afford one now, after saving myself $120! So, that’s exactly what we did. While the kids made good use of the hotel pool, Kate and I enjoyed a cocktail poolside.
That evening we had arranged to catch up with a few more of Kate’s cousins who were lucky enough to call Hawaii their home. Well, they’re actually Kate’s mum’s cousin’s children (bear with me) – which I think makes them cousins once removed? Kate’s Mum (Kitty) seems to have cousins in many exotic locations around the world, which makes me wonder why on earth she chose to settle in dreary old England. I guess the unavoidable lure of fish’n’chips and constant drizzle was just too much to resist. Anyway, I digress. We met up with Bonnie, her 4 year old son Maddox, her Mum, and her brother Waymond in a restaurant where her retired Dad happened to be working. I thought the idea of retiring was to not work any more? But, anyway, it meant we got to hang out with the whole family, while Kate and Bonnie filled in the blanks from the last several decades since they last saw each other. This part seems hazy, but they think that last meeting was probably around 25 or so years ago in Pennsylvania on a family vacation. It didn’t feel like they hadn’t seen each other in a quarter of a century, it seemed comfortable and familiar. Sharing a meal and getting to know my cousins-once-removed-in-law (phew) while the kids played happily, once again made me feel like I should make more of an effort with my own extended family. These guys live 7000 miles apart. My cousins live an hour away! Maybe I will, when we finally rotate back to the real world – life’s too short, right.
We had to get an early night’s sleep that evening, the following morning saw me dragging the kids out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:30am. Why would I inflict such an ordeal on my nearest and dearest you might ask? Well, it turns out that dolphins are early risers, and if you are at all interested in the opportunity to share the wild blue ocean with some of these magnificent creatures, then you’ve gotta catch them early. Astonishingly we actually managed to be in the car by 6am, and on our way to Waianae for a truly bucket-list worthy adventure. The nest three hours were to be spent scouring the nearby ocean for any willing marine mammals who didn’t mind 20 random land-dwellers launching themselves into the water next to them. After our guides for the day had led us in a traditional and rousing chorus of a Hawaiian “Oli” chant to pray for plentiful dolphins, we headed out into the deep blue. And I really do mean deep blue here. It wasn’t long before we had jumped in for our first attempt with a pod of bottle nose dolphins the skipper spotted, and the first thing that really strikes you is the piercing blue colour of the water. I haven’t applied any filters to these pictures, that really is the colour of the water. It was quite simply astonishing. This first pod of dolphins proved fairly elusive, and we were heading back to the boat within five minutes, but to be honest I didn’t really care – I was too busy marvelling at the incredibly clear and warm 3000 feet of sapphire water below my flipper-clad feet.
Before long we had tracked down a second target, and we were once again invited to dive in and follow our guides towards a nearby pod of dolphins. Bam was lucky enough to get a front row seat as she was towed along by Tahani the Taylor Hawkins looking guide, lest she miss the action. Lo and behold, hovering gracefully in the water all around us were dozens of dolphins. These weren’t your average, everyday bottlenose variety that gave us the slip earlier, mind you. Oh no, these were Melon-headed whales. They look like dolphins, and were long thought to be dolphins, but are actually small toothed whales closely related to pilot whales. They are also very rarely encountered in the wild as they prefer very deep water, and mainly live in the waters around Hawaii and French Polynesia. So to swim no more than 15 metres away from a huge population of these scarce cetaceans was not only a magical and privileged experience, but also a very unique one.
We spent 15 minutes or so with the whales before they drifted away and we headed off to our next drop. This time we were snorkelling above a reef which was riddled with crevices and caves known to be a hotspot for another of this island’s impressive inhabitants, the endangered green turtle. We had been warned that, if we were to come across any of these gentle giants, we should give them some space as there was a five thousand dollar fine for touching them. That didn’t sound like a problem. IF we came across one, it surely wouldn’t come anywhere near us anyway. How wrong I was. Within a few minutes, a turtle appeared from a cave directly beneath me, and surfaced for air about 30 centimetres from my face. My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t believe my luck, and called everyone over in case it was the only one we saw. But it turned out there was no need, as there were turtles everywhere, and they weren’t shy. We were lucky enough to spend 45 minutes in the area, while dozens of turtles surfaced for air before swooping to the reef floor over and over again. To be honest, if you didn’t concentrate, you could be racking up those $5k fines left, right and centre. Several times I turned around only to be nose to nose with another turtle chilling out in the sunshine next to me. It was, quite probably, the most intense and incredible 45 minutes I have ever spent in the water. And for my kids to have experienced that at such a young age is what makes this trip really special.
Begrudgingly, we all climbed back aboard and made our way back to shore. The kids managed to grab a bit of shut-eye to make up for the early start, on the way to our next stop.
As you regular readers will know, I love a good historical military site, and I couldn’t drive straight past Pearl Harbour without calling in for a visit. We couldn’t really do this important site justice on such a short visit – you could easily spend all day here visiting the various museums and vessels. But unfortunately we only had a spare hour. So, we got in line to wait for the shuttle boat to visit the most important monument, the USS Arizona memorial in the harbour itself. This white monolith straddles the final resting place of the WW2 battleship which lays exactly where it sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th December 1941. This vessel was struck by four high altitude armour-piercing bombs, the last of which penetrated five decks and ignited the million pounds of gunpowder aboard resulting in a cataclysmic explosion. 1177 of the 1512 crew members were killed instantly, and still lie in the murky waters of the wreckage below. This figure amounted to half of the total amount of lives lost that day. Staring into the water at the wreckage lying mere feet below the surface is a truly somber and harrowing experience. The names of every poor soul lost aboard that day adorn a marble wall in the memorial building, as well as the names of the survivors who chose to have their remains interred with their fallen comrades upon their eventual deaths. As harrowing an experience as a visit to sites such as this might be, I believe it to be important nonetheless. It’s important to never forget, and for our children to learn from the mistakes of the past.
There was one more pit stop we had to make on our way back to the hotel. I couldn’t come to Hawaii without indulging in my passion for a good Aloha shirt, and there was a shop in Waikiki that was just too good to pass up. Bailey’s Antiques has been in business in Honolulu since 1980, and has the largest selection of Aloha shirts in the world with over 15,000 in stock. It is absolutely jam-packed with shirts, and the owner is perfectly happy to help you find the perfect shirt with her encyclopaedic knowledge of all things aloha. I ended up with a couple of awesome shirts, one of which was the same design worn by Tom Selleck in Magnum PI – nice touch!
It was time to squeeze in a few quick school lessons before a bit more pool time back at the hotel (as if the kids hadn’t spent enough time in the water), and Bonnie and Maddox popped over for an evening swim before we all headed out for some dinner in the local food court. It was very sweet watching Bam and little Maddox strolling hand-in-hand – hopefully they won’t wait another 25 years to catch up again.
For our final day on Oahu, we had booked a slot to visit Hanauma Bay. This protected reef is incredibly hard to visit due to the restricted amounts of visitors allowed to attend every day. The amount of tourism the bay used to be subjected to was irreversibly damaging the reef. The sheer volume of sunscreen deposited in the waters every day from thousands of visitors was having a deadly effect on the coral. COVID allowed the reef to recover, and resulted in record low amounts of chemicals being present in the water, so the new post-pandemic booking system strictly limits daily attendance to 1000 people, and only five days a week. The booking system allows visitors to book two days ahead, and opens for reservations at 7am. By 7:07am there are no tickets left. Luckily, on our second attempt, we managed to score a set of tickets for entry at 11:10am.
I’m glad we were persistent and managed to secure some tickets, because after you have negotiated the strict, military-like admittance procedure, AND watched the obligatory orientation video, AND walked down the steep entrance slope – then, you are finally greeted with a perfect horseshoe shaped bay of glorious azure water and coral reef. We spent the next three hours snorkelling the warm waters, marvelling at the huge array of multi-coloured fish contained therein. Unfortunately there were no more turtles to be seen on our visit as the tide was too low, but luckily we had scratched that itch the previous day. The kids played in the water, and lay on the sand. It was like any other day at the beach. Except there was also a fantastic underwater ecosystem to explore at your leisure. The kids were able to snorkel across the tops of the reef with me as well, and experience the giant rainbow coloured parrotfish and tiny spotted pufferfish for themselves – just like a real life Finding Nemo.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. They close the beach at Hanauma Bay at 3pm, and before we knew it we were being herded back to the car park, fortunately via the leg-saving shuttle transport. We met up with Bonnie, Waymond & co for one final family meal at the enormous Ala Moana mall in Waikiki that evening. One final chance for Kate to reconnect with long lost family, while Bam and Maddox held hands one last time, and Hunter chatted with Waymond about all things Lego. It had leant a really nice, homely feel to the trip. Bonnie’s mum had even plied Kate with bags of fresh fruit, just like elder relatives often do at Chinese family gatherings. It was just like a home away from home. Hopefully, one day they’ll come and visit us in sunny (!) Ferndown. Not exactly Hawaii though is it. In fact, scrap that, let’s just come back here instead. Did you read that, Bonnie – we’re coming back, brace yourselves!
Well, that was it. A flying visit, and over before we even knew it. Not only was that the end of our fleeting Hawaii visit, but that was the end of our nearly 2 months in America. We dropped the car off at the airport and boarded the plane for a new continent altogether. Next stop – Tokyo…