Hawaii - Day 2
Apparently all we do is exercise now so we're up early again but for a hike this time. We strap up and scoff an iced coffee and banana and head for the Wa'ahila Ridge Trail to climb Mount Olympus. It's about a 15 minute drive away which takes us up through suburbia. We park and hit the trail which will take us up Mount Olympus.
It's supposed to be an 8km round-trip, fairly steep with some scrabbling up of rocks. The path starts off wide and smooth enough, reddish dirt surrounded by pine trees. Very forest like, Courts is frothing. It quickly becomes steep before we're descending again. It's a bit of up and down but it's definitely steep and definitely scrabbly. A bit of bum rushing and near misses of tree roots. We don't see anyone else on the trail and there were no other cars in the carpark when we arrived.
We get to the city view lookout and have a rest to refuel. Apparently the pizza and fish chips we had last night wasn't the best fuel for a hike as we're both feeling a little woozy. We decide we don't need to go the whole hog, We've got washing and other things to do today. It still ends up being a tough 1.5 hour hike. We make it back to the car and there's a few more cars now. We drive back down through suburbia and admire the views of Waikiki.
We head back to our accommodation to shower and pickup our washing. We drop it off at the laundry and then go and find some breakfast while we wait for cycle to finish. We head to Cafe Kaila a few minutes down the road. Standard American and Hawaiian brekky fair. Jeff goes a wrap and Courts gets french toast with turkey bacon and eggs. It's good, although Jeff isn't thrilled with the amount of potatoes in the wrap. We go and collect our washing and hang it haphazardly out the back of our room in the sun. The days are so hot and sunny we have no doubt it will be dry by the time we get back this evening.
It's back in the car and off to the Pearl Harbour memorial. There's a few different exhibits here, some free and some paid (such as the aviation museum). We just want to know more about the Pearl Harbour attack and so we head for that museum. There's two rooms and it goes through pre, during and post the attack on Pearl Harbour. There's also a short film and we get a good understanding of what went down. There is a short boat ride you can do to the memorial which is on the water where one of the battleships (the Arizona) was sunk and the hull still remains. After walking through the hottest museum we've ever been in we decide to skip the boat ride in the baking sun. We've learnt enough and head back to the air-conditioned comfort of our car.
We stop for a refuel before dropping the hire car back. Both congratulating each other on getting it back in one piece. No easy feat when you're not used to driving on the RHS!
Back on foot it's finally time for a poke bowl. We both choose an ahi (tuna) one and dig in. Very fresh, very yum. Next we're enticed across the road for a $5 happy hour mai tai. When in Hawaii... It's OK but we only stay for one.
We grab our Starbucks souvenir mug and head to Duke's on the beach (everything is named Duke's around here after the famous surfer Duke Kahanamoku). We're about to get a seat outside near the beach this time (after a 20 minute wait at the bar inside) and we kick back with a couple of drinks and watch the sunset. It is lovely.
We decide to go out with a bang and have one more poke bowl. We just want something small though, so we get the small size each at a place where you can build your own bowl. Well, of course they ended up being massive, but very delicious.
The sun and sand has been great but we're beat and looking forward to a travel day tomorrow and an excuse to chill out. We feel like we've got a pretty good idea of what Waikiki is about. It would be great to see what the vibe on the other islands is like, but we're glad we got to experience the Hawaiian beach life, even if only for a few days. Aloha!
