Diamond Head

 Today we climbed Diamond Head. 

Diamond Head is this massive stone outcropping at the end of Waikiki beach.  It was formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago.  In fact Diamond’s Head is a volcano, complete with a crater inside it.  There is a trail that goes from the bottom of the crater up to the top of the rim overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The whole thing is a state park.

Getting to the crater turned out to be a problem.  We figured we would take a bus to the base of Diamond Head, then walk in and climb the trail.  We have been using Google maps to map our routes, but Google maps refused to let us take a bus and then walk the rest of the way.  There is a tunnel that goes thru the crater walls on the inland side.  Google maps would let us get as far as the tunnel (take a bus and then walk to the tunnel), but it would not create a route that walked past the tunnel.  But we found other internet pages that showed that was both normal and reasonable, so we figured we would just do that.  After thinking about it, we tried Apple Maps, and it had no problem with us walking thru the tunnel and into the park.  In fact Apple Maps seems not to even know about the tunnel.

In any case, we stopped by a market to get some sandwiches for lunch, and took the #2 bus to the base of Diamond Head.  (Interestingly enough, when we tried to get on the first #2 bus that came along, the driver said that that bus did not go to Diamond Head — we needed to catch a different #2 bus.  How he knew we wanted to go to Diamond Head wasn’t clear; we just looked like trail head hikers?  This confirmed that there are different types of #2 buses, although we’re not sure how to distinguish them, or why they are all called #2 instead of assigning them different numbers.)

The bus dropped us at Diamond Head Road opposite 18th Avenue where we started hiking into the Diamond Head crater.  We walked up to the tunnel.


The tunnel had only one lane of car traffic, so there was a signal system allowing incoming and outgoing cars to alternate thru the tunnel.  To the side of the car traffic was an area for people to walk thru the tunnel.  The old removed and faded paint markings show that it used to have two lanes of car traffic and a narrower walking path; at some point they expanded the walking path, taking up part of one line of traffic, putting them down to one full lane of car traffic — the current situation.

Once thru the tunnel, we were in the crater, and walked to the other side of the crater to get to the trail that leads up to the crater rim on the sea side of the volcano.  Reservations are needed, and Linda had done that.  The family in front of us did not have reservations and were turned back despite complaints of having traveled over 2000 miles to get here and can’t climb Diamond Head because of a lousy reservation.


The trail starts off innocently enough.  It’s a wide concrete path.


But it soon turns to a steep rocky path with switch backs and gets steeper and steeper. There are lookout points where you can take a breather and look back to see the crater


But mostly it’s just up and up.  As you get closer to the top, it gets steeper. There is a tunnel that ends at a long stair going up


Eventually, after about an hour or more of walking, you reach the top.  Which has a nice view.


But that’s about it.  The top is a very small area with nothing but the view, and some old World War I military observation bunkers.


And then you turn around and go back down.

When we got to the bottom, there were some shady trees with park benches, so we stopped and had lunch — some sandwiches we got at a market before catching the bus.  Then it was out thru the Diamond Head Tunnel, across the street and catch a bus back to Waikiki.  I think we got back about 2pm, so some 4 hours later.

The rest of the day was recovering from the hike.  Then out to get dinner, a salad from a market to supplement our leftovers from the last few nights.


 

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