US Travel

On a day that we rented a car in Oahu we went to the Dole Pineapple plant and took a tour. This was a great way to spend a few hours but we had to battle against the heat in the middle of the island.

The trip to Dole was one of the great side trips on Oahu that we wanted to do. The big things at Dole are the tour of the plantation and the biggest maze in the world. There is also a train ride but we didn’t do it, the kids were too hot and tired by then.

Tour of the  Dole pineapple plantation

The tour of the plantation is either a walk around by yourself or you can follow around a tour guide. We followed the tour guide and he was great. We learned about the growth of pineapples, the history of Dole and how to pick pineapples the guide was a real cool guy that let us know lots of stuff and loved to ask and answer questions.

The worlds biggest maze

The pineapple maze is huge and a lot of fun. My daughter and son went with me but my poor 4 year old son was just too hot and gave up. My daughter and I finished the maze in about an hour and a quarter and it was a lot of running around and getting lost. There are two ways that you are able to do do the maze, with a little map which helps a lot but is still difficult, or just freeform which is super hard and is a way that you can become a legend at the maze. The record time for the day and all time is listed at the maze and when we were at the Dole Pineapple Plantation is 30 minutes or so…really tough. This is cheap to do as well as the tour and I thought was a lot of fun for the family although it can cause a bit of fighting (No not this way that way instead).

Dole is great and is a pretty cheap trip for the family. $4 for the tour and $6 for the maze per person but I think that you get a lot of entertainment for the money.

One of the strangest tourist events I have seen is the movie on the beach in Waikiki. There is a giant screen setup on the east end of Waikiki beach and they play movies for free for anyone that wants to watch.

The event is called Sunset on the Beach

The movies are not often the newest movies but are usually good movies and the place you are seeing them is great. You get to the beach, called Queens Beach and sit around and watch the sunset and as soon as it is dark enough the movie starts.

Did you want popcorn or food while you are watching the movie? No problem, there are food vendors around and of course there is a lot of food in the neighborhood anyway, it’s Waikiki.

The movies are free and are sponsored by local businesses and organized by the Hawaii tourism bureau.

To find the spot just look for the area pictured above by walking east along Waikiki Beach until your are past the kiddy pool and you will see the stands and screen frame.

There are a lot of choices for commuting around Oahu and especially Waikiki and I have used a few of them.

First of all you can run the whole gamut from Cabs to rental cars to buses and in fact there are two kinds of buses even within Waikiki.

First of all is the cabs, if you want to get around from the airport to the Waikiki hotel area you can only take either a cab or perhaps a tour bus. The cabs cost between 35 and 40 American dollars and the tour buses that shuttle people to and from the hotels from the Honolulu airport are about $12 per person. As a family of four we were able to pull off a deal with a bus driver for $30 to get to our hotel for all of us – great deal I thought.

Once you are in Waikiki there are plenty of buses to take you around the area. Some hotels offer a free bus that takes you to and from the Ala Moana shopping center. This can also be done for a $2 city bus trip. We went to the mall a few times and it is very close to the WalMart which is a great place to get food, suntan lotion and other things that you may need for your stay in Waikiki. The cost in Waikiki for almost anything is overpriced to say the least.

City buses actually go right around the island for $2 so if you wanted to spend the day on the bus you could go right around the island or even take the bus just to Hanauma Bay for the day. We caught a ride out to Hanauma Bay with an enterprising Hawaiian with a minivan and this was a quick and fun way to see some of the south of Oahu but coming back that day we took a city bus and except for the wait it was a great experience, the buses in Waikiki are very clean and we never ran into any troublesome people at all. [Read more…] about Commuting around Oahu and Waikiki

Magnum PI was one of the great fun to watch shows of the 80s. My wife used to watch an episode everyday in reruns while looking after the babies.

Anyway the show Magnum PI really was filmed in Hawaii and if you go north on Oahu you can find the house that they used to film Tom Selleck in all his hairy chested greatness.

The picture to the left is a picture of the entrance to the house.

This is important to know as the house is unmarked and very hard to find we thought.

There is always confusion about where the house is and we saw a listing in the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hawaii that said what general area to look for the house.

After we got back from out trip to Hawaii we had a lot more luck in seeing exactly where the house is and we got pictures of the wrong house while we were there 🙂

Anyway the location of Magnums house on Oahu is close to the Waimanalo Beach Park on the Kalanianole Highway.

You take the highway between the beach park and a pier close to the Kaupo Beach Park.

It is easy to miss the area but you just have to keep driving the 5 minutes or so between these locations and you will find a string of houses.

Pull over and get out of the car and just walk down the string of houses and you should be able to find the house. The map below should help.

For more info there are two great resources on the internet. For actual info on how to find the house you can go to finding Magnum PI house (which includes lots of pics) and for more info on the history of Robin’s Nest you can go to Magnum Mania.