Does anyone use binoculars?
 

When we visit Hawaii in April I was wondering if someone can recommend somewhere we could buy good binoculars?

We arrive early a.m. on a Tuesday and have 4 nights on Oahu then 4 on Maui. We plan visiting Diamond Head and Haleakala and have used our binocs in our high country in Australia, but they are old, so rather large and heavy.

I wondered whether I may have a chance of picking up something better than what's available here in Oz.

Your valuable guidance would be appreciated.

I would buy them before I got there. Save time, and you can shop for a what you want. Best Buy, Acadamy.

I think you should buy in advance as well; it's just my opinion, but there's nothing worse than shopping under pressure.

I always recommend www.eagleoptics.com
Binos at all price points, and they give excellent advice as well; they don't always try to sell you the more expensive thing. I hope they can ship to Oz... or wait! Could they ship to your hotel in Hawaii??? That could work very smoothly...

The first time we went to Maui we took some binoculars. We've been there several times since and have bought another pair - one for each of us. I could pack pretty light if I didn't have to find a place in the suitcase for them. We bought both pairs at Walmart. Good quality and a decent price.

Prices are probably better in Honolulu than in Australia, but your post header is misleading - if you want somebody from Honolulu to tell you where to buy binocs on arrival, post with the header "Where to buy binoculars in Honolulu"

Also look at http://honolulu.craigslist.org/ - if only to make a friendly contact and get an email back from somebody, whether you buy theirs or not. Binocs appear sometimes in Sporting, sometimes in Photo-Video.

Also google White Pages and Yellow Pages for Honolulu and look under sporting goods and optics etc.

I just bought a monocular from Amazon.com for my Hong Kong trip.
So far, I like it much better than my binoculars.
This is the pair I got... they are a little larger than a regular birding monocular but I wanted something that would zoom further.

http://www.amazon.com/Barska-Bluelin...290&sr=8-1

Lots of great suggestions - thanks everyone.

Yes I was definitely thinking I would get a better deal buying in the US. I had not thought about buying online.

Will investigate all avenues.

DalaiLlama I was sort of hoping to find out if it was worth having binocs. We took them to England and hardly used them (they don't have mountains :) just pretty hills and dales). Looks like they would be good to have though in Hawaii. Thanks for suggestions to follow up.

TxTravelPro I will certainly ponder your suggestion of a monocular as I have difficulty keeping binocs still!! But that's also a reason for trying for something lighter.

Thanks again to all

Do you know, now that I think about it, shopping at Walmart would be a novel experience for us. I'll probably go there just for the heck of it :).

I will check out online prices and if there is time to get a good deal shipped here before we leave then I'll have to think about it.

Great idea to ship to hotel NewbE I'll bear that in mind too.

Look at binoculars.com. They have a complete selection and the prices are reasonable. A lot come with free shipping (but maybe only in the US).

I bought a monocular for travel because I pack light. It's about the size of two fingers. It's really powerful (varies from 10-30x), I use a tiny tripod to keep it steady at full power.

We took some pocket binoculars that were really sufficient for whale watching--and it was so nice to pack them and to always carry them with us. I would think by April that the whales will not be as plentiful as they were when we visited in Feb. and they were everywhere. When do they start making their trek back to Alaska?

If you see what looks like a puff of smoke on the water, look toward that spot--generally a whale will jump, tail slap, etc. Watching the whales from our lanai on Kauai every morning still ranks up there as one of my most enjoyable travel experiences. I was totally amazed by the whales.

I've often told the story on this board about watching a whale show from the beach at the Maui Prince Hotel. A mother, her calf and 2 males put on an unbelievable show for about a half hour. The mother and her calf decided they had had enough when the 2 males started jousting and putting on quite a performance. She decided to hide behind a boat of snorkelers at TurtleTown. You have never seen snorkelers get out of the water so fast--one snorkeler said all she saw was a giant eye. It was written up in the Maui paper the next day. It was unbelievable--even for the boat captain. He was also amazed.