2019-05-03: Sun, Rain, and Traffic

We flew in to Honolulu late last night. We left Calgary at 3:30pm but had to connect through Vancouver. We landed in Honolulu at about 9:30pm which was 1:30pm Calgary time. It was another hour by the time we grabbed our bags, picked up the rental car, and arrived at the hotel. We booked a room at Ohana Waikiki East by Outrigger.

We woke up early as we are not fully adjusted to the four hour time difference yet. Amanda was awake at 4:30am. Michael wan’t too far behind her. We managed to stay in bed until about 7:00am before getting ready for the day. Our plan for the day was to take a drive around the island of Oahu.

First, we had to grab some supplies. We hopped in the car and drove to Wal-Mart. We then continued on and found a place to have breakfast. We went to The Original Pancake House. The decor was dark and old, but the food was quite tasty and there was a lot of it! Amanda and Michael had the Hawaiian pancakes, Patrick had pecan pancakes, and Darrell had macadamia nut pancakes.

After filling our bellies, we hit the road. Our first stop was Diamondhead Crater. We should have done a little more research on Diamondhead. We paid the $5 park entry fee and entered the crater. There isn’t a lot to do in the crater unless you want to take the 2 hour hike up to the summit. It looked like an amazing view from there, but having only 2 days to do our sightseeing we decided not to spend the time on the hike this visit. We went back to the car and continued on.

Our next stop was Hanauma Bay. Unfortunately, the parking lot was full so the road to the bay was closed. We continued a little further down the road and came across the Halona Blowhole Lookout. We watched the blowhole for a few minutes and admired the view. You could see a beach just down the road and Patrick was dying to visit a beach. We drove the short distance to Sandy beach and let the kids play in the sand and get their feet wet. They hadn’t changed into their bathing suits for this stop, so getting their feet wet soon became drenched from head to toe of course. On top of that, we forgot to grab the beach towels from the room so had nothing to dry the kids off with. They changed into their dry bathing suits when we got back to the car.

We continued our coastal tour and before long ran into some rain. The rain continued for the majority of the afternoon. We stopped at Tropical Farms Macadamia Nuts farm and sampled some of their products. They had a bunch of chickens roaming around that Michael found fascinating. Next we stopped at a shrimp truck to grab a bite to eat. The shrimp trucks are quite a bit more expensive than we were expecting. $15 for six shrimp, some rice, and some salad. We enjoyed the shrimp and Michael found more chickens to stalk. After the snack we made our way to the Polynesian Cultural Center where they have exhibits explaining the history of the different Polynesian cultures such as Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and a few others. They normally have various activities running throughout the large outdoor exhibits but many of them had been cancelled or postponed due to the rain. This was not mentioned when we paid the rather large entrance fee of course. At this point on the island, the rain poured down several times during our stay. We forgot our rain gear in the hotel so got absolutely drenched. We were rather disappointed with the experience due to the rain. We believe it would have been a much different experience if the weather had been nice.

We were supposed to meet one of our Scouting buddies at 5:30pm. He was in Honolulu for work. It was approaching 4:00pm so we decided we should make our way back to Honolulu. Darrell chose to take the scenic route which was a mistake. While we should have had plenty of time to get back to our hotel for 5:30, it was after 6:00 before we arrived. The traffic was HORRIBLE. There a few places where we hardly moved for a couple of miles. There were a couple of cruise ships docked in Honolulu which didn’t help matters. Getting through downtown Honolulu took about an hour. We finally made it back to the hotel where our buddy was waiting for us. We had a chat with him while the kids swam in the hotel pool for about an hour before he had to head to the airport for his journey back to Calgary.

After our visit, we got the kids cleaned up quickly and headed out to find some dinner. The streets along Waikiki were amazingly busy. It reminded us of the Las Vegas strip. There were people everywhere. Most of the restaurants had a 45 to 60 minute wait to get in. We finally found a food market that wasn’t too busy and ordered some dinner. By this time it was 8:00 so the kids were pretty hangry. Three of us had burgers while Michael elected to have some pizza. After dinner we made our way back to hotel and called it a night. Tomorrow we’re off to see Pearl Harbor!