Oli – Page 8 – Nearly Neutral Travel

Swimming with sea turtles on O’ahu, Hawaii

When we read that 79% of hotel rooms in O’ahu are located in Waikiki, the holiday neighbourhood of Honolulu, we confidently assumed that we would stay somewhere else on the island, perhaps a rustic seaside shack on an undiscovered beach. Reality soon set in and we realised that we had neither the budget or the forward planning to make this possible, so Waikiki it was to be! While this isn’t exactly our usual style, it did mean that we were right in the action, with Waikiki Beach, literally hundreds of restaurants and food trucks, and superb people-watching opportunities within a stone’s throw of our apartment.

Waikiki’s mass tourism was quite the contrast to New Zealand, which seemed very peaceful in comparison. It wasn’t just the population density either, as almost everyone in Waikiki is on holiday, which produces a vibe that I can only describe as Vegas-meets-Rio. It took us a few days to settle in and really appreciate the Americana, but we soon got into the swing of things. For instance, we dropped into The Cheesecake Factory for lunch, and found the portions so large that Sara stretched her burrito, beans and salad to cover both lunch and dinner!

It took the best part of two days on the beach watching the tanned surfers and picture-perfect sunsets before our feet started to itch. We were keen to see a bit more of Oʻahu, Hawaii’s most populous island, which we explored through three separate excursions…

Excursion 1: Hiking to the summit of Diamond Head

Waikiki beach is bound at one end by Diamond Head, a dormant volcanic cone, which affords awesome views across the city and bay. Having read that this was a “steep and strenuous” hike, we donned our walking boots and set off. And when I say set off, I mean from our apartment in Waikiki, which was a good 5.5 km scurry (of course we were running late for our timed entry) up to the visitor centre and trailhead, located in the centre of the volcano’s crater.

Arriving at the visitor centre, it became clear that we were the only people who had brought our walking boots to Hawaii. Everyone else was in trainers and sports gear, and we stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs. So much so that I even heard someone say “it’s because they’re European” when I passed them on the left side of the footpath (instead of the conventional right), but I was only letting someone with a walking stick use the side of the path with the hand rail! I was still fuming from this interaction a few minutes later when I realised that of course most of Europe also drives (and passes people) on the right, so really, the joke was on them!

From the visitor centre, we climbed the remaining 171 m of elevation to Lookout Point, with our walking boots providing excellent traction against the steep and strenuous gradient. We arrived at the summit to stunning views across the bay and city from the WW2 battery, which had been built to make use of the natural vantage point to defend O’ahu’s coastline (although it had never fired a shot in anger).

We were famished by the time we headed back towards Waikiki, so we bent our route around the Rainbow Drive-In, an iconic Waikiki institution serving up plate lunches. This is a quintessentially Hawaiian meal, which combines Japanese white rice with American comfort food, and is accompanied by side of coleslaw or macaroni salad. We went for Shoyu (soy sauce) chicken and Kalua (island style) pork, and although neither plate was much to look at, they were exactly what we needed to get us the remaining few kilometres home after our hot 11 km hike.

Excursion 2: The sunken history of Pearl Harbor

No visit to O’ahu would be complete without a trip to Pearl Harbor. It was here that 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft carried out a surprise attack in 1941, causing huge loss of life and damage to the US Air Base and Pacific fleet. The raid was hugely successful in inflicting damage and undoubtedly changed the course of history; but rather than preventing the then-neutral USA from entering the war as intended, it resulted in the USA declaring war on the Empire of Japan, Nazi Germany and Italy.

The white memorial sits directly above the sunken USS Arizona battleship
The memorial contains the name of every member of the US Navy and Marine Corps who lost their life in the attack
The battleship’s rusted gun turrets and funnel protrude just above the sea level

We took a public bus from Waikiki to the Pearl Harbor visitor centre, and a US Navy shuttle ferry over to the sunken USS Arizona battleship in the middle of the harbour. A solemn white memorial sits directly above the submerged battleship, which rests in the same location as at the time of the attack, over 80 years ago. The battleship’s ammunition magazine received a direct hit during the bombing raid, and the resulting explosion was responsible for the loss of 1,177 of its officers and crewmen, many of whom are still entombed within the battleship today.

You can just about make out the outline of the USS Arizona on Google Maps satellite view if you zoom in.

Visiting the memorial was a sombre experience, and following our visit we were in need of both some mood repair and sustenance. This came in the form of a sandwich from the memorial cafe, which Sara tried to liven up with a little sachet of mustard. Our sandwiches soon drew the attention of some cute little birds, who gained in confidence and hopped closer with every bite we took. Sara tried to waft them away with her hand when they got too close for comfort, and unintentionally flicked a big blob of mustard in their direction. Presumably thinking it was their lucky day, one little bird must have had the shock of his life when he gave it a taste. It didn’t put the poor fellow off, though!

In the afternoon, we took a shuttle bus into the active military base on Ford Island to board the USS Missouri. This battleship is best known as the site of Japanese surrender while it was moored in Tokyo Bay, thereby ending the Second World War. Today, it is permanently moored in Pearl Harbor and has been turned into a floating museum. Although the battleship wasn’t commissioned until after the raid on Pearl Harbor, it did serve in the Pacific Theatre during the war. In fact, it still bears a battle scar or two, including a dent where a Japanese kamikaze pilot struck the side of the hull and bounced off – the bomb it was carrying having failed to explode on impact. We learned more about other kamikaze missions in the onboard museum and read a few of the terribly sad letters that the Japanese pilots had written to their families, knowing they were about to embark on their final mission.

Boarding the USS Missouri
USS Missouri
Site of Japanese surrender
Photo of Japanese surrender
Inspecting the dent left by a Japanese kamikaze pilot
Kamikaze pilots
Letter written immediately prior to kamikaze mission

Excursion 3: Swimming with sea turtles on Laniakia Beach

Eager to see as much of the island as possible, we hired a car for a day and departed Waikiki on a mini road trip. Always on the look out for opportunities to reduce our carbon footprint, I spotted a great deal on a mystery electric car, which turned out to be a Tesla Model 3.

We put our foot down and headed straight for Kualoa Regional Park, a huge strip of parkland that meets the ocean at a narrow sandy beach. The bay affords excellent views of Mokoli’i Island, which is also slightly questionably referred to as the Chinaman’s Hat (for its almost perfectly conical shape). We preferred our new name of the Wizard’s Hat.

We continued on to Hakuku on the North Shore with lunch in mind, having read about a legendary shrimp truck called Giovanni’s. The truck was actually located next to six or so other food trucks that also looked great, but Giovanni’s had by far the longest queue so we knew we were on to a winner. We hedged our bets between a plate of hot and spicy shrimp and a plate of garlic butter shrimp, each of which came with two healthy balls of rice and a slice of lemon. Eating the shrimp was a messy business, as much of the sauce was on the outside of the un-shelled shrimp, but the flavour more than made up for the mess.

Customers signing the outside of the shrimp truck

We broke the journey back to Waikiki with a stop at Laniakia Beach, where we’d heard we might see a sea turtle or two while snorkelling, if we were lucky. Sara grabbed a snorkel and headed out into the shallows, but with poor visibility in the sea, didn’t find much at first. However, while looking out for a turtle the size of a fist, you can imagine her surprise when a giant turtle swam right underneath her. Slightly panicked, she surfaced only for a turtle conservation volunteer to call out to her, “Ma’am, there’s a turtle, like, right behind you!” Overwhelmed, Sara clambered up the beach for a sit down, only to pass a couple more on the sand and rocks between the shore and her towel. We certainly didn’t expect it to be quite so easy to spot them – even the smallest were the size of dustbin lids! After this, I didn’t even bother going into the water – there was no need!

On our way back to drop the hire car, we finally found out why we got such a good deal on our electric car – it was nearly impossible to recharge the thing. We attempted four different charging stations before finally having some success. We ended up charging it at a slow charger while we ate dinner in a very uninspiring strip-mall, but even then, we had to wait a further 45 minutes for it to reach enough charge to avoid a penalty fee when we returned the car. Knowing this, we unplugged with just enough charge in the battery, then drove very tentatively to drop off the car. We avoided a penalty with just 1% to spare, not bad!

I’m not sure how O’ahu ended up in a situation where there are too many Teslas on the road for the number of superchargers, but it made for a slightly stressful ending to our road trip. On top of this, I’ve since learned that Hawaii’s electricity is generated largely by petrol-fired power stations, so I’m not sure that electric vehicles are much better for the environment than petrol vehicles anyway. Still, it was at least encouraging to see demand for electric vehicles, even if the infrastructure has some way to go to match it.

We rounded off our stay on O’ahu by watching a free firework display above Waikiki Beach and the lagoon. We’d really enjoyed having plenty of time to relax in Hawaii, partly due to a miscalculation related to the International Date Line. If we’d had even more time (and the ferry was still running!), we would have loved to explore “The Big Island” of Hawaii and its volcanoes, but it’s always nice to have a reason to return if we’re ever in the area 😉.

New Zealand roundup 🇳🇿

We completed a wonky figure-of-eight across New Zealand’s two main islands. Starting in Auckland, we traversed the North Island via Waitomo’s glowworm caves and Tongariro’s volcanoes en route to the capital city of Wellington. We then crossed the Cook Strait and after a brief tandem-shaped detour to Nelson, we headed south through the vineyards of Marlborough to the newly-rebuilt city of Christchurch. Next, and probably our top highlight, was four days of cycling through the Central Otago region. We then stopped in Dunedin for penguins and street art on the way to our southernmost point on Stewart Island, before turning north to beautiful Queenstown. At this point, we picked up a camper van and detoured to moody Milford Sound before driving all the way up the wild west coast. We then crossed the Southern Alps at Lewis Pass and made stops in Hanmer Springs and the coastal town of Kaikōura en route to Christchurch to return the camper. On our way back to Auckland, we revisited Wellington before tracing a route through Art Deco Napier and geothermal Rotorua.

Carbon 🚆

The 8,000 km flight from Singapore to Auckland dominates our carbon emissions for New Zealand, and is solely responsible for our highest single-country total to date. There’s no getting around the fact that New Zealand is a long way from everything, including its closest neighbour – Auckland is well over 1,000 km from Sydney! We agonised for a long time about whether flying to NZ was the right thing to do, but we absolutely loved every moment of our two months there, so we got good bang for our ~~buck~~ carbon! And, to compensate for our emissions, we’ve prevented 3 tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere by offsetting with Gold Standard. As always, we would have preferred to avoid these emissions in the first place, but when there’s no low-carbon mode of transport available, offsetting is the next best thing.

The other part of our NZ travel that was less than ideal was our camper van adventure, which emitted almost twice as much carbon as our journeys by bus, despite covering a similar distance in total. While literally driving the kitchen sink around the country isn’t exactly travelling light, it did afford much more independence than we could have achieved on NZ’s limited public transport network. Camper vans probably compare more favourably to public transport if you manage to fit four people into a single vehicle, although that would have been quite a squeeze in our little Toyota HiAce!

Cost 💰

New Zealand was the most expensive country we’ve visited to date, surpassing even Japan in daily expenditure. We started to notice that no matter what we did, everything always added up to NZ$150, so we joked that this was a “unit of NZ”. It was both infuriating and very funny every time it happened!

While transport seems (and to a certain extent, was!) quite expensive, it’s worth noting that we classed the camper van as “transport” rather than “accommodation” in our cost tracker, although it obviously served both purposes.

Cats 🐈

As previously discussed, New Zealanders have something of a love-hate relationship with cats. While on one hand New Zealand has one of the highest cat ownership rates in the world, these invasive mammals are making short work of the country’s much-loved flightless indigenous bird population. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that NZ came in last place with 1.15 cats per day, although its total would have been even worse if we hadn’t spotted 15 cats in one fell swoop as we passed the window of a cat cafe in Rotorua shortly before leaving the country.

Our bad cat-spotting luck means we’ve expanded the scope of our cat awards to cover other species, which is lucky really, as NZ was great for wildlife spotting.

🏅LEast evolved bird

Not many species evolve backwards, but we learned that kiwi have actually forgotten to fly as a result of having no natural predators. Instead, they forage at ground level, seemingly without a care in the world. Cute but totally useless!

🏅Absolute top number one friend

We met this little pirate in Central Otago, and I’ve never seen Sara fall in love so quickly. He even got out of his cosy bed to wave us off on a frosty morning before the sun had risen. That’s commitment.

🏅Saltiest sea dog

We met this lovely chap on the ferry from Wellington to Picton. He seemed more interested in making friends than exercising. We sympathised.

🏅Most distinguished bicycle attendant

This gentleman caused us to miss part of the vineyard briefing before our bicycle wine tour, but we regret nothing (they all made wine and that’s all we needed to know!).

🏅The aloof botanist

We found this chap enjoying the sun in Wellington’s botanical garden. He tolerated a few strokes, but we could tell he preferred keep his own company.

🏅Smallest bird friends

I just love how penguins hold out their wings while they waddle along. They were also never disheartened by their “two steps forward, one step back” approach to climbing the dunes.

🏅Behind-the-scenes photography award

This award goes to Mario, for exposing how annoying we are when we get distracted halfway through a conversation because we’ve spotted a cat.

Culture 👨‍👩‍👧

Despite being about as far away as it’s possible to get from the UK, we felt right at home in New Zealand. The people are low-key but friendly and kind, and this is the first place we’ve visited since leaving London that has a proper pub culture. We’ve missed ordering at the bar, it’s just so efficient! Some things were quite different from home, though, so in no particular order, below is a list of our miscellaneous cultural observations about NZ.

I mentioned how much we enjoyed going to the pub, but Oli did get upset every single time because there’s no such thing as a standard pint in NZ. Instead, you normally order a glass (small) or a handle (large), and these could be any size. I’m not sure if he’s going to complain more or less when he has to deal with U.S. pints soon…

You’d better bring your ID if you’re buying vegetables as it seems there’s such a thing in NZ as age-restricted carrots 😂 Ok, ok, I think this might have been a glitch at the self-checkout machine, but it really made us laugh! The staff might not have asked for ID for the carrots in the end, but they were extremely strict about checking when we bought wine…but we’ll take that as a compliment.

Cars are king in NZ. And not just any cars, but the bigger the better, which did seem somewhat at odds with NZ’s eco credentials. This drove us absolutely mad – many places were totally inaccessible without our own wheels and the idea that we would want to rely on walking or public transportation was met with puzzlement more than once. We thought this was really interesting because NZ seemed so similar to Europe in most other respects.

Buses are few and far between, but if you do manage to get on one, then you’ll probably be treated to a free tour guide commentary from the driver. Honestly, we learnt so much from them chatting away on the tannoy as they drove along, pointing out things like local landmarks, notable viewpoints, where we’d find the highest point on the road, braided rivers, interesting wildlife, conservation projects, which small towns have the best pies… NZ bus drivers must be the friendliest anywhere in the world! Well, all except for Brian. But we loved him anyway.

There’s obviously a lot of wildlife to be celebrated in NZ, and we really enjoyed the sheer variety of animal warning signs we saw, often in the most unlikely suburban streets.

We were really blown away by New Zealand and its been great to fulfil a long-held dream to visit. It’s a very long way away, but we’d heartily recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in the area! We’re very sad to leave, but excited to be planning our next chapter of travel, and more on this in the next post…

Auckland strikes back

We returned to Auckland on a trusty InterCity coach, and while these aren’t exactly tour buses, I’ve come to appreciate the freestyle commentary that some of the drivers take great pride in imparting along the route. Today’s driver Brian, however, gave by far the longest and most irrelevant spiel of all, which covered topics such as: yesterday’s weather, the seat belt configuration on buses other than the one on which we were riding, and how to load luggage on to subsequent connecting buses. He did his best to maintain order and keep to schedule on a very busy route, but we could tell Brian had accepted that some things were just beyond his control. This was summed up perfectly when a couple of guys arrived to board the coach just as it was pulling away, and Brian spent the next five minutes chastising them over the tannoy. To be fair to Brian, he wasn’t visibly angry, you could tell by the tone of his voice he was very disappointed. The irony of his next lengthy tirade about how we shouldn’t take phone calls on the bus in case we disrupted fellow passengers was not lost on any of us.

Having a second shot at Auckland gave us the time to visit some sights that were further afield and that we didn’t manage to squeeze into our first visit. The first of these was the suburb of Devonport, located on a spit of land opposite downtown Auckland and easily reached via a short ferry. The suburb itself looks like a very comfortable place to live, with the perfect balance of quiet local life and proximity to the city centre. We enjoyed strolling the sunny streets and browsing the shops, before settling down at Corelli’s for brunch. Here, Sara enjoyed a generous helping of bacon and creamy mushrooms on wholegrain toast, which has swooped in and stolen the top spot on her list of NZ brunches.

Just behind Devonport is Mount Victoria, which is quite an impressive-sounding name for a 66m hill. Still, it occupies a great vantage point over Auckland’s harbour and has long been used as a defensive fort, first by the Māori and later by European settlers. Today, the hill functions as a public park, so we joined in with what most other Devonporters seemed to be doing, and climbed it in an attempt to work off our brunch. It was a little breezy at the top, in case you can’t tell!

Having been feeling a little under the weather since arriving in Auckland, I took our first day to recover while Sara went out for dinner alone. She returned with such rave reviews of the Ramen joint across from our hotel that I was keen to make it my recovery dinner, meaning Sara had to eat there two days running. I could tell it must have been really good as she didn’t seem at all upset at the prospect! As well as offering a traditional tonkotsu (pork bone broth) ramen, this place also specialises in sesame ramen, which we both tried. This turned out to be a deliciously rich and salty broth – the kind where the first mouthful makes your tastebuds dance, but by the last mouthful you’re totally defeated.

We also failed to visit Auckland Domain’s Winter Garden on our last visit, having previously arrived too late in the day. This time, things were different (by luck rather than skill!), and we enjoyed a lovely stroll around two beautiful glass houses and a fernery.

It felt very fitting to end our nearly two-month trip to New Zealand in the same city in which we arrived. Auckland really grew on us too, I think helped by better weather and staying in a more central location on our second visit. Having said that, Auckland still felt worlds away from the rest of the country, and couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the desert-like mountains of Central Otago or the wild west coast of the South Island. We were very sad to say goodbye, but as always, excited about the next leg.