Honolulu, Hawaii 9th Feb

Honolulu Harbour

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After 4 days in huge Pacific seas we were pleased to wake up this morning to a calm sea as we sailed in to Honolulu.  This is the capital of Hawaii (the 50^th state of the US) but the island it is on is called Oahu – one of seven inhabited islands – there is actually an island called Hawaii.  These islands are incredibly remote and were apparently settled by travellers from Polynesia (the Fiji area) in about 500 AD – quite a feat to travel several thousands of miles by canoe even if they were big enough to hold over 100 people!  Hope they had better weather than we did!  Anyway Captain Cook arrived in 1778 and things started to change pretty rapidly.  After first welcoming him as a god the novelty wore off and when the islanders stole one of his small boats he was killed in a skirmish trying to get it back.  By this time King Kamehameha had got his hands on lots of nice European weapons and he promptly used them to subjugate all of the islands into one state – we visited the cliff where reputedly thousand of rebel warriors were forced to jump off!  Unfortunately for him the Europeans had brought disease and the population of the islands collapsed from anything up to 1 million to 50,000 by the end of the 19^th century.    The islands were annexed by the US in 1894 and finally became a state in 1959. 

Oahu, home of Pearl Harbour seems to be a huge US military base with attached holiday resorts – it has eight golf courses reserved for the military but also some famous beaches and quite spectacular mountain scenery.  We visited Pearl Harbour (built in the cone of a volcano) which is designated as a memorial for all the military personnel who died in the Japanese attack in 1941.  We were able to go on board a WW2 submarine called the Bow Fin and then we joined the tour to see the Arizona memorial – Arizona was one of the large warships which was sunk with over 1100 men on board when a bomb hit its ammunition supply – the remains, containing the bodies of the men can still be seen in the clear water and a sort of shrine has been built over the top of it which you get taken out to by navy launch – all very impressive and of course sad.  You can still sea oil seeping from the wreckage – estimated at 2 litres a day and another 50 years to go!

Following the history lesson and a tour of the island we visited the famous Waikiki beach.  Thre were lots of surfboards but no waves – the sea is amazingly shallow,perhaps that makes for better surfing when the waves come in?