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Hawaii
Our flight from Fiji to Hawaii included a brief stop on Christmas Island before we arrived on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu. However, our arrival at our hostel in Waikiki was to be somewhat delayed as we were all stopped (except Julie) at passport control due to our original flight dates exceeding the 90 days allowance to stay in the United States. So Customs and Excise Personnel locked us in some kind of interview room demanding that they change our flight dates to reflect our visa. Julie somehow managed to slip through the net and was 'on the run' in baggage claim collecting our backpacks, but before she knew it she felt a tap on her shoulder and was led back by another customs officer. We managed to get everything sorted and we were allowed to continue on our travels. We got a limousine taxi to the Waikiki Beachside Hostel which was going to be our home for the next 8 nights and after checking in we took a walk along the beachfront to check out what was in store for us!
We then returned to the airport that evening as Blue (Andrew) was arriving to join us on our travels of America. We didn't quite manage the traditional Hawaiian welcome with colourful shirts, music and flowers but it was good to see him and I think he was pleased to see us after his marathon of flights from the UK. We managed to grab a bite to eat and a few Budweiser's before we all crashed and burned after our hectic days of travelling!
As Waikiki is famous for its beach we didn't waste any time and spent a few days topping up our tans and Mould and Tanq having another unsuccessful attempt at surfing!
Between our energetic days on the beach we did manage to see a few sites. We took a trip to a water park, which was the same as most as after an hour we had been on all the slides, we did enjoy it though and had a good laugh! We also caught the bus to Pearl Harbor to visit the museum and memorial. We watched a short video/documentary of the events that occurred and the memorial is over one of the ships (USS Arizona) that was destroyed and is still there today. We enjoyed our trip here and found it quite interesting. We also took a guided tour of O'ahu with the self confessed America's Craziest Cabbie, (no joke, this bloke actually exists, goes by the name of Tom and even has a website). He talked a lot of crap and was very proud of his car so after about an hour we realised we had been took for mugs! He took us to where Jurassic Park and Lost have been filmed and also to a Mormon Temple, which as you can imagine we didnt really appreciate. We also visited the North Shore and the Dole Pineapple Plantation. Apart from being famous for its pineapples it also houses the largest maze in the world so Tom managed to get rid of us for over an hour while we worked up a sweat trying to complete the maze!
As usual we did manage a few nights out for a couple of meals and a few drinks. We bumped into Steve who we'd met in Sydney and on Beachcomber Island, and he was leaving for Las Vegas so we had a few goodbye drinks with him. We also went into a bar for a couple of drinks one lunchtime and ended up staying there for most of the evening. Blue, Mould and Julie met a couple of girls and carried on drinking untill the early hours of the morning and I think it would be fair to say we all felt a little fragile the next morning!
Our next destination was to be Los Angeles so we left for the airport and eargerly anticipated our arrival in HOLLYWOOD!
Love H, Julie and The Lads xx
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