This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.
My third day on Oahu is over. This morning we took one of those buses for more than 1.5h to Pearl Harbor National Park. When we studied WWII in school the focus was mostly on what happened in Europe and I didn’t even pay that much attention. It just didn’t interest me. I wasn’t super excited about Pearl Harbor. But I will probably only be on Oahu once, and Pearl Harbor is a pretty big deal here. And it was interesting to learn it from the Americans point of view. I didn’t really understand why Japan attacked the Americans like that. It had something to do with China and Japans previous invasions and America who didn’t want to sell oil to Japan anymore and Japan who wanted to vanquish the American fleet. They didn’t really explain that in the movie we saw. I should probably google it. There were two exhibitions, “Road to War” and “Attack”. We only had like 1h before the USS Arizona Memorial tour so I spent most of the time in “Attack”, learning about those 2 hours when Japan surprised the Americans and killed 2400 people. It was interesting and the Japanese were smart. They had specially engineered torpedo’s that could go in the shallow water of the harbor. They had designed bombs that could penetrate the battleships and they attacked from different directions so all the battleship sunk. All the American aircrafts were blown to pieces too. 64 Japanese died, 9 airplanes out of several hundred crashed. They really knew what they were doing. December 7th 1941 was the day USA joined the war.
I almost wished we could have stayed longer so I could learn more about “Road to War”, but I would rather stay longer at the beach. So after the short boat trip out to USS Arizona Memorial (it was like a white cube above the sunken battleship) and back, we took the bus back to Waikiki.
Caroline took a surf lesson for an hour and Jair rented his own surfboard for several hours to try. When he was out there he told us that he saw three turtles swim by!! I am so jealous! The waves were so tiny, so I didn’t want to spend money on a surfboard rental because I would get so frustrated when I wouldn’t be able to get speed enough to catch a wave. And, when I got in the water (it was warmer today, probably 28C) I realized the whole bottom was full of sharp rocks. And it was shallow, so if you fall you will most likely fall on sharp rocks. I decided to rent a Stand Up Paddling Board instead, but I fell asleep at the beach so I will do it tomorrow instead.
We stayed at the beach and watched the sunset. It was so beautiful! I took a lot of pictures but it doesn’t give the real thing justice.
Then we waited for the hula dancers that were supposed to dance at the beach in the sunset. But they never showed up so we went to Subway and bought dinner to eat at the beach while watching tonight’s firework from Hilton Hawaii Village. The funny thing is that the firework was behind the tall buildings so we didn’t see anything. Too bad! The rest of the evening was spent in an ABC Store. There are millions of souvenir shops here but they are all the same. There is like one ABC store on each block here, it’s ridiculous. But anyway, both of me and Caroline bought so many souvenirs to our loved ones and a little to ourselves too of course. I bought a new bracelet and a tiki statue. I’m not gonna write about the other stuff, in case someone happens to read.
A quick shower back at the hostel and tonight I’ve just been going through pictures, and a little bit of tiny things. I should go to bed, because tomorrow I have to be ready at 7:30 so we can do the Diamond Head hike before it gets too hot. I’m really excited about our first hike :).
Caroline’s system camera is slightly better than my HTC One phone…
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