Today was the day I had been so excited about. We would be flying in da Vinci’s aircraft or what it is now called a helicopter. We had been watching the helicopters fly past every day while we were in the pool. On one of those days Dad said he would really like to fly in the Hughes 500 Helicopter which he knew from an old TV show called Magnum PI. Just like that we decided to book a helicopter tour.
The morning arrived. Dad and I were 10 out of 10 on the scale of excitement, Amelia was a 5 and Mum was a 4. We left the hotel at 9:45 to catch a 10:00 shuttle bus out to the airport. We hopped on the bus and stopped to pick up some others from a different hotel. On our drive we watched a safety video. We arrived very shortly after the video finished.
Before we could go on the helicopter, Mum bought a strap for her phone and Dad checked if the strap on the camera was strong enough to pass their standards. It wasn’t so they lent Dad a lanyard which was attached with 2 of the worlds smallest zip ties. The reason for making sure that everything had a strap was that we would be flying in a helicopter with no doors! The motto of the company is, “Doors off! The only way to fly”.
Next we put our life jackets on then we were sent outside where we met our pilot Doug. He was a very interesting person and loved to share information with us. He sensed that Mum was a little bit nervous so he reassured her that all would be ok. One of the ground crew sent Amelia and me back in to the office to borrow some sun glasses. This was not for the sun, it was to protect our eyes from the crazy amount of wind.
We waited for the other two helicopters to take off and start their tour before we got in our helicopter. In the front there was Doug, me, then Amelia and in the back was Dad behind Doug and Mum behind Amelia. The ground crew did up our seat belts and gave Doug the ok to take off. Doug told me to turn on the headsets and tune the radio to the traffic control tower. Doug took off into a hover, then slowly backed up the helicopter to get out of the way of two other helicopters that were still on the ground. We taxied out to near the runway and then heard Doug ask for permission to take off. Then seconds later I heard a crackling response giving the OK. It did not take long before we were flying over the Port of Honolulu.
At the start of the tour there was lots of turbulence coming off all of the high rise buildings which did not settle well with Mum. We flew along the coast of Waikiki and saw where we were staying. We saw a lot of famous parts of Oahu like Dimond Head, Jurassic Valley, Rabbit island, Pearl Harbour, the Dole pineapple plantation and Obama’s beach house. We ended up doing a full circuit of the island. We landed very smoothly, went inside the reception area and got a book of photos. Then we got back on the bus and went back to the Hilton where we had lunch at a shrimp place. Amelia and I had Tacos, Mum had scallops and Dad had hamburger meat with gravy, corn, potato salad and brown rice. Then we had ice cream and went for a swim. We had sushi and salad for tea while watching DC’s Justice League.
