In case you haven’t seen it yet, we wrapped up our time in the National Parks by writing a post covering our “best highlights” – check that out here if you want to see what we each thought in various categories.

After an early morning start in LA we flew the “short” trip between nearby US states to get to Hawaii – it only took 5hr30 on the plane here 🙂

We arrived in Hawaii at around 1pm local time, another 2 hours time difference to the UK so we are currently 10 hours behind everyone back home. We are staying on the island of Oahu for our first week here, the most popular and developed island in the Hawaii chain where Honolulu (the capital) is, and also famous places like Waikiki beach.

We are staying right near Waikiki actually in an Airbnb, so very centrally located and lots to do. It’s a big and busy city and it certainly makes a big change from the quiet and cold National Parks we’ve been travelling round during January. Loads of people around, plenty of bars, shops and restaurants and lots of people out surfing too. The weather is really warm (around 27 degrees most days), but there’s a nice breeze and it’s not too humid.

When we arrived, we checked in to our Airbnb and got settled and then went out for a drink and a bit of food just to get a feel for the area.

Day 1 trip to Kailua

Our first full day here was Thursday and we decided to head over to the East coast of the Island to an area called Kailua. We had to get an Uber there as we’ve decided to not have a rental car for our week here, as the traffic is really heavy and it’s super expensive to park anywhere downtown (like $50/night or more). There’s plenty of things walkable, there’s a decent bus system, or we can just get Ubers around so we figured it would save some effort and money overall. It’s nice not to have to drive everywhere too for a bit.

Anyway we went over to Kailua to rent a Kayak near one of the beaches and went out on to the ocean for a bit. We are kayaking novices really, it was good fun but hard work. You had to cart the kayak down to the beach yourself a fair distance, then drag it across the beach and sort it all out yourself so it was quite tiring even just doing that. Anyway we had a nice time out on the water for a bit, grabbed a bit of lunch and then went to do a nearby hike.

The hike was really good, it was called the ‘Pillbox trail’. A very steep and rocky climb up, but only a short distance overall.

It takes you up to a couple of old dis-used army lookout stations which you could climb on the roofs of, and even go down the ladders to get in to them. Amazing views from the top of the old dormant volcano that the trail ascends, so well worth the difficult climb to get there.

The above is a large panoramic pic, so you may need to click it to get a full view

After the hike we went to the nearby Lanikai beach for a bit of a wander down the sand and in the water. It was a bit quieter and calmer here than on the very busy Waikiki beach so that was really nice. You can see how blue and clear the sea is here, it’s really amazing.

We decided to head in to the local town of Kailua afterwards for a well earned pint at the ‘Maui Brewing Co’. They had a happy hour on, so before we knew it we’d decided to scrap going home to cook dinner (we needed to call at the supermarket on the way home as well) and just got a pizza and more drinks and stayed there for a while. They even had some live music on for a bit which was good.

I was going to include stuff about our second day in this post too, but it’s already pretty long so I will write that one separately. Look out for another update soon then!

Si