Mike in the Wild

I've been to crowded Honolulu several times, even staying a night near the airport on my very first visit to Hawaii.  It happened over thirty years ago when I connected through on my way to the neighboring island of Kauai.  I later took a couple of vacations to Waikiki, Honolulu's most famous beach.  On one of those visits I rented a car for a few hours and drove around the entire island, witnessing the quieter and more rugged North Shore along with the picturesque East Shore with its exclusive coastal communities.   On my recent return to Oahu, I stayed for only thirty-six hours after disembarking in Honolulu in the morning off a cruise ship that had left Seattle five days before.  While I planned to overnight in a hotel at the quieter east end of Waikiki, it was the North Shore that was the main subject of my itinerary.  After picking up my rental car at the airport, I planned two days of snorkeling the coastline's most popular reefs, from Kulim...