Oahu

When we think of Oahu, we tend to get hung up on the bustle and congestion of Honolulu and Waikiki. So we decided to leave that all behind and spend our two days on Oahu concentrating on the section east of Waikiki and the North Shore. We now have a much better appreciation for the beauty of that island.

I bet we could ask all of our friends what the first picture is and no one would come close. That’s the inside of the Diamond Head Crater. We expected something like what we saw on the Big Island—not so. Diamond Head is not a volcano. There are 2 on Oahu, both extinct. Diamond Head is a tuff cone, where water from the sea met the volcanic stuff coming from the top and it just exploded and formed a secondary crater. The outside of Diamond Head is shown in picture 2. Rick caught that image as we sailed into Honolulu at sunrise. By the way, Diamond Head was named by sailors who thought the calcite crystals found in the crater were diamonds.  Today you can hike to the top of the crater—next time.

The next 2 pictures were taken at Halona Bay, which is further east of Diamond Head. The first picture is Oahu’s Blow Hole. Again it erupts when water forces it’s way into a lava tube. We watched for some time and found we could not predict when it would blow—not just big waves, sometimes small…. The second picture is not the most beautiful beach on Oahu, but may be one of the most famous. It’s Eternity Beach, where the steamy kiss between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr occurred in From Here to Eternity. May need to watch that movie.

The 5^th picture is the view from the Nuuanu Pali overlook, highlighting the beautiful mountains on Oahu. The overlook is famous because here King Kamehameha I defeated the chief of Oahu, uniting all the Hawaiian Islands under one king. His method of victory was interesting: he pushed the other guys over the edge of the cliff, which is drop of several hundred feet.

Moving toward the North Shore, one sees little islands off Oahu’s east coast. The 6^th picture shows, probably, the most famous of these islands. It’s called Chinaman’s Hat and the picture was taken from Kualoa Beach Park. These little islands are now nature sanctuaries for birds and sea creatures and people are not allowed on them.

Reaching the top of the North Shore, we stopped for lunch at one of the many shrimp shacks.  As picture 7 shows, we had a great lunch! We had coconut shrimp and lemon-pepper shrimp, followed by shaved ice. The many shrimp shacks are here because the King Kamehameha Highway follows a string of shrimp ponds. Our “shack” harvested approximately 500 pounds of shrimp per day from their private pond. They use nets with appropriately-sized holes, so that the growing shrimp are not harvested with the larger ones.

The north shore has two famous surfing beaches: Sunset Beach and Bonzai Pipeline. Picture 8 is Sunset Beach. We were there on a pretty calm day, so there were few surfers.

Pictures 9 & 10 show green sea turtles. These were taken at Haleiwa Beach Park. In the afternoon, these turtles tend to come on shore at low tide or into the shallow water at high tide to sun themselves and take a nap. We were fortunate to spot these guys.

As we headed back to Honolulu, we stopped at the Dole Plantation to see what it was about. Bad idea! It ranks right in there with Gatlinburg and Stratford-on-Avon as some of the world’s great tourist traps! All-in-all, however, Oahu was beautiful.

The final picture is a special one. All on our ship were invited for cocktails on the USS Missouri, which is stationed in Pearl Harbor and can be toured. We were allowed to tour officers’ and crew’s quarters and enjoyed some 40’s-era entertainment. The USS Missouri is the battleship where the official unconditional surrender of the Japanese occurred. There’s a bronze circle on deck indicating where American and Japanese sat and signed the document. What we didn’t know was that the ship was attacked by a Kamakaze pilot shortly before the end of the war. The plane was shot several times, but the pilot still managed to clip the edge of the deck. Also unknown to us, this ship was still in use during Desert Storm, but was de-commissioned shortly after that. Some of the sailors on board, however, informed us that it was still ship-shape and could be re-commissioned if necessary. It was a great evening.

Kauai tomorrow….