Job One is to get out of Waikiki on Highway 1 eastbound. You'll want to bypass Diamond Head (covered in my Honolulu journal) and other tourist-heavy attractions on the way up the coast. Continue east on Highway 72 (Kalanianaole Highway.) You can take a detour to see the luxurious Kahala Mandarin Oriental Hotel if time permits - we heard it has an amazing view - but when we pulled in, parking didn't seem easy so we just turned around and kept going.

Be patient as you enter the Koko head area with its tediously perfect planned community and cross over Maunalua Bay - the view will improve shortly. Slow down rounding Koko Head or you'll skid right into the traffic jam at the entrance to Hanauma Bay, which merits its own entry. Pull over at the next stop, an unmarked lookout 3/4 of a mile after Hanauma, and drink in an expansive view of surf-drenched coastline and an endless teal-blue seascape. I believe it's called Molokai Lookout. It's not marked on the Oahu Drive Guide map, so keep a careful eye out. The daring can ignore the danger signs, climb over the guardrail, and hike a ways down the cliffs. We were rewarded with some disapproving stares and some great photos (see below).

Just past Molokai is the Halona Blowhole, a complete waste of time when we visited. Wave conditions need to be just right to see any action there. Don't skip Halona lookout altogether. Instead, stay to the right as you pull in, ignore signs for the blowhole itself, and look down and back south at tiny Halona Cove. Does it look familiar? That's because it is home to one of the most famous scenes in movie history: the wave-splashed, moonlit, sand-in-the-skivvies, torrid (well it was torrid in 1953!) love scene between Deborah Kerr's cheatin' army wife and Burt Lancaster's Oahu-based Sergeant in "From Here to Eternity". Even if you haven't seen the movie, you've doubtless seen that once-scandalous scene. Of course, if you have seen the movie, you know that soon after that seawater-saturated gropefest, they get in a big fight and he as much as calls her a slut, and she tries to hit him... perhaps you're better off not seeing the movie, come to think of it.