While on the island of Oahu, we did the usual tourist activities including hiking to the top of the Diamond Head crater, snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, paying our final respects at Pearl Harbor, and on the last day, a stop at the birthplace of our current president, Barack Obama.  You can take a four-hour guided bus tour that includes a stop at the birthplace, his boyhood home, where he went to school, and his favorite Hawaii places.  We didn't do that.  We simply grabbed the city bus and took a ten-minute ride from our hotel in Waikiki, then walked a couple of blocks.  The Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children is an unassuming building located at 1319 Punahou Street, Honolulu. 

Hawaii is a place of incredible natural beauty.  For me, it is always hard to visit such places without grieving the damage caused by human over-development, but Hawaii is so unbelievably beautiful it seems that even humans can't ruin it no matter how hard we try.   You can easily find many places that are still pristine. 

We also appreciated the effort by the native Hawaiians to preserve their culture and to educate tourists about their history.   When white people discovered Hawaii, they brought disease that natives had no immunity to, nearly wiping out an entire people.  Back in the 1800's the government of Hawaii was illegally overthrown by a group of American and European businessmen.  Today, Hawaiians believe their culture, based on balance and respect for resources, has much to offer in finding solutions to the problem of climate change.