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Honolulu Destinations

OCEAN SAFETY

Drownings in Hawaii are all too common. Waves can sweep in from two thousand miles of open ocean onto beaches magnificent to look at but unprotected by any reef. Not all beaches have lifeguards and warning flags; unattended beaches are not necessarily safe. Watch the sea carefully before going in, and never take your eyes off it thereafter. Fierce rogue waves can appear from the blue to drag waders - or even those walking along the shore - far out to sea in seconds, and powerful undertows may not be detectable until too late. If you do get swept out, don’t fight the big waves; wait for the current to die down before trying to swim back to shore.

Sea creatures to avoid include black spiky sea urchins , Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish , and coral in general, which can give painful infected cuts. Shark attacks are much rarer than popular imagination suggests; those that do occur are usually due to “misunderstandings,” such as surfers idling on their boards looking a bit too much like turtles from below.

Ocean Fun

The nation that invented surfing - long before the whites came - remains its greatest arena. The sport was popularized early in the twentieth century by Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, using a 20ft board; these days most are around six feet. Smaller boogie boards make an exhilarating initiation. Windsurfing , too, is rapidly growing, often using the same favorite beaches, usually on the north shore of each island. Snorkeling and diving are top-quality, although Hawaii’s coral has fewer brilliant hues than those in warmer equatorial waters.

BEST OF HONOLULU

Waikiki Beach Learn to surf, or just sip a cocktail on the world’s most famous beach.

Pearl Harbor Relive December 7, 1941 - the “day that will live in infamy” - by visiting the sunken USS Arizona.

Bishop Museum A great museum for those with archeological interests, the Bishop has the world’s finest collection of Polynesian artifacts.

Hawaii Maritime Center The Maritime Center excellently documents Hawaii’s seafaring past, including the lowdown on surfing’s local beginnings and exhibits on today’s luxury cruises.

Diamond Head Climb the extinct volcano of Diamond Head at dawn for superb views of the whole city.

EXPLORE HONOLULU

Bishop Museum

The anthropological collection at the Bishop Museum at 1525 Bernice St (daily 9am-5pm; $15) - well away from both the ocean and downtown, near the foot of the Likelike Highway - showcases real Polynesian culture, as opposed to the fakery of Waikiki. Three floors of one of Hawaii’s oldest houses display ancient carved stone and wooden images of gods, magnificent feather leis and cloaks, and a full-sized hale (traditional hut) brought here from Kauai, in addition to Japanese samurai armor and a full-size sperm whale hanging in the central well. There are also excellent special exhibitions for kids, and a planetarium. TheBus #2 from Waikiki stops two blocks away on Kapalama Street.

Chinatown

TheBus #2 from Waikiki drops you at Hotel and Bishop streets, in front of the gleaming high-tech Executive Center in downtown Honolulu. Just five minutes’ walk away down Hotel Street, the faded green-clapboard storefronts of Chinatown seem like another world. Traditionally the city’s red-light district, the narrow streets leading down to the Nuuanu Stream are still characterized by pool halls, massage parlors and heavy-duty bars.

It’s well worth delving into a few of Chinatown’s inconspicuous alleyways. Some of its old walled courtyards are now modern malls, but the businesses remain much the same as ever, and you can still find herbalists weighing out dried leaves in front of vast arrays of bottles. Pig snouts and salmon heads are among the food specialties at Oahu Market , on N King and Kekaulike streets.

Diamond Head

Waikiki’s most famous landmark is the pinnacle of Diamond Head , another extinct volcano just to the east. The lawns of the crater interior are oddly bland, but a straightforward hiking trail leads up a mile or so to the summit, and a panorama of the whole coast, passing through a network of tunnels built during World War II. TheBus #22 and #58 stop on the road nearby.

Hanouma Bay

Magnificent crescent-shaped Hanauma Bay , formed when the wall of a crater collapsed and let in the sea, is renowned as Oahu’s best place to snorkel . Though it makes a nice excursion, and the sea is full of brightly colored fish, overuse has killed off most of the coral near the shore, and the feeding of fish has led to a decline in the range of species. Tour parties were banned in 1991, and access is now controlled via a visitor center that shows educational videos about the bay’s fragile ecology (daily except Tues 9am-6pm; $3). TheBus #22 (“The Beach Bus”) runs by the bay from Waikiki every forty minutes.

Pearl Harbor

Almost the whole of Pearl Harbor , the principal base for the US Pacific fleet (just over one hour west of Waikiki, beyond the airport, on TheBus #20), is off limits to visitors. However, the surprise Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, which an official US enquiry called “the greatest military and naval disaster in our nation’s history,” is commemorated by a simple white memorial set above the wreck of the battleship USS Arizona , still discernible in the clear blue waters. More than 1100 of its crew - who had earned the right to sleep in late that Sunday morning by coming second in a military band competition - are entombed there.

Free tours of the memorial operate between 8am and 3pm each day, but it can be two or three hours after you pick up your numbered ticket at the Pearl Harbor visitor center (daily 7.30am-5pm; tel 808/422-0561) before you’re called to board the ferry that will take you there. Many of the 1.5 million annual visitors are Japanese; a surprisingly even-handed twenty-minute film pays tribute to “one of the most brilliantly planned and executed attacks in naval history,” and books and charts are on sale telling the Japanese side of the story. The USS Arizona memorial was partly financed by Elvis Presley’s 1961 Honolulu concert, his first show after leaving the army.

The huge USS Missouri , which survived the attack and was used four years later for the ceremony in Tokyo Harbor that ended World War II, is now moored alongside the Arizona . Guided visits include the actual surrender site as well as sweeping views of the harbor from the Missouri ‘s bridge (daily 9am-5pm; $14).

Punch Bowl

High above Honolulu, lush lawns growing in the caldera of an extinct volcano are the emotive setting for the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (daily: March-Sept 8am-6.30pm; Oct-Feb 8am-5.30pm), in which are buried the dead of all US Pacific wars, including Vietnam. The Hawaiian shuttle astronaut Ellison Onizuka is also here. This spot is said to have held an ancient sacrificial temple, and is on TheBus route #15 from town.

Waikiki

Built on a reclaimed swamp, Waikiki is very nearly an island, all but separated from Honolulu between the sea and the Ala Wai canal (which provides the drainage to make its incredible highrise profusion possible). Once home to Kamehameha the Great, the site may be venerable, but these days its raison d’être is rampant commercialism. You could, just about, survive here with very little money, buying snacks from the omnipresent ABC convenience stores, but there would be no point - there’s nothing to see, and the only thing to do apart from surf and sunbathe is to stroll along the seafront Kalakaua Avenue and shop.

The most striking thing about the parallel Waikiki Beach is how narrow it is, a thin but nonetheless attractive strip of shipped-in sand. Compared to other Hawaiian beaches, it’s overcrowded and small, but the fact that it’s lined by a pedestrian walkway, with several pleasant gardens en route, make this, relatively speaking, a refuge from the resort frenzy nearby.

Two possible diversions on the eastern fringes of Waikiki are Honolulu Zoo (daily 8.30am-5.30pm; $6), where you can walk through a mock African savannah set against the magnificent backdrop of Diamond Head, and the more expensive oceanfront Waikiki Aquarium (daily 9am-5pm; $7) which, as well as holding sharks and monkfish seals, has a tank devoted to the many-hued reef fish of Hanauma Bay.

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                  * Region: Hawaii
* Geography: Northern Hemisphere