One of the most delightful little villages on Oahu is the surfing town of Hale’iwa. When I say surfing town, I don’t mean the town itself surfs- that would be silly – but the town does revolve around surfing. Once a plantation village where workers lived and bought what they needed to go about their…
South East of Honolulu are the neighborhoods of Aina Haina and Hawaii Kai. These are upscale neighborhoods that you reach when you pass by Diamond Head and the ritzy Kahala neighborhood and continue on to Koko Head and Hanauma Bay. As a guide I often pass through here, but rarely stop. There are some houses…
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve been to Molokai. I was suppossed to go back over this Christmas holiday, bring my family, meet up with friends – but the cost of living in Hawaii and a particularly painful dry period in tourism during October, November, and early December brought about the necessity of…
Lanai is owned by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle Corporation. The people who live there are not owned by him. The last time I was there was in 2008. It was a short trip – mainly because I couldn’t afford to stay any longer. Lanai has two expensive resorts and the Lanai City Hotel…
While it’s probably not what it wants to be known for, the town of Waipahu’s most famous resident is probably Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked large amounts of classified information from U.S. intelligence agencies. Of course, there is much more to Waipahu than just Edward Snowden. Waipahu is a central Oahu town which…
How many lighthouses exist on Oahu? If you’re just here to find the answer quickly – there are six. If you want to go deeper than that though – read on. Most people can only list one or two of the lighthouses on Oahu. Diamond Head Lighthouse is an obvious one and the one at…
The number one tourist attraction in Hawaii is the Polynesian Cultural Center in the town of Laie. Laie is also known as ‘the Mormon town’ and with good reason. The Mormons were early settlers in Hawaii and virtually the entire town of Laie is of the Mormon faith. There is a Mormon temple, a Mormon…
I’m not going to write much about this since I’ve already given you most of the words and some of the pictures from my old Nokia phone in the Flashback Friday Post about my 2008 Perimeter of Oahu Walk. This post is mostly to show some of the people I met and the beautiful scenery…
In 2008, I decided to walk all the way around the island of Oahu. Here is my record of that. I’ll add a Saturday Slideshow tomorrow with more pictures from my walk. It was awesome. Maybe I’ll do it again. (It’s funny to note how much I took with me – today, I would go…
There are a ton of military bases on Oahu. Strike that, there are two tons – or maybe more like 250,000 tons. close to 50,000 active military personnel plus their wives and children makes at least 125,000 people who don’t live in Hawaii except as a duty assignment. Add to that the 15-25,000 reserve personnel…