Hawaii here we come!

Monday 24 Feb we flew out of Rockhampton at 10:30 to Brisbane, via Sydney, before arriving in Honolulu on the island of O'ahu. 

Here we go...!

Our aircraft in Sydney

Nice to see something familiar on the plane

As we came into Honolulu airport I was listening to a family history podcast, and right at that point they were interviewing the last survivor of the bombing of Pearl Harbour! What a coincidence. On arrival we went outside into the fresh air and waited for Marc to arrive.

Wearing our COVID-19 masks while in the airports and planes

I had a big issue with Hertz Rental Cars, as I believed I had already paid for the car hire, but apparently I had paid for all of them except this one, and they were trying to charge me twice what I believed the cost would be...and that was in US dollars too! I didn't have wifi at the Hertz office so couldn't find my bookings, so had to go back to the airport to download them. I am still not convinced that we were covered for insurance properly. It also turned out that we would have had to pay extra to enable Marc to drive the car as we had planned.

Darryl orientated himself with the vehicle and driving on the right-hand side of the road, as we drove out to Waianae. 

Having some food on the beach

Life Savers

Plenty going on with surfers, snorkellers, & paddlers

Gorgeous birds - we found out later this is a Cardinal

The Rocks were fascinating

Back towards Waikiki we pulled in to Paradise Cove. This is one of the up-market areas but there were lovely free lagoons with free parking and grassy parks.

It took hours to drive to Waikiki and our accomodation as the traffic was really bad around 4pm. Checked in. There were a couple of raised eyebrows when we saw the outside of the airbnb as it looked quite dated (like a 1970s motel). But, luckily it was quite nice, although small, inside.

An Air BnB photo

It was actually an excellent location and the price was good for Waikiki. It had quirky plumbing, but was great overall. We walked a couple of kms to Safeway to stock up on food. There was a little rain on the walk back. Dinner was a light one with Salmon Poke. Darryl was a bit excited that there was cable and watched part of a movie before we headed to bed and slept for 10 hours.