OAHU · HAWAII
The whole island, off the beach and beyond it.
Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona. The crater trail up Diamond Head. Green turtles on the reef, catamarans at sunset off Waikiki, and the surf coast of the North Shore an hour north.
Only on Oahu
Three things you can only do here.
Beaches and boat trips run on every island. A sunken battleship you can stand over, a crater trail above Waikiki, and the valley Hollywood casts as Hawaii do not.
December 7, 1941
Pearl Harbor & the USS Arizona
A white memorial sits astride the sunken hull of the USS Arizona, where 1,177 sailors and Marines are still entombed and a thin sheen of oil still rises to the surface eighty years on. Stand over the wreck, walk the Battleship Missouri where the war ended, and you understand why Pearl Harbor is the most-visited site in Hawaii.
- 1 Oahu: Pearl Harbor USS Arizona Memorial
- 2 Pearl Harbor Remembered Tour
- 3 Pearl Harbor, USS Arizona Memorial & Honolulu City Tour
Le‘ahi
The Diamond Head Crater Hike
The tuff cone at the end of Waikiki erupted some 300,000 years ago, and the trail switchbacks up its inner wall through old military tunnels to a bunker on the rim. From the summit the whole south shore unrolls below you: the reef, the high-rises, and the surf lines peeling toward the beach.
- 1 Diamond Head Crater
- 2 Oahu: Diamond Head Cruise with Drinks & Appetizers
- 3 Diamond Head Hiking and Oahu Island Experience feat. North Shore
The windward valleys
Kualoa, Hollywood’s Hawaii
The Koolau cliffs fall straight into Kaaawa Valley here, so green and so dramatic that Jurassic Park, Kong, Lost and Jumanji were all shot on the ranch. Ride out by ATV, horseback or movie-set tour into a working cattle ranch that doubles as the island the whole world pictures when it thinks of Hawaii.
- 1 Oahu: Kualoa Ranch Movie Sites and Ranch Tour
- 2 Oahu: Kualoa Ranch UTV Raptor Tour
- 3 Oahu: Kualoa Open Air Jungle Expedition Tour
The one everyone books
If you lock in one day, start here.
More travellers book this than anything else on the island. The safe first move before you fly, and the day most first-timers come home talking about.
The classics
Oahu’s Most Popular Tours
Pearl Harbor trips, circle-island drives, snorkel cruises and sunset sails. The days most travellers book first.
Where to begin
The days an Oahu trip is built around.
Pearl Harbor, the circle-island loop, the reef, the sunset sail and the luau. The experiences most island weeks are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
How to do Pearl Harbor.
The USS Arizona Memorial is free, but the timed tickets release a day ahead and vanish in minutes, so most travellers book a tour that holds them. Here are the three ways to spend the morning.
Off the beach
Green turtles over the reef.
You do not have to go far. Boats leave straight off Waikiki for Turtle Canyon, where honu graze the coral in water warm enough to stay in all morning, and a short drive east the old crater of Hanauma Bay shelters a reef so calm the fish barely move aside. A mask, a set of fins and a few feet of clear water is all it takes.
Read the guide: snorkeling tours on Oahu →An hour north
Winter on the North Shore.
From November the swell rolls in and the seven-mile stretch from Haleiwa to Sunset becomes the home of surfing. Waimea Bay and the Banzai Pipeline draw the best in the world for the Triple Crown, green turtles haul out to bask at Laniakea, and the old sugar town fills with shave ice and shrimp trucks. Come summer the same water lies flat and glass-clear for the learning waves.
See the surf trips →The south shore
Where modern surfing began.
A century ago Duke Kahanamoku and the beachboys were teaching the world to surf on the long, forgiving rollers off Waikiki, and the beach has never really stopped. Outrigger canoes still catch the same waves, catamarans run sunset sails straight off the sand, and Diamond Head closes the view at the end of it all.
Browse Waikiki & Honolulu tours →December to April
Humpbacks off the leeward coast.
Every winter thousands of North Pacific humpbacks swim down from Alaska to calve in the warm water off Hawaii, and Oahu’s leeward coast is one of the best places to meet them. Boats out of Waianae and Ko Olina cut the engines while forty-ton whales breach and slap within sight of the rail. Spinner dolphins ride the bow most mornings, in season or out.
- 1 2-Hour Oahu Whale Watch from Ala Wai Harbor, Waikiki
- 2 Oahu Dolphin and Snorkel Tour with Waikiki Pickup & Lunch
- 3 Luxury Snorkel Cruise, Local Buffet with Whale & Dolphin Watch
Oahu after dark
A luau worth staying out for.
The luau is older than the hotels. A whole pig steams all afternoon in an underground imu, the mai tais pour as the sun drops, and the show runs from slow hula to the fire-knife dancers of Samoa and Tahiti. Paradise Cove and Chief’s set it on the beach; the Polynesian Cultural Center turns it into an evening across the whole Pacific.
See all 16 luau & shows →By place
Pick a corner of the island.
Pearl Harbor for the history. Waikiki for the beach and the boats. Diamond Head for the climb. Kualoa for the windward valleys, the circle-island loop for the whole coast, and Hanauma for the reef.
By activity
Or pick how to spend the day.
Snorkel if you want the turtles. A circle-island drive if you want the whole coast. Pearl Harbor for the history, a sunset sail to end the day, plus whale watching, the luau, surf lessons and the doors-off helicopter.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time on Oahu? A long weekend that pairs the south-shore landmarks with a full lap of the island.
Just added