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

Kailua, Oahu Island - Hawaii
Round The World Trip Journal

(10th - 17th August) Oahu, Hawaii - Kailua
What a sad day when we had to leave Maui – it had become like home to us and we’d settled into a nice routine, but the weather was changing and Mike’s windsurfing was being affected so that helped to make it easier to move on. We only had a short 30 minute flight to our next destination - the neighbouring island of Oahu. This was a bit of a culture shock to us after spending over 2 months on small, quiet islands as this is the most populated island in the Hawaiian chain. We could see the high rises of the hotels at Waikiki clearly from the air as we flew in. Fortunately, Mike had previously spent 5 weeks on Oahu, so he knew to book into an apartment on the opposite coast to Honolulu, across the mountains on the Windward side in a town called Kailua. This has one of the best beaches on the island – a 2.5 mile long sweeping, palm fringed bay with offshore islands and the Ko’olau mountain range as a backdrop. There is windsurfing, kite surfing and surfing in the bay. Luckily, we had access to the northern end of the beach within a 5 minute walk of our new home. There are 3 highways that cross the mountains from west to east but our favourite had to be the H3 freeway. It’s rated as the next best thing to taking a helicopter flight along the mountain range as it gives incredible views of the lush green fluted mountain sides from its elevated position high above the ground. We also stopped at a lookout on another of the highways – the Pali Highway – and were almost blown off our feet, quite literally, from the strong wind funneled between the mountains and also metaphorically by the awesome views down over Kaneohe Bay and along the mountains.