Hawaii 2024, August 28

Due to yesterday's experience I left a few minutes earlier for breakfast and it was slightly less crowded this time. After breakfast I attempted a different run near Waikiki beach along Fort DeRussy boardwalk, but it was only a short loop of a couple of kilometres. Instead of trying to navigate through the docks I went back to the start then head over towards the Ala Moana park where I was yesterday afternoon. Overall I managed to get in a longer run but it was nearly all hard concrete footpaths, not even bike path surfaces.

After getting back to the hotel I left around 9:30am to get a bus over to the entrance of Diamond Head state monument before 10:00am. Entry requires an advanced bookings and you have a one hour slot to arrive. Luckily I came a few minutes early as it was about 15 minutes just to walk from the closest bus stop to the entrance through a long tunnel, then after the entrance it was another long walk to reach the base of the hike too.

There was quite a crowd of people but nobody was slowing things down too much and everyone was keeping to one side. It was a moderately challenging climb in parts, so I'm not sure why lots of people had brought small kids along. Most of the view on the way up was on the less interesting side of the crater facing away from Waikiki, the best view of Waikiki was saved for the final lookout at the very top.

It was interesting to see how the houses had been strategically built up some of the hills on the island too. On the way down I went up this annoying 99 step climb only to find it was joining back onto the loop I'd already seen. Since I had both my watch and phone with Samsung health today the whole trip came out to about 12,000 steps and 1.5 hours.

The return bus took a long time to show up, I got off after a few stops and found a Jamba Juice and an unexpected Taco Bell. The Taco Bell store had a great deal on bean and cheese burritos for only $2 USD so I got three of them, very filling.

Back on another bus after lunch and I got off near Kapiolani Park and Waikiki beach at the far west side. It's quite an impressive beach front that goes for a few kilometres at least, all the way towards my hotel at the other end. I walked along the street closest to the beach, which had a lot of hotels and high end fashion stores. The only purchase I made was a good magnet, I also found the Duke statue and a banana stand shop.

It was getting towards mid afternoon so I made one more stop at the US army museum, back at Fort DeRussy beach park near the hotel. This was a small free museum mostly focused on the war with Japan that featured Hawaii quite prominently. There was some interesting facts but it didn't seem to have as much information about the conclusion and victory as the build up. One the top floor there was also a helicopter, and some tanks out the front.

I picked up the usual assortment of snacks from 7-Eleven for dinner again, and another drink from Jamba Juice, while watching some more shows off the USB drive. After getting the last plans arranged for a long early trip out to Pearl Harbour in the morning I had another go at the TV channels. Every night it seems the comedy channel has nothing but South Park for hours, Tru TV has Impractical Jokers, and MTV has Ridiculousness. Similar to Australian TV there might be one or two shows each night on the major channels ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.

Steps = 29,000 with 11km running