Rod and Brenda, Jeff and Darla to Hawaii

June 22-July 1, 2018

Jeff and Darla flew up from New Orleans and met us at Atlanta Airport on the morning of June 22 for our flight to Honolulu. The 10 hour flight on a Boeing 767-400 covered about 4600 miles from Atlanta to Honolulu. We left at 10:55 am and reached Honolulu about 1:45 pm Honolulu time, there being a 6-hour time change.

After nearly ten hours of flying, Jeff gets a view of the tip of Oahu as we approach Honolulu.

Next he got a dramatic view of Diamond Head and the north part of Honolulu including Wakiki Beach! In fact he has a photo of the hotel in which we were to spend the night. About an inch and a half in from the right side of the photo below is the Aston Wakiki Beach Hotel, at which we would arrive about an hour later than this picture!

His next photo contains four neat little beaches which allow it to be identified clearly. These photos plus the aerial view below show that the plane flew above Diamond Head and across the island to the far side before turning back to land at the International Airport.

We got a taxi driven by an interesting and friendly Asian guy, so our transition from the Airport to the Aston Wakiki Beach Hotel was a smooth one.

This was our view of Wakiki Beach from our room on the 18th floor of the Aston Wakiki Beach Hotel. Our taxi driver said that the hotel was the tallest building on Oahu. We had just gotten into our hotel at 3:45pm.

Jeff and Darla had the room next to ours, so we could see them on their balcony.

We're not generally that much into selfies, but perhaps this is a reasonable celebration of the unique experience of having Wakiki Beach at our backs.

Darla snapped a shot of Rod on the balcony from their nextdoor balcony, so we have proof that we were there looking at Wakiki Beach.

Darla got this nice wide shot that showed the large number of sailboats off Wakiki.

Very pleasant, and just what I would expect of Wakiki. Clear, beautiful water, waves coming in, and lots of folks relaxing on the beach.

Lots of folks in the surf a little further down around this breakwater. Several people on surfboards, but the waves weren't high enough for real surfing. We were told that the surfers were out at dawn when the waves tended to be high enough for surfboarding.

We went down to street level and Darla got this nice shot of the palms. It was impressive that they had kept the palms so nice in this high traffic area.

Jeff, Darla and Brenda on Wakiki at 4:40pm when just this morning we had been in New Orleans and Atlanta, over four thousand miles away!

Surfing is a big thing at Wakiki. You certainly didn't have any trouble finding a surfboard if you wanted one.

Clear air, clear water, you could certainly see why Wakiki is so popular. This was a nice park along the beach, and I was appreciative that they had exercised the care to preserve this high-dollar real estate which would otherwise have been occupied by high-rise hotels. This view is toward the north, and toward Diamond Head.

Brenda and I walked out on the long pier that was close to our hotel. Lots of kids were jumping off the pier into the surf and there was a lot of playful activity.

From the end of the pier we got this view of Diamond Head over the beach.

Darla on Wakiki Beach. We certainly had beautiful weather for our first venture out to this famous beach. As you would expect, there were a lot of people on the beach.

Jeff and Darla head into the surf at Wakiki at 4:45pm, which would be 9:45pm in New Orleans.

Our hotel, the Aston Wakiki Beach Hotel was very close to the pier on which we were standing. It is the far left building in this photo.

I enjoyed watching the boating activity from the pier. This is a pretty fancy sailing yacht in the foreground.

We saw several of these long Hawaiian canoes.

I can understand that a lot of people want to live here, but the density of the housing up the mountainside above the beach was a bit of a shock to me. In places it looked as dense as the housing sprawling up the mountainsides in Quito, Ecuador.

We had supper in a restaurant on the ground floor of the Aston and retired to our rooms. Brenda and I went to bed at 6pm Honolulu time (midnight Atlanta time) because we were exhausted.

Oahu, Day of Departure
 Index

2018
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