THURSDAY 25TH – A VERY PHYSICAL DAY

We started today with the exploration of Diamond Head, a dormant volcano crater immediately to the north of Waikiki. It is deceptively large but, once you have made the 500 feet increase in altitude from the crater floor to the highest part of the rim, the view is spectacular. You get an excellent understanding of Waikiki geography – remarkably similar to the Gold Coast, but with a much better road and transport system.

From there we went to Makapuu Point and lighthouse, a little way north of Diamond Head on the east coast. The ascent is not as demanding as Diamond Head in that you follow what was originally built as the sealed access road to the lighthouse when it was manned – somewhat easier than the zig zag path and hundreds of steps necessary to get to the top of the crater rim.

From there we took advantage of the freeway system to get to the west coast where we found snorkelling paradise. The map simply talks about the beach villas at Ko Olina but that is an extraordinary understatement. There are a whole series of five star establishments built adjacent to the most picturesque little bays which are absolutely perfect for snorkelling. Each bay has public access between the five star establishments with a well manicured path linking the bays. We snorkelled in two of them.

If we were five star hotel people, we would definitely be staying there in preference to the very busy Waikiki glitter strip. It does need to be said however that, while the snorkelling conditions are perfect, there is relatively little marine life to be seen.

We returned our little car without incident this evening, having successfully driven on the right side of the road for the last two days.

Tomorrow we are off to the Big Island, Hawaii itself, for a volcano tour. One of the volcanoes has been a little mischievous of late and causing some concern with a lava flow so I wonder what we will see. We get home quite late tomorrow night and then fly out Saturday morning so there may be a delay in the posting of the final blog. We land in Sydney 10 hours later on Sunday evening.