Commuting around Oahu and Waikiki

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.

Also there is the option to rent a car. Car rentals can be affordable and usually best if you have plans for a couple of days of things that you want to see. There is a lot to drive out to see from Sandy beach and Kailua to the world famous North Shore of Hawaii and even the Dole Pineapple Plantations.

One last thing to be careful about when travelling around the island of Oahu is the highway speed limits. The speed seems to range anywhere from 30 to 60 miles an hour on all of the main highways, often dropping for no apparent reason so while driving around and looking around be aware of the posted speed limits