Travelbloggin': Hawaii (Preamble)

That's right: It's time for another edition of Travelbloggin'!

In our last episode, Your Humble Narrator hit up Peru for some crazy fun and adventure in the Andes. (See the December 2005 archives for a recap of that trip) This time, it was off to Hawaii, partly for a little R&R, but mostly for some really cool activities, which we'll get to in great detail soon.

But lets kick it off with some overall impressions of Hawaii. I'm not going to dwell too long on the obvious here, but it needs at least a mention that Hawaii is gorgeous. The picture to your left is Hanauma Bay, which is a beach about 30 minutes away from Waikiki by bus. From as far up as this photo was taken, you can totally see how clear the water is and even see all the coral reefs underneath. I love oceans. This is an awesome place for snorkeling, which is what most people are doing out there. And there are indeed a lot of people.

Actually, our trip to Hanauma Bay was a bit of an accident, since we were trying to get to the Halona Blowhole, but we got off the bus a stop too soon. SCE said something about wanting to see nature being weird. We did end up getting there, eventually, which was right beside this little bay where more people were swimming. We found the blowhole, only it wasn't doing anything particularily interesting when we got there. But the bay is somewhat of a tourist attraction now, since it appeared in the classic movie From Here To Eternity. Anyway, this is where I learned my first lesson of Hawaii: always bring something to swim in. Even if you're not planning to.

I also found that it's hard not to ignore how prevalent the tourism industry is. That may have been somewhat attributed to where we were staying (Waikiki on Oahu, Kona on the Big Island, and near Lahaina on Maui) but it seemed that all the "locals" I met when I was there were mostly mainlanders (Minnesota, Wisconsin etc.) and it seemed like everybody else was just on vacation (or honeymooning on Maui). So I didn't really have any sort of cultural revelations about the place. And it's really expensive to be there. But all that aside, there's still a lot of cool stuff to do if you seek it out. So, the next posts in this Travelbloggin' series are going to be focused on the fun stuff we did. Oh, and the picture on the left is from the park just across the street from our hotel, facing the beach. Pretty sweet.