Honolulu - Hawaii - A bit pricy but cool place to visit!

January 05, 2016

Honolulu - Hawaii - A bit pricy but cool place to visit!

We had a connection in Guam on our way to Hawaii. I was surprised as there was a line for US citizens and residents and another for other nationalities; well I learned that Guam is a USA territory. We in fact did immigration there which was pretty smooth compared to the mainland.

(Red dot - Guam. Purple dot - Honolulu)

After the connection, we finally arrived to Honolulu, Hawaii. The airport looks kinda old like from the 70's, with wood walls and a carpet in some places. We took a taxi to Waikiki beach to the Hyatt place hotel that we had reserved and paid with credit card points! I know pretty sweet!

Otherwise it would had been $350 dollars a night! Waikiki hotels are expensive! At least includes American breakfast buffet

The taxi charged $40 dollars + tip! We thought it was really expensive too! but then we realized that we had been living in Asia for the last 3 months, so everything it is just cheaper there! Welcome to the USA.

Waikiki beach is a great area to stay, as there are lot of things walking distance from there, like malls, nice restaurants,

Shops

nice beaches next to tons of hotels and beach bars

the aquarium at Diamond Head which also features a Luau show.

And while walking on the street you can easily spot the statue of "Duke Paoa" who was a full-blooded Hawaiian Olympic champion that introduced surfing to the western world . "Father of International Surfing" - I had no idea!

It was also David's birthday while in Honolulu, so I made a reservation at Ocean House Restaurant which has the best prime rib in the whole city! He was haaaappy!

Plus this place is by the beach so it was a great place to watch the sunset!

I also surprised him with this video - check it out!

https://youtu.be/lUYvGw09BGs

As you can tell from the video, we have been traveling around the world, and have learned to love the ocean and sea live, so I found online a great spot to snorkel about an hour away from Waikiki, so we took public bus and headed to "Hanauma Bay".

If you are ever there, just take the bus n.22 on Kalakaua Avenue, it only cost $2.50 per ride and drops you right at the entrance of the park. The entrance was like $7 dollars and you can rent snorkel gear at the bay.

The bay was created many millions years ago as it used to be a volcano. Then the ocean started rising and it overtime flooded the crater.

The place it's pretty amazing and because it's full of minerals from what used to be a crater, the corals grow there quickly and its full of fish and different creatures.

Just be careful because the current is kinda strong and the coral reef is really high, so when a wave passes you could suddenly drop and hit a rock or get into some coral hole. Haha! Honestly we didn't like snorkeling there that much, maybe we were really spoiled having the opportunity to snorkel in the Maldives.

However the trip paid off as we spotted an octopus and few fish banks. There were also pretty big fishes there, like 3 feet long.

Another day, we went on a dolphin tour. "Dolphins and You (www.dolphinsandyou.com) that took us to the north west part of the island to a town called "Waianae". The cool thing about this tour is that we actually got to swim with wild dolphins! It was spectacular!

There were around 100 dolphins swimming all over the place! We jumped into the ocean to snorkel and all these amazing creatures were swimming right below us!

You could hear the noise all around! It was an incredible experience!

Also, we spotted about 5 big turtles around a big round coral rock and I was able to test my new free diving skills then. I got to dive about 10 meters deep (30 feet) and swim really close to them. Unreal.