Everyone visiting Hawaii knows about Honolulu, Hawaii's capital city, and about Waikiki, the popular tourist destination just south of Honolulu. But what else is there to see and do on the island of Oahu, one of Hawaii's eight biggest islands?
Oahu might be a relatively small island, but it's still nearly six hundred square miles. In those six hundred square miles, visitors can find everything from shopping and surfing lessons to magnificent views from the top of extinct volcanoes.
Hanauma Bay
The word “Hanauma” in Hawaiian translates into “Shelter Bay”. Not quite as famous as Waikiki Beach, Hanauma Bay is probably the second most popular beach destination in Oahu. Located on Oahu's southeastern tip, about twenty minutes' drive from Honolulu, the bay is considered by many to be the premier site for snorkeling.
Whilst on your Hawaii holidays, besides snorkeling, there's also the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve. The Nature Preserve is relatively new; at one point, Hanauma Bay accommodated some three million tourists per year, and all that traffic damaged the ecosystem. In 1990, the City and County of Honolulu established a plan to turn the area into a protected reserve. In 2002, they finished the project with an award-winning Marine Education Center. Today, Hanauma Bay is not a place for parasailing, surfing, and jet skiing, but for those who want a quieter swim amongst reefs and tropical fish, Hanauma Bay is the place to go.
Valley of the Temples
One of Oahu's hidden gems is the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. Although it is a memorial park (in other words, a cemetery), the park is filled with gorgeous statuary and mausoleums of famous residents. The Valley of the Temples is most famous for the Byodo-In Temple, a non-denominational Buddist temple. Built in 1968, Byodo-In Temple is a full-scale replica of a temple of the same name outside Kyoto, Japan. The original temple is a United Nations World Heritage Site; Byodo-In Temple in Hawaii may be a replica, but it draws thousands of visitors each year. Tourists love the serene ponds filled with koi, the Japanese gardens, and the nine-foot Lotus Buddha, which is the largest carved Buddha created since the twelfth century.
Oahu's North Shore
If Hanauma Bay and the Valley of the Temples are just too tame for your kind of holiday, you might want to check out Oahu's North Shore. The North Shore is world-renowned for its surfing – surfing contests have been held for years off the North Shore, where the waves are big and dangerous. The waves are so big, in fact, that for years they went unsurfed because they were considered too dangerous. In the early 1990s, some brave surfers started a new technique called Tow in Surfing, in which a jet ski tows a board and rider into a huge wave. By the early part of this decade, Tow in Surfing was taking surfers to new heights – literally: surfers on the North Shore can catch waves twenty or even fifty feet in height.
From Waikiki Beach and Hanauma Bay in the south to North Shore surfing in the north, Oahu has plenty to offer its visitors, making it possible to spend a very enjoyable Hawaiian holiday without ever visiting any of the other islands.
Photo credit: Hawaii Tourism Japan (HTJ)