My airline, like most of the other carriers a few years before us, has been using the legal options available in bankruptcy to restructure and reduce costs so we can continue to offer cheap air travel to the masses at the expense of my wages and benefits. One of the things that was taken away from our contract was the ability to have a say in which layover properties we stay at. I knew that our sweet digs on Waikiki were not going to last much longer (and indeed they did not, as we are now at a different property near a park that is prominent with the homeless community in Honolulu) so I figured I should take advantage of the close proximity to Diamond Head and finally climb to the top of it.
Diamond Head is the name of the famous dormant volcano that sits at the edge of Waikiki. It got it's name from British sailors who mistook the crystals imbedded in the volcanic rock as diamonds.
I started off from the hotel at about 7am and started the two mile walk to the entrance to Diamond Head State Park. From there it's a mile hike up the trails to the top of the crater. It includes a series of steep steps, 74, 99, and 43 steps in three separate stairways, so by the time I got to the top I could not breathe, but the view was amazing. And in true Hawaiian fashion there was a rainbow over Waikiki when I got to the top.... all that was missing was an Elvis song. Scroll down for some of the photos I snapped along the way.
The hike down the hill was almost as hard as the path is a bit uneven and I learned on the way down that my shoes were missing most of the their tread. I was a bit too ambitious and when I left the park I decided to head right and continue walking around Diamond Head, not realizing that I had another three and a half miles to go to get back to the hotel and my legs already felt like jelly.
I arrived back at the hotel completely whipped, but happy that I completed a task I had been promising myself I would do for the last five years. Aloha!
