WorldTravelReynolds

Oahu is one of the largest islands in Hawaii and by far the most touristy. We are in the capital city of Honolulu for the next two days. Our only plan here is to watch the whales and then just enjoy the sunshine.

The nickname for Oahu is “The Gathering Place” and this leeward side of the island certainly is, lots of crowds, lots of sights to see, and pretty commercial.

Honolulu, which means “sheltered harbor” and apparently the Polynesians thought the same as it may have been settled as early as 2,000 years ago according to one source. It was made the capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1850 and continues on as the state capital today. In years past it was an island known for sugar and pineapple plantations and while the former are mostly gone, the ones that grow the golden, sweet iconic fruit still remain. There were plenty of touristy things to do that we have already enjoyed the last couple of visits here. Hawaii is very expensive and we didn’t see the need to visit again. One of those was the Dole Plantation. Our last trip here we learned how they grew the pineapple and had some samples. Not surprisingly it was so tasty!

We had also hiked the iconic Diamond Head Volcano and saw Pearl Harbor, especially the moving Arizona Memorial. These are all the things you come to Hawaii for aside from the beautiful sandy beaches and the wonderfully smelling Plumeria and the bird of paradise so popular on this island.

So, with all those touristy things we have done, we chose to watch the whales since it is breeding season here. We took a tour out not far from land and started seeing large humpback whale females with their babies and an escort. Apparently the females have an escort, not necessarily the baby daddy to keep the babies safe until they are old enough to travel to Alaska for feeding season. Learn something new every day!

Although they were plentiful, they were quite a distance away. We didn’t see any of them breach (jump out of the water) but many showed off their tails proudly.

Afterwards we walked about 7 miles around the city, mainly going to the largest mall around here. It’s the Ala Moana Center. Talking about huge! It has 350 stores, 3 stories and is 2.4 million square feet. We spent a few of those miles in here. If you’ve never been, it’s an outdoor mall and although extremely busy, it was beautiful. We finally found the store we were looking for. Target of all places. It was two stories itself and had an escalator just for the shopping carts. It was awesome.

After some retail therapy we walked back to the ship, passing by so many homeless people sleeping and camping on the sidewalks. Such a shame.

The evening gave us some more cultural entertainment by local Hawaiians. Some young girls did an amazing job in the historical and modern dances known to their country.

We enjoyed the air of Hawaii and now we are off to the Polynesian islands of Tahiti and Mo’orea in about 4 days.

Tomorrow we have a conference call with Royal Caribbean to talk about our questions we all have about our travel around Africa. There are many such as vaccines needed, visa required, etc. I’ll update once we have our final vote on February 26th.

May God bless you always!

Chuck & Lea Ann