LOST-Day 4, Tuesday

Now that everyone was feeling a little better, we decided to see the sites of O’ahu. We started the morning with a light breakfast of muffins and cinnamon roles from Starbucks, and headed out to Diamond Head. Diamond Head is a large, nearly perfectly round volcanic crater. There is a path that you can climb on one side of the crater, that takes you up to a rim, once occupied by the US Military. The path is 1.7 miles in total, but it climbs up the side of a volcanic crater, so you can imagine it is pretty steep.

As Lily is getting older, she is getting more independent. Currently, she is focused on feeding herself using spoons and forks (with limited success) and walking everywhere on her own (no carrying or hand holding allowed!). On top of that, her new favorite word is “No!” As we started up the climb, we walked along a paved, gently sloping pathway, several feet wide. This is a very popular tourist destination, so we were not alone.

Despite her best intentions, Lily tends to meander a bit, and is pretty slow, as she stops to visit every plant and inspect every rock. At a certain point, I had to scoop her up and start carrying her. This went better than expected, and she seemed mostly content to ride on my shoulders. There were a few parts that were fairly steep, and when you are carrying 30 extra pounds (Lily + backpack with water, camera, candy), you need to take a breather every so often. Lily didn’t really care for the rest stops, and urged me to move on. Her motivational techniques include sticking her fingers deep into my ears, and pulling backwards very sharply, as well as trying to pinch my actual eyelids. Message received.

Diamond Head was first and foremost a military installation, with several cannon batteries, which were still in place (no cannons though). The idea to make it a tourist destination, was clearly an afterthought, and surpising sketchy. The path up the mountainside is extremely narrow, extremely uneven, with minimal safety installations (railings, falling rock protection, etc). The top of the rim was no exception, with 100+ people crammed on to a small platform. After about 20 minutes of looking around, jostling for a rail position, and taking some pics, we decided to head back down. Lily felt that she needed to take a little bit more control of the situation.

For the trip back down, she was hell bent on walking it herself. After a few minutes of struggling, I thought I’d give it a go and see how she did. Honestly, it was admirable. I was able to negotiate a few points of order (I had to carry her down the two story spiral staircase, as well as the flight of 100 steep concrete steps. In return, I would let her walk the trail on her own). She is a very shrewd negotiator. It helps that her only initial response to anything is “No!”.

Eventually, traffic started to back up behind us, and I had to cancel our arrangement let her ride on my shoulders down the path. This did not go well, as she made entire mountainside aware of her displeasure. The squirming, hair pulling, scratching, and biting lasted for several hundred feet, before she realized that riding was way better than walking. Carrie and I focused on trying to distract her with a selection of best loved Elmo songs that we have been forced to listen to for hours on end (current favorites include 1. The wheels on the bus, 2. Itsy-bitsy spider. 3. If your happy and you know it, etc). Eventually her mood changed, and she began to dance…on my shoulders. My sun-burnt shoulders. We did not realize the show that we were putting on for the weary travelers following us.

From there we headed over to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial. Part of the tour is a 20 minute video about the Pearl Harbor attack, which was very informative. Lily was not quite as engaged. She did like riding in the boat to the memorial, and the “pfishies” swimming around.

It was nap time so we decided to drive to the north shore which is less populated, but said to have giant waves this time of year. After a little shopping in the small town of Haliewa, we headed to the beach, where lily wanted to play in the sand, and apparently started eating it. Gross.

For dinner we went to Haliewa Joe’s, which was easily the best dinner we had the whole trip. Most of the seafood was freshly caught from local waters. We ordered Lily the Kids Fish and Chips, which she liked. Neither of us could identify what kind of fish it was, so we asked our waiters. Freshly caught Yellow Fin Tuna. I am not a fan of tuna, but even I know that frying yellow fin is wrong! Needless to say, she loved it.

Here are some pics from that day.