Monthly Archives: May 2014

Hawaii

Day 4 – We’re doing this, or else.

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After 2 days of not much going on, we firmed up in our minds that we were doing something. SOMETHING.

We started the day by making bacon and eggs in our kitchen. Mmmmm, breakfast. Then we drove down the highway around 20 minutes to Kualoa Ranch. This place has ATVing, horseback riding, jungle tours and a tour of a variety of movie locations. It’s gorgeous valley is the filming location of movies like Jurassic Park (most of this was filmed on Kuaui, but they finished filming here after a hurricane), and Lost. Lost is primarily why we cared, since we’re both Lost fans. 🙂

We did see the site of Hurley’s Golf Course, but unfortunately didn’t get much of a view of it. The bus traveled on, and we got a few photos only. This was a great tour anyway – relatively short, relatively inexpensive and an amazing view of some great mountains and meadows!

We had lunch at Uncle Bobo’s BBQ, a well rated local BBQ place. We bought some of their sauce it was so good.

On our way back we saw paragliders kiting in a park that we drove past, so we stopped to say hi. Unfortunately, their insurance requires that they not inflate within 50 feet of pedestrians, so while I just wanted to say hi and share stories, I was actually really in their way. I spoke with a guy whom we had seen doing some acro up and down the mountains range the day before, and we spoke with a guy who had been ground handling for 6 months on the beach and hadn’t actually flown yet! The local sites tend to be pretty rotory with strong winds and unforgiving mountains, so it totally makes sense. Still, I don’t know if I’d have gotten into the sport if I’d had to kite for 6 months before I was ready. Makes me glad we had such forgiving sites nearby Vancouver!

We drove on. Our goal – find the sunshine. We drove around the mountain range and around the tip of the island onto the North Shore, where the waves are still pretty big. Before we left on vacation we’d been told that the winter months had big waves, and were unsuitable for swimming in for all but expert swimmers. Unfortunately, it looks like we’re still near enough to winter that the waves are 6 feet still – tall enough that if we don’t find some good spots, we won’t be doing much water sports in them.

But we lucked out! There was a little tide pool just to the left of Sharks Cove which our book says is “good to let the kids splash around in”. We arrived at high tide, and it was so full of water that you could get fully submerged and get some real swimming in. This was excellent snorkeling, as we saw a ton of fish swimming around and enjoying the protection provided by the larger rocks! There still wasn’t much sunshine, and the water was colder than we’d really have liked, but it was what we needed!

We had dinner at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, a local institution. The garlic on these bad boys was potent, and we had a massive plate of shrimp to go through. Luckily we both enjoyed the garlic, otherwise that would have been an exercise in sleeping on the couch. 😛

We had a few games of Roll Through the Ages, watched X-Men 1 and then passed out.

Hawaii

Day 3, of the Diamond Head

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We woke up early this morning because we had heard that getting a parking spot at Diamond Head is a real pain in the ass if you aren’t there by 9am.

We walked to Eggs ‘n’ Things, about a 7 minute walk away. All of the runners we saw were not well-muscled men and we theorized that all the smart people ran at 7am when the city was cool, whereas the well-muscled men ran during the day to show off how well-muscled they are. ENT served a delicious mac nut pancake, the first time in a while where Miranda’s meal wasn’t decidedly more delicious than my own. 😛

Packed up our stuff and headed out from Honolulu. It was a super quick drive to Diamond Head! And we got the third to last parking spot, at 8:45am…lathered up the sunscreen, slipped on the toe shoes and started walking. It was about 45 minutes from the parking lot to the top, at our pace, and lots of cool things to see on the way up. The hike up the trail has plenty of spots to stop and turn around and look at the crater behind you. As well, the further up you go, the more of Honolulu you can see rising up over the crater. Towards the end the hike becomes a lot of stairs. At the top you are rewarded with an amazing view of the city, the crater and the surrounding ocean, as well as an older military bunker that you get to climb into and walk up or down the stairs inside. Back at the bottom of the trail we bought shave ice and water, and it was delicious.

We hopped back in our car and drove highway 72 along the coast towards Kailua. This was a nice drive, winding around the mountains. We stopped at a scenic point and took some photos of a bunch of wind swept rocks – very beautiful.

Then we just drove. There was a bunch of places that we could have stopped at, but the further east we went the more the weather turned to shit. Dark clouds and rain. We didn’t want to get out of the car, let alone go swimming, even though it’s still 25C with the warmest water you can imagine.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Fresh Catch in Kaneohe. Miranda got the fish and chips, which were delicious and I got the fried poke. It was a little spicier than I would have preferred, but still amazing. An excellent restaurant!

Our place for the next few nights is about a half hour north of Kaneohe, and we just drove. It’s just up the street from a little beach park, and although the place we’re staying in is really nice, this is the sort of area where there are trucks parked in the yard that haven’t moved for years, and another yard with a giant truck with giant wheels with it’s hood open.

We settled in and then drove back a bit to get dinner at the Shrimp Shack. Miranda had the coconut shrimp (a pattern…) and I had garlic shrimp. SO MUCH GARLIC. Very tasty.

The weather is still pretty crappy so we’ve watched a documentary on the Costa cruise that fell over in Italy and now watching a movie on kittens…it’s a tough life. Played a game of RTTA where I finally beat her, and we have some Yatzhee and Forbidden Island scheduled last tonight.

Tomorrow is up in the air…we have planned a movie tour, and then a few different ideas depending on what the weather is like. We’ll see how it goes…

Hawaii

Day 2! Not a whole heck of a lot…

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Day 2 we both woke up sore and tired. Not much happened.

We had breakfast downstairs of our place, in a restaurant called Cream Pot. Our book calls this “like being in a French fairytale cottage house.” He’s not wrong. I had the souffle pancakes, which were touted as containing no more than a tablespoon of flour each. Light as air, I didn’t really know if I was eating anything at all.

The weather was terrible, and we went back up to our room and played Roll Through the Ages until about noon. 😛 At which point we decided that we’d slouched around enough to go outside. We walked through Honolulu or Waikiki, towards Waikiki…or just towards the east, until we got tired of walking. Lots of sand. Lots of well-muscled men and women running without shirts on. Lots of Japanese tourists. We had lunch at a place called the Steak Shack, which was veeeery well rated on TripAdvisor. For $7 you get a plate of rice, lettuce+ranch and some well grilled beef. I think it was well rated because you can’t buy a can of pop for $7 here (joking…). For dinner we went to Lulu’s, a barish kind of place. Miranda had the coconut shrimp because she’s on a mission. I had something called a Loco Moco, which was a plate of rice with a beef hamburger patty on it, with two sunny eggs on top, surrounded by the saltiest gravy on the planet. It was delicious, but my grandma and father would have been horrified at the amount of salt. 😛

The night before I had tried to get some circus going on while Miranda was out, but had failed. The lady suggested I might try Kapiolani Park after 4pm on Sunday, as there is a get together. We walked over that way, and found the circus folks doing their thing, but I had to walk away. It was sort of a meet up, do your own thing training kind of thing, and I wasn’t prepared to show up and be a new guy and not really have much to do anyway…the only thing I’m good at is trampoline, which needs a trampoline…which you can’t do in a random park. Sad, but such is life.

We started to walk back but it was a long way back and decided to finish off with a short cab ride back. That night we watched the Amazing Race (the condo TV isn’t nearly as nice as ours :P) and some Lost and then went to bed. Early morning for hiking Diamond Head!

Hawaii

Back in Hawaii!

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We just couldn’t stay away…

Got on a flight at 6pm from Vancouver,  hours later we’re in Honolulu. A semi-stressful ride to our hotel – just finding our way in the dark, after a long flight and a long day and we’re both a little tired and grumpy – but we made it and both fell asleep super quick.

The next day I had a 6am shuttle to go diving! Miranda was hanging out at a stagette in the afternoon and evening, so this day would be spent almost completely apart.

I had decided to dive with Reef Pirates, a diving operation recommended to me by my friend Sean. This was an great recommendation – this is the only dive shop in this area I can see that isn’t all full of cattle-car like boats. I did 4 dives, the most I’ve ever done in a day! We started out by diving the Kahala Barge – a massive ship with tons of cool reef stuff growing on it. Just the size of this thing is impressive! At one point Sean found an octopus in a hole. He found a stick and put it into the hole, and moments later there was this black ink spewing out of the hole, with tentacles writhing and wrapping around the stick. Very cool! Then we went to Fantasy Reef, which was a great collection of rocks with lots more life growing all over the place.

We stopped at the dock to drop off some folks and pick up some more folks. I decided to get a burger for lunch, which wasn’t the smartest idea (diving — being horizontal for 40 minutes at a time), but was delicious. I went to Teddy’s Bigger Burger, and the smallest burger here was larger than most you’ll find in Vancouver. I did two more dives that afternoon. We went to Koko Craters and then Turtle Canyon. Apparently the turtles realized that they’d been pigeon-holed, and had stopped hanging out at Turtle Canyon. We did see an amazing National Geographic moment – I got video on my little snorkel camera of two turtles fighting over a piece of rock! I’ll try to post the video, but it may be a few days. 🙂 We had a new dive master for the afternoon, and two people on the boat who’d only barely finished their Open Water certs, so this was a bit of a different experience – a little more “follow the leader” and a little less “exploration”.

I got a ride back to our condo (which is on the 43rd floor of the building, facing the mountain – awesome view!). Miranda was just finishing her afternoon and we went out to Cheeseburger Honolulu for dinner – tasty, but not amazing. $4 Mai Tais and Pina Coladas were worth it though. 🙂

That evening she had an event to go to, so I had to figure out what to do. I had thought to find some circus or parkour in the city, which exists, but not on a Saturday night! So I thought instead to go for a run…but after diving all day, I was pretty damn tired. Instead I found a movie theatre and walked the half hour to it to go watch Spiderman 2, which was a pretty good movie. 🙂 I had only watched 1 on the plane the day before, so it was well timed. 😛

That night I walked back along the canal. Pretty. Sort of 80s TV crime drama-esque, in a way that I can’t quite explain. I got back and the bathroom light was on…I figured we’d left it on…when I hear a “Hello?”…apparently she’d gotten home minutes earlier and had thought I was asleep in bed so had left all the lights off! She was very very happy, in a drunken sense, so we hung out and talked about our days apart before both passing out in exhaustion. 🙂

Today is Sunday and we have nothing planned. We’re both pretty tired, so right now it’s a pretty chill day of having breakfast…playing a game or two…who knows what the afternoon will bring!