Mr. Munro suggested it. “We should climb Diamond Head,” he said. “We’ll go as soon as we wake up.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. “We need some exercise after eating all that food on the ship.” Right about now my inner self should have been shouting, “No! No! Bad idea.” Sadly, my inner self appeared to have had one margarita too many and was on holiday.
We started out, walking along the canal, heading toward Diamond Head. It’s the big hilly volcano thing in the photo below. About halfway there my inner self decided catching a bus would have been a good idea.
“It’s not much farther,” Mr. Munro said.
He lied but finally, finally we arrived at the park. We purchased our tickets.
“Where do we go?” I looked around and frowned. I looked up and up and up. “Surely not up there?”
“Nah,” Mr. Munro said. “This way.”
He lied again. It was all the way up there. We had to go past people with sharp elbows, people who dawdled and the cheerful people who had already climbed to the top and were coming back down. They were disgustingly cheerful because they knew how much I suffered…

We passed puffing, red-faced people. We climbed 99 stairs, walked through a tunnel and squeezed under an obstacle and up a hole. We huffed and we puffed. Or rather I did. Mr Munro never huffs or puffs because he’s fitter than me. Finally, finally we stood on the top to look down on Waikiki.
“I need a beer,” I said. “A big beer.”
This is me recovering my puff at the top of Diamond Head.

And this is me at the bottom. No beer but Mr. Munro bought me a shaved ice instead.
