Travel Day 847 – Waikiki, Honolulu, Oahu, HAWAII
Well, my scooting vision did not quite come true today because it was actually a lovely, sunny day and I couldn’t help myself but go to the beach again…
Diamond Head view of Waikiki, Hawaii
Well, since I decided early on that I wouldn’t get the scooter today, I felt actually ready for a little activity. So I did some research in the morning and realized that there were two things in the area that interested me. One was a hike up an extinct volcano called Diamond Head and the other was a visit at Doris Duke’s mansion Shangri La. Since I was not quite sure if it was possible to reach both on foot, I thought I should just give it a try and see how far I would get…
Unfortunately I didn’t get very far at all because right before I reached Diamond Head I was passing a nice beach and decided to have a little rest in the sand. I thought it really was the best use of the sunny day, plus I couldn’t quite see myself hiking up the volcano in the mid-day heat anyway…
In the end I left the beach at 4pm and it took me until 5pm to finally reach the entrance to the Diamond Head crater. I had to walk all the way around the volcano first and through a tunnel before I could finally enter the official park. By the time I got to the entrance gates, they had already closed up 30 minutes ago and it took me quite a while to convince the two park rangers to still let me in. The park was locked at 6 pm every night and I promised many times that 60 minutes would be more than enough time for me to do the 90 minute return hike…
Bunker atop Diamond Head, Hawaii
Luckily they believed me in the end and let me in. Also luckily I actually managed to run up and down the steep walls of the crater within the allowed time-frame and I even had enough time to enjoy the views of the sunset from the top. It was really, really great, especially because the climb up had been through an old hidden bunker in the crater top. As it turned out, the bunker was actually predating world war 2...
Finally the sun was setting while we were overlooking all of Waikiki. Luckily all the other tourists had left already when I climbed up through the 4 levels of the bunker. It was obviously a great day and a long walk back down into town. In the end I never made it out to Shangri La, but I was already excited to see more things tomorrow… : )
Find all Oahu, Waikiki photos here.
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