Hawaii Vacation- Diamond Head

Early in the planning for our trip our niece sent me links to all sorts of hiking options while visiting the Island of Oahu. At a certain point I did ask that she consider our "hiking" more of a forest walk than scaling Mt. Everest. She settled on Diamond Head.

Though cooler in Waikiki than where I live, it was still warm and this hike is pretty exposed. I am not a warm weather hiker. My preference would have been to arrive at the trailhead at 6 am when they open. My buddy was not on board with that schedule. We were told that the easiest way to get from our hotel to the trailhead was via city bus #23. Off we went at about 6:30 or 6:45 to walk to the bus stop. Bus #23 never came. We waited nearly an hour and no bus. Apparently they run on "ish" time. Neither of us could figure out the online bus schedule either. We returned to our hotel totally defeated. S really wanted to do the hike but by this time it was already after 8 and getting warmer. I decided to just pay for a taxi to get us there and off we went. The "pros" were already on their way back down when we began our ascent.

I must point out that I managed to accidentally delete all of my camera photos from this hike so most of these were taken by S. Some I captured with my phone which I managed to keep.

This is not a difficult hike really, though you begin down inside the cone and climb up.There are lots of switchbacks and stairs.  I slowed us down and S let me slow us down, graciously. The trail itself has pretty uneven footing in many areas. In the worst spots, it's very narrow and you've got folks coming in the opposite direction. No twisted ankles!

A few views on the way up or down:

 At the top:

At the top of Diamond Head there is a concrete structure that has "keep off" all over it. S captured this photo of feet hanging over the side of the structure you are not supposed to climb on.

We also saw folks climbing under railings meant to keep them safe to get that " prefect selfie." I overhead a young man suggest to his father that he climb through a gate to take a better picture. The father replied that he wanted his son to learn to obey rules. The son replied, " So not cool!"  Good for the dad.

Notice the crowds that can be seen on the trail. It's actually more of a parade as the day wears on. This density was seen in a few spots on our descent. The closer we got to the bottom, the more dense the crowds walking up became.

I must mention this bird we saw. I thought at first it was the same bird I've seen in the Southwestern US. Nope!  It's not the Pyrrhuloxia cardinal, this bird is species Paroaria coronata and it's a tanager.

These 3 looks pretty similar to me but 2 are in the cardinal/grosbeak family and the other one is now in the tanagers along with summer, vermilion and scarlet to name a few. I know DNA is the gold standard, but... . Thoughts?