Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Honolulu, Oahu Island - Hawaii
Round The World Trip Journal

(10th - 17th August) Oahu, Hawaii - Honolulu
Honolulu, the main city, is a spaghetti junction of highways and freeways. There is so much traffic here and it is a huge sprawling urbanization on the leeward side of the island, with the beaches of Waikiki at its centre. The high rise hotels are densely packed into an area of only 1 square mile, so it’s very contained. We actually really enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Waikiki. Although some of the beaches are crammed it is possible to find quieter beaches if you walk out a little farther. We walked the entire length and back in 4 hours. There are so many surfers out here and if you look at the photo with lots of surfers out you’ll also see a surfing outrigger canoe! The photo of the circular volcanic crater was taken as we flew away from the island – this is the Diamond Head crater. It took us half an hour and a bucketful of sweat to climb the 0.8 miles to the top but wow, was it ever worth it! The photo of Mike stood in front of the city of Honolulu shows just one small part of the 360 degree panorama we were greeted with. We spent an hour trying to take everything in (and to let Jo’s Elvis legs recover!). On another day, we drove out to the back of the city and up into the hills to do the Tantalus Drive loop road which takes you to a great lookout with views down over the city (see photo of Jo in red skirt with Diamond Head crater above her head – we are now looking at Honolulu from the opposite direction to the photo with Mike in it!). Just along the coast from Honolulu is the bay of Pearl Harbor which is still an active American military base. It has three main tourist attractions: USS Bowfin, USS Arizona Memorial and USS Missouri. We first went onto the submarine USS Bowfin and did a self-guided tour – see photos of Mike stood in front of it and of Jo (complete with headphones and audio guide) ready to climb through a hatch. This sub was launched the year after the Pearl Harbor bombings and was known as the Pearl Harbor avenger. Next we went to a theatre and saw a 20 minute film about the infamous Japanese attack on the harbour on 7th December 1941. They completely caught the Americans by surprise and claimed over 2,400 lives by sinking or damaging 21 vessels. The sinking of the USS Arizona, however, caused the most deaths: 1,177. We boarded a boat and were taken across to the memorial which floats over the sunken ship which you can see just below the surface of the water and it still has the dead men and all its fuel inside – very creepy looking down on it but a very moving place. A bus next took us over to the USS Missouri battleship – otherwise known as “Big Mo”. If you look at the photo looking down along the big guns, you can see the USS Arizona Memorial just ahead (a white floating pontoon with a curved roof). It is very fitting that the decommissioned ship is permanently sited here, next to the ships whose sinking caused America to enter World War II, because it was on the decks of the Big Mo that the Japanese signed the surrender agreement to mark the end of the war. She was launched in 1944 and was the last battleship ever built. She was refurbished with Tomahawk missiles in the mid 80’s and fired the first shots in Operation Desert Storm. But most importantly of all, Jo thought she recognized the big guns, so later she checked on the internet and found out that this was indeed the ship on which Cher recorded her video for “If I Could Turn Back Time” – you know the one – she’s wearing the prototype Borat mankini and not a lot else and sat on the big guns?! How exciting but unfortunately we couldn't get to them for Jo to reproduce the famous shot - and she had her mankini with her too!