Day 3 of 2023 Trip to Hawaii, Diamond Head, and Flight to Maui

Third (and fourth) day of my January 2023 trip to Hawaii. My friend and I spent the morning visiting Diamond Head Crater, before hopping onto an afternoon flight to the island of Maui. (For the fourth day, I had a crash course on paddleboard surfing, before a mechanic issue with the rental car ruined the remainder of the day.)

Waikiki from Diamond Head

Our final few hours on the island of Oahu. Originally, I planned to spend the morning relaxing either in the hotel hot tub or on the Waikiki Beach across the street (after my early morning video meeting with people on the east coast, during which I watched morning sun lighting up Waikiki Beach from darkness). But since we were turned back from Diamond Head Crater two days ago without reservation, I had to cut my time in the hot tub short, and left the hotel for Diamond Head at 10am.

Diamond Head

Diamond Head is a volcanic tuff cone on the coast of Oahu. Visible from much of Honolulu, it’s the defining backdrop of the city’s skyline.
In the early 20th century Diamond Head was used as a military base, nowadays much of the infrastructure near its summit, in the form of bunkers and stairs, were remnants of the military era. Its summit offered spectacular views overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown Honolulu.

The summit of Diamond Head was reached via a 3.1km out-and-back trail(AllTrails link) with 160m elevation gain. A majority of the trail had no shade, and it felt pretty hot under tropical sun even in January.

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Stairs to the Summit of Diamond Head
Taken from the bottom of the crater not long after we started the hike.

Valley

The trail to the summit of Diamond Head wraps around this valley. In the background, Ko’olau Range was like the fin of a dinosaur, rising above the hills before it.

Helicopters in Flight
Likely from one of the many military bases in the island.

Distant Koko Crater
The tunnel that provided access to Diamond Head in the lower-left of this photo.

Overlooking Diamond Head Crater

Diamond Head Lighthouse along Coast
Lovely waves from the ocean.

Bunker Interior

The trail saw heavy traffic, but was well-maintained. Towards its end there were some stairs (p1 below), which was followed by a tunnel (p2), presumably from the military era. After the tunnel the trail formed a small loop, we followed the crowd and turned left towards the summit. From the bunker at the summit, there were more stairs (p3-p5 below), finishing the loop.

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Stairs before Tunnel

Tunnel

Spiral Stairs from Bunker

Looking Up at Spiral Stairs in Bunker

Stairs from Bunker

It took us about 45 minutes of decent physical efforts to reach the top. After that, we had a feast of the views, with skyscrapers of Honolulu gorgeously lit by the morning sun.

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Waikiki from Diamond Head

Bunker on ridge of Diamond Head

Overlooking Diamond Head Crater

Oahu Coastline to the South

Waikiki Beach

Ala Moana Beach
Honolulu Airport in the distant background.

Skyscrapers of Waikiki

View from Diamond Head Summit

The summit of Diamond Head was a former military bunker. It took a few steps of duck walk to enter the bunker (last photo of the first slideshow), and frankly, there’s not much to see inside.

In the end, we got back to the parking lot at noon, after which we headed straight to the airport for our flight to Maui at 2:55pm.

Southwest Flight WN1048 from Honolulu to Kahului

After returning the rental car, we arrived at the airport a good 2 hours before our flight. There’s not much wait for security, so I figured we should have enough time to check out the Plumeria Lounge, a lounge operated by Hawaiian Airlines that participated in PPS.
It turned out that Hawaiian Airlines had two lounges in Honolulu Airport, I accidentally tried out and was turned away from the more obvious, but arguably inferior Premier Club first. It’s a bit weird that PPS offered access to the better lounge in the Hawaiian Airlines network.
A (very friendly) receptionist at the Plumeria Lounge manually seated all the guests (otherwise the lounge wouldn’t be able to accommodate the number of visitors). That also meant there’s a line to enter the lounge since it took time for the receptionist to designate seats and introduce the rules and amenities.
It turned out that the Plumeria Lounge was a mediocre domestic US PPS lounge, at best. The number of guests meant the seats and tables were hardly clean, the food offering was underwhelming (p3 below), and there was hardly anything remarkable.

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United Airlines Check-in Counters
The background art in blue matched well to the airline’s color.

Southwest Airlines Check-in Counters
For southwest, the background art changed to fiery orange.

Food at The Plumeria Lounge
This photo showed pretty much all the food offerings in this lounge.

Japan Airlines B788 (JA836J)

American Airlines B789

Southwest Airlines Fleet at Terminal E
Southwest had a pretty decent presence in Hawaii.

In the end, we stayed just under half an hour at the lounge, before heading to our gate.

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Terminal E Interior

C.B. Lansing Memorial Garden
Honolulu Airport was known for this open-air garden for travelers to unwind.

Gate Decorations
It was only a few days to Chinese New Year.

Gate Decorations

Towards the right of the agent stand, more Chinese New Year decorations waiting to be unpacked. Along the wall, Christmas decorations that was just packed up.

Southwest Airlines B38M (N8718Q)
My plane to Kahului. This would be my first time flying 737 Max.

Seats onboard Southwest Airlines B38M
Definitely not properly cleaned.

Since launching Hawaii service in 2019, Southwest Airlines has engaged in a price war with Hawaiian Airlines on inter-island flights: throughout much of 2022 and into early 2023, most (if not all) of Hawaii inter-island flights were priced at 39 dollars with Southwest, including the flight I was about to take. I fathomed that before Southwest, Hawaiian Airlines had a proper fleet of Boeing 717’s to meet the demand of inter-island travel; with Southwest’s entry, the inter-island market became over-supplied, as Hawaiian’s 717’s were of no use on other routes.
As a result, there were only ~70 passengers for a plane with 175 seats, and I got an entire row to myself.
In addition, at only 101 miles, this would be the shortest flight that I had taken so far.

Southwest Airlines 1048
Honolulu, HI (HNL) – Kahului, HI (OGG)
Boeing 737 Max 8 (N8718Q)
Seat 9A
Scheduled Departure – 2:55pm
Actual Departure – 3:21pm
Scheduled Arrival – 3:40pm
Actual Arrival – 3:45pm
24 minutes
Here’s GPS tracking:

Since it’s such a short flight, I used my GoPro to record the flight in its entirety. Here’s the video:

To keep viewers from getting bored of watching clouds, the video was sped up between 4:35 and 9:32, together with a few short holds on the ground. As a result, it’s 14 minutes and 39 seconds.
If one doesn’t like the ads on YouTube, below is the same video hosted on my server:

2160p30fps, H265 only, 13Mbps/1.46GB.

I sat on the left side of the plane, that meant after takeoff, I was treated with the stunning views of downtown Honolulu, and the few craters on the island of Oahu.

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Taxiway Maintenance

Skyscrapers of Honolulu and Diamond Head Crater
A unique sight during our taxi to the reef runway (8R).

Overlooking Downtown Honolulu

Waikiki and Diamond Head Crater

Overlooking Diamond Head Crater
The distant Koko Crater also visible.

That also meant before landing, there were views of West Maui Mountains and the winding road to Lahaina.

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Southwestern Tip of Molokai Island

Mauna Kahālāwai (West Maui Mountains) in Clouds

Road to Lahaina
One that winds around the coastline.

Kealaloloa Ridge
For the final approach into Kahului Airport.

For its limited distance, the highest altitude we reached was 4100m/FL13, which was lower than the highest mountain of Hawaii, with the cabin maintained at sea level pressure throughout the flight.

A friend of us would be joining this leg of our trip in Maui. His flight from Atlanta landed 10 minutes after us. After greeting his arrival, we grabbed a rental car and headed out of the airport.

A side story of the rental car: After leaving the airport in a Nissan Sentra, our first stop was a Walmart to stock up on supplies. At the Walmart parking lot, I realized I couldn’t find the keys to the car. (It came with keyless ignition so the key must be inside the car.) It took us 5 minutes to locate the key underneath one of the seats. Towards the end of the day, we checked into the hotel 2 minutes after sunset and thus missed it, which I would attribute to this incident.
Or even worse, it’s the omen of something bad that was to befall this rental car the next day.

But for the moment, we had no clue of that. We continued our day by grabbing dinner in Kahului, and headed to our overnight hotel in Wailea. This time, my friend who was a Marriott elite booked “AC Hotel by Marriott Maui Wailea” with his 50k free night certificate plus some top-up for the night. It’s certainly one of the fanciest hotels of our Hawaii trip.

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Hotel Room

Hotel Room

Hotel Room

Thursday Jan 19

The next morning, one of my friends insisted on going surfing at one of the beaches, despite my other friend could barely swim after my crash course at Waikiki Beach three days ago. To get us onboard, he rented us a stand-up paddleboard, which was wider and supposedly more stable than the surfing board he got himself. To cheer things up, he even gave me a crash course of surfing.

Amazingly, after a few attempts it turned out his crash course worked, and I managed to properly paddleboard-surf. Even better, since I was sitting elegantly on the paddleboard, I didn’t have to bother myself with the acrobat of getting onto the surfboard precisely when the wave hit. As a result, I had a higher success rate of riding the waves than my surfing friend. 😎 In addition, while paddling I spotted a few sea turtles.

Unfortunately, after great fun paddleboard-surfing, we were hit with a disaster as our rental car refused to start, with information of “engine malfunction, power reduced” displayed. After calling the rental car company, they decided to dispatch a tow truck to help us out.

Problem with Rental Car

With a very rapid roadside assistance service last summer that saved me from costly airline rebooking, I was pretty optimistic that this would be resolved in a flash. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. In the end, it took almost three hours for the tow truck to arrive, because, as the driver put it, he was needed all over the island that afternoon (he came from Lahaina and was heading to Hana after us). Despite it looked like an engine failure, the tow truck driver determined this required only a jumpstart, after which the car could limp back to the airport.

Technically, the rental car company informed us that we had the option to leave the keys in the car and head to the airport to grab a new car, despite the agent advising against doing that as we would be responsible for any damage occurred while the car was unattended. What’s more, the luggage in the car (mostly swim gear) was in such a way that couldn’t be efficiently packed into the trunk of an Uber (the rental car company was willing to provide complimentary Uber rides). But since it took much longer than anticipated for the tow truck to arrive, one of my friends Ubered back to the hotel to pack up our belongings, while the other one Ubered to get a new pair of glasses (the old ones were gone while surfing) in Kahului, and I stayed back waiting for the elusive tow truck.

After the car was resurrected via jumpstart, I headed back to the hotel to pick up one of my friends and our luggage, then straight to the airport. Amazingly, the lady at the rental car counter seemed pretty used to this “malfunction indicator”. 👻 To sort of make up for us, she offered to exchange for a Jeep Wrangler, which was usually considered a premium SUV in Maui. (At first sight, it’s hardly an “upgrade” since the Jeep came with a strange smell, it ended up being sea water that seeped into the carpet.)

This pretty much covered the entirety of our activities of Jan 19.
END

Day 3 of 2023 Trip to Hawaii, Diamond Head, and Flight to Maui by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.