Hawaii - day 3

Up bright and early this morning as we were off to do the Diamond Head hike - a steep hike up the Diamond Head crater!
So here we are at the entrance to the crater all geared up with our new running shoes that we bought yesterday LOL.

I was a bit worried about doing this as it is quite steep and lots of stairs but I have been doing some stair runs in my training the last few weeks to get my lungs a bit fitter.
This was the view from the car park, you can't see it in the pic but from where we were standing we could see the track zigzagging up the side of the mountain and it was a bit daunting.

 Here are some photos taken on the way up....

So we zig zagged up the side of the crater then we hit these 74 stairs!! And let me tell you these were no where near as bad as the next set of stairs!

 At the top of the stairs there was a tunnel you went through and  I thought "oh a reprieve from the stairs" but the tunnel was at an incline as well.

Then at the end of the tunnel you stop to catch up breath and this is what greets you......

99 extremely steep narrow steps!!! We waited a bit then headed up, unfortunately I couldn't do it all in one go and had to stop about 3/4 of the way up, but just enough to catch my breath as it was very narrow and there were lots of people there. So we got to the top and into the bunker then there was the next staircase...........a spiral metal staircase!!!

Up we go again!!
At the top you come out into this concrete bunker where you have to crawl through a small opening to get out to the lookout.

But the views........oh so worth the effort!!!

It was sooo worth it.  Here is a diagram I found on the net of the hike.

So we had all this done by 10am so headed back down to near the bus stop to the farmers market across the road at the community college. Will do a part 2 to this day.