Ireland day 0975. Thursday 30 May 2024- Honolulu 3

Today’s summary	Drove to the middle of Oahu island to visit the Dole Plantation first thing, which turned out to be better than expected. Then took the long route to the Wahiawa botanical gardens, which we really enjoyed especially as they were free to enter. Rounded off the afternoon with a swim with turtles on Lanikea Beach and dinner at Denny’s (again) near Pearl Harbor.
Today’s weather	Sunny dry and warm. Moderate north easterly wind. Appx 27c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Wahiawa Botanical Garden

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

A busy day today. We started off with fresh papaya and tea for breakfast on our hotel balcony, then retrieved the car from the hotel courtesy parking (at great expense) and set out on our adventures.

Our first destination today was the Dole Plantation, which promises “pineapple-centric fun for all the family”. Too good to miss, obviously, as pineapples used to be one of Oahu’s principal exports (and they still are significant, though dwarfed nowadays by tourism). And it turned out to be extremely tacky but strangely interesting – even though the site tour doesn’t actually involve seeing any pineapples. Even more oddly, I discovered that the global headquarters of Dole foods is in Dublin, just round the corner from the National Leprechaun Museum.

From there on we drove to another botanical garden – number seven on our trip, as it happens – in the Wahiawa valley. En route we drove past the Wheeler Field military airbase – which was of interesting to us as it was where the Southern Cross landed on its pioneering circumnavigation flight in 1930, and which also took in the Velvet Strand at Portmarnock.

The botanic garden was excellent, especially as it was free. There was another tree identification trail, much like at the Foster yesterday, and it was very well maintained. The only slight downside was the plague of biting insects which left us scratching vigorously at our shorts-clad legs.

From the gardens, we drove up to the North Shore of the island for a swim at Laniakea beach. It turned out to be more interesting than we had expected when the semi-submerged rounded rocks along the shore turned out to be green turtles. We had a look but kept well away as we were swimming, as they don’t like being disturbed.

We finished off our action packed day with dinner at the Denny’s near Pearl Harbor, before driving back to the hotel for a beer which felt particularly well earned today.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


At the Dole Plantation – this bus says it is 100% powered by electricity. Apart from trolley-buses, I’ve never seen such a large electrical vehicle before	Tourist train (similar in design to Malahide’s Toots) taking the punters round on their expensive but short tour of the estate

Pineapple whip. If you look at the list of ingredients, you will discover that it doesn’t actually contain pineapples	At the entrance to the Wahiawa Botanical Gardens. The best bit was that there is no admission fee

This is a rainbow Eucalyptus – and it’s easy to see how it got its name	Decisions, decisions – in Denny’s

This rock has flippers and swims around because it is actually a large Green Turtle