Hawaii

Did you know it is 4230 miles from Manhattan, Illinois to Honolulu, Hawaii? Did you know that about 2 people die per year from parasailing accidents, and every two years someone dies from a shark attack? That means you are about 4x more likely to die parasailing than from a shark attack. Did you know the #1 cause of death for a tourist in Hawaii is drowning? Here are the highlights of my 7-month late honeymoon trip to Hawaii.

This was my second trip to Waikiki, the other being in 2005. The 1st thing I noticed as I exited the plane on a November day on Oahu was the warmth and humidity. The 2nd thing I noticed as my taxi neared the Moana Surfrider Hotel was all the shopping and high-end retail stores along Kalakaua Ave, the main road along the beach in Waikiki. Why would anyone come to a tropical paradise and want to shop?

With a 4-hour time difference from home, we joined all the mainlanders who woke up between 3-5 am to walk the beach before sunrise. I found the sand to be cool to the touch. Where the waves were lapping onto the beach it was warm on my bare feet. This led to the conclusion that the ocean water was warmer than the sand cooled by the 71-degree overnight temps. I also found it interesting that about every 100 feet someone was sleeping on the beach; I could only assume all night long. Here are other things I learned.

Most of the tourist attractions are overcrowded and need reservations. This requires you to use your phone, which I wanted to leave in my pocket so I could enjoy my surroundings. A 4-hour bus tour to Pearl Harbor only allowed enough time to see the Arizona Memorial and read the displays about the “day of infamy” and tour the submarine Bowfin. We did not have time to visit the USS Missouri and other Ford Island sites.

Renting a bike was $75 each for the day and a moped that fit two was only $125. That means we spent two days on a moped cheating death as tourists. We circled Diamondhead and the Iolani Palace multiple times. We went to the east side of the island to visit many beaches and the famous blowhole. This was a great way to learn the traffic grid system of Waikiki for our later adventures while walking. The moped made it easy to visit the striking Punchbowl Cemetery, boat piers, Diamondhead lighthouse, Pali Highway, Ali Wai Canal, and many points of interest with rainforests, waterfalls, banyan and monkeypod trees.

I discovered that paddling a surfboard is not easy after shoulder surgery. I found that I loved my first time snorkeling. It was as much fun scanning the ocean floor and coral as seeing the turtles and fish in Turtle Canyon. On this adventure I watched the catamaran captain skillfully park his bow right on top of one of his crew in the water who hooked several lines to moor the boat. This is when I learned they have a permanent mooring in the seabed to dock so the boats do not have to drop anchors on the fragile ocean floor below.

Parasailing was fun; it would have been more fun had I not read on the internet about how it is loosely regulated and fraught with accidents. Knowing the risks, my overactive brain could not quit wondering: Is that hook secure? How high are we? Could we survive the water’s impact if the supports failed? How old is the line pulling us? How far would we travel if it broke? Would I be able to unhook us if we ditched in the water? At one point I counted the height of the hotel on the beach to be 22 floors and extrapolated that since I could not see the roof, we had to be less than 250’ high. I should have enjoyed the thrill and not pondered the what-ifs.

There were options for remote hiking and waterfall tours, but they were booked days in advance. On our 4th day we rented a moped for the second time to head up the Pali Highway into the rainforest to find the Judd Trail and the Nu’uanu Stream. An internet search revealed the trail was a 1-mile scenic hike used by locals. At some point we took a lesser traveled “fork in the trail” and were lost for about 3 hours in the rainforest. This was a blessing in disguise; we found dense bamboo forests and solitude with nature. The rain did not deter the hike. When we rested our bones with some juicy burgers after 5 grueling hours of hiking, we used our phone to secure a 4 pm reservation to hike the extinct volcano crater of Diamondhead. We enjoyed the strenuous hike to the summit with the view of the city despite the fatigue we had beset on ourselves that day.

There is a quote about not mixing business with pleasure. However, when we returned to our hotel at 5 that night after traversing 35,000 steps, I finally succumbed to the patio chairs facing the ocean and did what I had seen many other tourists doing. I pulled out my phone and used it and ignored the beautiful surroundings around me. I did some farm business while on a beautiful beach with my wife at my side in front of the sunset. My body was sore and tired, but my mind was active. I had to complete an order for corn and soybean seed so I could pay the bill when I returned on December 7th. A prepay discount was about to expire, and I wanted to save some money so I could enjoy more fun vacations in the future.

Other notes include how delicious guava juice is. We never saw an out of state license plate, ha-ha, and saw only one pickup truck. I watched a 23-minute parade of motorcycles for the Toys-for-Tots campaign. I had no idea that many motorcycles existed on an island of only 1 million people. Gas was $5/gallon, and the bus driver to Pearl Harbor spoke about 10 dollars per gallon milk. However, I did see in a store that they sold a gallon of water for $5.79. That in my mind makes milk seem like a bargain if they can get that much for water.

We arrived home wide awake at 1 am, 9 pm Hawaii time. The laundry from our trip was tossed into the washer. The next day we emptied the dryer, and it revealed I had truly vacationed and not worked for over a week. It was the first time in years that the lint trap was not full of hay or straw, instead it had sand in it. I take that as a sign of a good vacation from my daily farm life.