Timewarp

27 hours, 4 flights and 3 countries after I left Christchurch, I arrived in Hawaii on the same day.

Yep, you read that right. I left Auckland on Jan 11th at 8 am. I landed in Honolulu on Jan 11th at 11.30am.

I had totally forgotten that I'd be passing the international date line (and didn't see it once...) so when the driver announced the time and date on the shuttle bus from the airport, I involuntarily went 'WHAT?' really loudly and had to ask a bewildered American tourist what date it was. I had booked my accommodation for the date I thought I was getting there: the 12th.

We had stopped for refueling at Christmas Island on the way, and I poked my head out of the plane's door to see what the craic was. I was totally disappointed: not one hint of tinsel and no reindeer anywhere. It was more of a deserted island. At this point I started to doubt whether Easter Island was made of chocolate at all, but I soon regained my senses.

I was almost disappointed again when I got to Honolulu airport (which, by the way, has almost no roof) and there weren't hoards of hula dancers cascading me with leis, but to be fair this is more of a problem with my own imagination than any fault on the part of the Hawaii tourist board.

I got to my hostel, threw on my swimmers and headed to Waikiki Beach (30 seconds away) for my first surf. It clicked: this is American Paradise. The sun is strong but its not too humid (I guess it is winter), and the sea is green but not too wild. The streets are clean, the people are happy and the coffee is good and plentiful. What more does your average Yank want? Designer shopping and hundreds of people wearing flowers in their hair? That's all here too.

It sounds ghastly written down, and did prove to be after about 3 days, but as a first view its pretty amazing. The waves had unfortunately settled down for the day so I had to settle for floating about in the  gorgeous sea with the sun beating down on my skin. It's a tough life.

The bus all around the island is $2.25 but that's about the cheapest thing in Waikiki. I found a lack of veggie restaurants or anything approaching a budget option, but thankfully there was enough at the local 'Ruffage Foods' restaurant to keep me full and going for all the time I was on the south part of the island.

Duke Kahanamoku

 A particular treat on Oahu, and the rest of the islands, is Kona Coffee, grown in the Kona region of the big island between 800 and 2000 feet only. If you're not American you probably haven't heard of this coffee, for 2 reasons: it's too labour intensive to be worthwhile dealing with if you're a big company, and there are only a handful of small, family-run coffee farms on the east of the Big Island who grow it, and they're not all impressed with huge corporations. I loved it immediately.

After a day or two, during which I only got to surf once in lacklustre waves and realised that I needed to move on from tourist haven Waikiki if I was to a) catch a decent break and b) not go mental, I noted that beyond sun bathing and shopping, there's not all that much to do. There's nothing wrong with this, per se, but I had come for adventure, not relaxing 24 hours a day. I sat on the totally manufactured beach - they shipped the sand in from elsewhere - and watched the lightning to my far right without feeling any rain. I had to admit, it was pretty magical.

Also pretty magical is the Honolulu Cookie Company. Not only do they produce amazingly delicious buttery yummies, they have numerous stores in Waikiki, all of which give out free samples of all their flavours. And this is not the sparse tasting opportunity you might find in a supermarket - oh no. These shops have veritable bins full of cookie bits and invite you encouragingly to try all their variations. Living on a tight budget meant that I was down to one decent meal a day with coffee to stave off the hunger, so wandering around the 4 different stores in my immediate vicinity and filling my pockets in each became a daily habit. Whatever, I figured, it's a victimless crime. It's not even a crime, just overdoing it on the 'gratis' front.

When the sun set on one of the days, I stumbled upon a free public display of traditional Hawaiian music and hula dancing. It was very different than I imagined, and utterly gorgeous. When a Ukelele and several small drums create a jaunty rhythm, the women move their arms into physical patterns while their knees bend and their hips roll, all the time moving up and down. It was hypnotic, and so, so beautiful. I especially enjoyed it when a 5-piece troupe of older ladies took over. It's always inspiring to see the older generation active and enjoying life, and the lady at the front in particular was having the time of her life. I stayed until they stopped dancing.

Hula

Other than this I spent 2 days entertaining myself by throwing myself into my James Joyce novel (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, if you're wondering) and wandering tattoo parlours trying to find one I liked the look of. One shop in particular looked good but once I'd explained my ideas for design and placement to the huge dude behind the counter, he took it upon himself to disregard everything I'd said apart from 'wave' and turned my idea into a huge Polynesian design that I couldn't have been less interested in. I seem to find that big tattoo guys want to cover me in big guys tattoos. I'm too small! Back off!