Hawaii Day 2 - Diamond Head Crater and Honolulu Zoo (video)

Today is our first real day in Hawaii (Day 1 was when we arrived into Hawaii). There is a time zone difference of 2 hours. So when it is 8am in Hawaii, it is 10am in Vancouver. Because of slight jetlag, everyone woke up pretty early. I have schedule "excursions" for each and every day we are on vacation and today, we will be visiting Diamond Head Crater and the Honolulu zoo.

Diamond Head Crater - this used to be a volcano; the last time it exploded was 13 million years ago? It is now a national park. In order to get to top of the crater and see the view, one must hike 1.5km on a winding trail. It really is a trail with dirt, gravel and rocks so families must carry their little ones (can't bring stroller). That was a challenge but we were determined to see the view at the top.

I carried Julia with my Baby Bjorn and Richard/Lo Ye carried Jasmine whenever she was tired. It wasn't an easy walk. There were steep stairs and tunnels. It took about 45 minutes to hike up to the top and a little less than that coming down. Luckily it was a semi-cloudy day and not scorching hot. Once you were at the top, the view of Honolulu and Waikiki made the entire hike worth it. So beautiful.





The next stop was the Honolulu Zoo. The zoo is located right in the middle of Waikiki (weird) and they had their own parking lot. Too bad the parking lot was all full with like another 20 cars waiting to get in. So we looked for street parking found a free spot about 2 blocks away. Very lucky.

I really wasn't expecting much but was surprised to see there was pretty much every animal you can think of at that zoo (zebra, rhino, hippo, elephant, monkey, tiger, giraffe, turtle, birds, fish). It was actually pretty hard to get pictures of the animals (they were moving all the time) and add on the moving Jasmine/Julia so we ended up taking lots of videos and not too many pictures. Jasmine loved it there, running from one area to the next. She tried to chase down a peacock!