Riding With The Locals

On The Bus

Honolulu, Hawaii is a lovely city, and we were docked there for two days, so we had lots of time to see a bit of the city. The ship docks right downtown, so we were close to everything. Our original plan was to book a “Hop-on-Hop-off” bus through the ship. It seemed like a reasonable deal and was active for both days, but when we tried to book this shore excursion it was sold out. We decided it would not be any big deal, we’ve found our way around cities all over the world, simply finding a map and exploring on our own.

Not so easy here in Honolulu . . . Most cities that host cruise lines, make the most of thousands of tourists suddenly arriving to spend their money, but when we left the ship this time, other than a line of taxies, there was nothing, no tourist info site, no free maps, not

A 'Local"

even anyone to give us advice. After exploring the area, and receiving negative responses to locating tourist information, we were not sure what to do. The two activities we wanted to do were at opposite ends of the city, Pearl Harbour at one end and Diamond Head in the other direction.

Another passenger we shared a table with at dinner suggested that the public bus system was quite easy to use and could actually get you anywhere on the island you wanted to go. I found a Department of Transportation office that had a rack of bus route maps and we found a couple that seemed to head in the correct directions.

Trying to Blend In

This worked great, and for $2.50 (it would have only been $1.00 if I could have proved “senior-ness”) we got a return ticket. The bus stop was easy to find, and the stops were clearly announced as we went. We managed to go visit Pearl Harbor and get back to the ship with no problem the first day and then used the same procedure the next day to visit Diamond Head.

There was lots of Hawaiian patterns (Yup, the locals really do wear those Hawaiian prints), flip flops and grocery bags, so our beige cargo tourist pants and Tilly hats did not really fit in perfectly but the locals seemed to accept us on their buses, and we got around the city perfectly well.