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.