Although for the most part Hawaii was intended as a convenient way of bridging the journey from Japan to mainland USA and for some R&R, I did manage to do a bit of exploration of both the surrounding coastline and the local museums.
Hawaii is basically a series of volcanoes and Oahu definitely had some very striking vistas particularly along the coastline as the photos below testify.
The Honolulu tourist board run a series of tram tours which included one which took a trip up the coast (passing the house that Barack Obama was born in) which took around 1.5 hours and included various stops at vantage points along the way. The volcanic activity had created a harsh, barren landscape on the seaboard side which provided some stunning views.
By contrast the low lying inland areas were quite green and pleasant with the various lakes and mountains breaking up the landscape to create a vivid series of contrasts when framed by the clear blue skies and bright sunshine.
One of the real highlights was the clearness of the air - unsurprising I guess given the fact that Hawaii is 1000’s of kilometres from the nearest major landmass with the attendant light and air pollution and this was also captured by the local artists in the museums and art galleries I visited.
This included the Bishop Museum - which rather reminded me of a smaller version of the British Museum (particularly with its Blue Whale centrepiece and mixture of oak panelling and native artefacts). The Honolulu museum of Art was also very well endowed, residing in a colonial style low rise building with lots of little courtyards and passageways which made for a very pleasant afternoon’s exploration.
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