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Hawaii

#5 – March 10th – Walmart again, more Ava in the water

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I don’t think I have any photos for this one either, but I need to have a good scouring of my photo sources to make sure. Later. I have 4 camera-like devices myself, and Miranda, to collate.

This is an easy one to write – we put Ava in the water again in the morning. I wanted to get her in there again before we tried kayaking in any form, to make sure for sure she was ok. This was more of a functional try – we tried out her lifejacket, and her new floaty tube, and her lifejacket with her new floaty tube. Unfortunately for her, the latter looks safest. She’s very small still, and with just the floaty she tilts forward to much. Or maybe just the jacket, depending on how we make this kayak work. We were thinking of pulling her tube behind us (it’s a very lazy river) in the tube.

We did that in the morning because the forecast was for overcast and rain all afternoon, and there were spots of sun that morning so I bolted out into the spotty sunshine. That afternoon, as we packed up for our third trip to Walmart, it was sunnier than ever. >.<

 

How I can pad this entry? Food.

We’ve been to Oahu 3 times now, and the food here is excellent, across the board. Even the stuff that isn’t great, is pretty great. We have a number of places that are top top top picks that we crave when not here:

  • Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck. This place has a massive line-up, even before the open. And the food is super simple – pile on like 20 cloves of garlic, 15 big shrimps and 2 scoops of the whitest white rice you can imagine. Serve. It’s assaultingly garlicy, but man is it good. (I avoided it for now)
  • North Shore Tacos. For me, this is quintessential North Shore food. These tacos are amazing, and it doesn’t hurt that at this point they are linked in my mind with enjoying sunshine and reggae with Ava.
  • Konos. Or the Surfing Pig. This one isn’t on Miranda’s list, I don’t think, but I really like it. Lots of options for how you want your BBQ pig served to you. Last time we had the breakfast wrap with eggs and potatoes and pulled pork. This time I had a sandwich with bacon and ham and pulled pork. I don’t see how you can go wrong!
  • The Sushi Place. I didn’t even know the name until I just looked it up, because there’s only one sushi place up here — Banzai Sushi. Last time we were there we had a King Salmon that was to die for. It was very expensive though. And we haven’t been this trip yet. Soon.
  • Uncle Bobo’s BBQ. I mentioned this a few entries back – awesome BBQ, but unfortunately closed for renovations right now, with no mention of when they’ll be back. Their sauce is worth buying a truck load of bottles of and bringing it home.

And a few places we’ve been before that aren’t necessarily top-picks:

  • Teddy’s Bigger Burgers. This place is good, but not great. It’s an easy choice though – it’s hard to go wrong with any burger topping choice you could imagine wanting.
  • Hale’iwa Joes. We’ve been here twice and I don’t think we’ll go again. Bad service both times (so much so that Miranda has now left a bad review on TripAdvisor) and the food has been mediocre both times. It’s #3 in Hale’iwa in TA, so we’re left wondering what other people see what we don’t. It’s location in the harbour doesn’t have enough of a beach or ocean view to make up for it’s short falls.
  • Matsumoto’s Shave Ice. An institution, like Giovanni’s, the line-ups here are lengthy. And it’s good, don’t get me wrong – we’ve been twice this trip alone. But San Lorenzo Shave Ice just down the block did just as good last we were there.

We’ve tried a few new places this trip:

  • Beachhouse. This place is brand new to us. It’s right across the street from the beach in between Ali’i and Hale’iwa beach parks. And it looks nice. To me, it reminds me of the Cactus Club in English Bay that’s on the beach, except in a place where you can have an entire side of the building open to the air because it never gets cold enough to close it. Everything inside looks nice and crisp and new. Miranda had a steak sandwich she didn’t super love (to spicy), and I had a Thai BBQ sandwich served on a Taro bun that was pretty good. Wouldn’t go back, but wouldn’t avoid it either.
  • Cholo’s Mexican. Mexican food is the food I would choose to eat forever if someone told me I had to pick an ethnicity. The food here was stock-standard Mexican, which in my opinion, is never bad. But I wouldn’t crave it like the top list.
  • Chili’s. This place reminded me of Boston Pizza – like a family restaurant mixed with a bar. The food was adequate, the service was only saved because the lady adored our baby (interacting with Ava is bonus points for servers — just do it, we love it — and can save otherwise questionable service)

 

So far, nothing to add to our top-picks list. But except for Chili’s, which is a chain restaurant and in Miliani, the food in Hale’iwa continues to be worth dreaming about!

 

Hawaii

Last Actual Day For Reals

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Typing this from my desk at home, so hopefully we’ll get some more photos and videos going shortly…we’ll see what the afternoon brings.

We woke up early and drove into town for another recommended breakfast place called Kono’s. Their logo is a pig riding a surfboard. We both had a breakfast burrito, which was excellent, although Miranda regretted not realizing that she’d gotten the kalua pork burrito instead of the bacon burrito.

We drove to a nearby beach that was said to have excellent snorkeling called Three Tables. When we arrived there were a ton of families swimming around, more than we’d seen anywhere yet. This was some pretty good snorkeling, better when you get closer to “the tables”, with lots of nooks to look into and lots of big fish to check out. The downside is that the surf was somewhat kinetic, and I didn’t want either of us swimming close enough to the wrong side of the rocks to be pushed around on them. We swam for a bit and then came in.

Back at our place, we packed our stuff up for the last time and said our goodbyes. This was a great place to stay. It had mediocre reviews on AirBnb, but the fact that it was right on the ocean made up for any perceived faults. Unless you needed A/C and restaurants right outside your door instead.

We drove back into Hale’iwa an had North Shore Tacos again, confirming their status as the best place to eat on the island.

Then we got started on a long drive. We’d showered and didn’t want to get wet and dirty again, so we planned to drive the rest of the island today. We drove along our little road until it ended in Ka’ena Point, the western most tip of O’ahu.

From there we drove down the middle of the island from Hale’iwa, and found our way on the H1 a massive highway of 4 lanes and a speed limit of 55. Considering every road I’d been on recently had been 25, this was a big deal. Unfortunately, there is no road connecting the island at Ka’ena Point, so we drove all the way down to Pearl City and then back up the western coast up to Ka’ena Point…from the other side. On this side the waves were pretty big, getting on 4-6 feet tall in some places, and we watched a few surfers who actually knew how to stand up and navigate a wave.

We drove back down the coast (with a pit stop or two in the middle) and ended up near ‘Ewa Beach and watched some more surfers as the sun went down.

Had dinner at Big Kahuna’s Pizza and Stuffs, there was no pizza. We had pizza sandwiches. And then had a frustrating drive around the airport area trying to find a gas station, with no luck and just returned the car as is. I think we lost $5 in the deal, which I consider just fine.

At the airport, it was empty. It took us 4 minutes to go through security, and we were first in line for baggage drop. We played a few games, rounding out Yahtzee out to 6 games with me being the overall winner for the weekend. Roll Through the Ages we played 7 games, but couldn’t find a sheet for one of them so only scored 6 and Miranda was the overall winner. Lastly we played Forbidden Island, which is a co-op game and I’m considering myself the winner for having convinced Miranda to play it with me. 😛

We got on the plane around 11:30, First Class. We’d upgraded our seats for $150 each, which was worthwhile for the leg room and extra recline. We both slept, but it was a horrible sleep. I woke several times and looked up to see the flight attendants having a conversation with a passenger right in front of me…like…I’m trying to sleep, shut up, sort of thing. The last time I woke up I decided to just leave it and read. I asked where we were in the flight, and she told me that we had just started to descend. O.O 5 hour flight, apparently I slept for it.

We landed in Bellingham, easily grabbed our stuff and got on a Quick Shuttle to Vancouver really quickly after getting some food. Fell asleep there, broken only by the border and the next thing I know we’re getting off at 12th and Cambie to grab a car2go home.

Now the cats are needy, I have a billion photos to process and a lot of other things that need doing and…hi!

Hawaii

Last Full Day

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I find writing super easy, and photo editing and organizing difficult so I have a ton of photos to deal with, but instead you get more writing. 😛

We didn’t have much of a plan this morning, but started with breakfast made in our kitchen. We talked a bit and decided to go Stand-Up Paddleboarding up the river in Hale’iwa bay. A quick drive, and an illegal parking spot (which we didn’t notice until we got back), a conversation with a dude who’s job it was solely to rent us boards and we were paddling our way up the river.

The river was brown and murky, and I didn’t really want to fall in it. Which is rough, since SUPing is a very balancey activity. We paddled about a half hour up the river, saw a giant turtle with a barnacle on his back and then paddled back.

I suggested that we drive back to Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck (about a half hour away) and then try to find one of the Lost beaches nearby. The shrimp wasn’t as good the second time, it felt less like it was assaulting my mouth with garlic and more like it was a good heavy helping of garlic. When all you want is to be slapped in the face with garlic…

The beach was called Papa’iloa Beach and it’s the location of most of the beach filming on Lost after half way through the first season. They started filming on Moke’leia Beach, but apparently the winter storms threatened to flood the set (which is actually outlined in an episode) and filming moved. We found the beach and walked down to it and started hiking. It was apparently about a 15-20 walk down the beach.

We walked about 5 minutes before we came upon 3 girls throwing green stuff into the water. Miranda cried out and at the edge of the rocks in the waves were 8 turtles all swimming around trying to get at the green stuff. 8 large turtles. In one area. Miranda quickly stripped down to her bathing suit, and convinced me to do likewise and we were in with our snorkel camera. The waves were kind of rough so we had to be very careful to stay out of their way, and keep our footing. But ho-man, 8 turtles.

As we walked along the beach, we found another turtle sunning himself on the beach. And a few more in the water. We’d found the Kingdom of Turtles!

After 15 minutes Miranda decided she wasn’t interested in continuing to walk. I was in the middle of a good, solid, obsession, and wanted to keep going. We compromised, with her stopping to photograph some more turtles and we continuing on along the beach. I walked for another 20-25 minutes and came around the corner to find Hale’iwa Beach Park. If the film set had been near that park, my directions would have said to come from that direction…I turned around, having failed, and took a bunch of photos in case Miranda recognized the locations at all.

When we got back I asked her to drive. I’d been hiking for near 1.5 hours, in bare feet along the sand. My feet are throbbing right now, and telling me that they didn’t like what I did, but that they’ll forgive. Eventually.

We came back and had a shower. And moisturizer.

Dinner was at Breakwater, which got good reviews in our Big Blue Book but mediocre reviews in our book. The garlic fries were a $3 addon where the cook seemed to sprinkle garlic powder on them. (in truth, they were tossed with olive oil, garlic and garlic powder, but compared to Giovanni’s where they practically give you an entire garlic bulb with your order, it was lackluster. Miranda’s fish and chips arrived and she wondered about tartar sauce. I pointed at a sauce in a bottle on the table, and we both tried it and were sure it was either chipolte mayo or thousand island… we were told it was the tartar. It was no tartar I’d ever tried. My own meal was pleasant and unremarkable. Although I did end up eating my fries with the “tartar” instead. 😛

Back at the home I walked the slackline a bit and Miranda lay in a hammock and read. We watched the sun go down while I wrote the last blog post and she continued to read.

Tomorrow we have a few options, but they depend on when we have to be out of this place. And also how various muscles stand up…

Hawaii

Lies!

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We woke up at 440am to go look at baby turtles at a nearby beach.

While this story continues, please keep in mind that I’m the sort of person who _will_ wake up at a ridiculous hour in order to see something amazing. There’s a finite amount of amazing things in this world (although a large number) and if you miss one, you may regret it.

We’re up and eating hard boiled eggs prepped the night before and granola bars and out the door. Miranda offers to drive, which is nice since my eyes are barely open and I want to study the book to make sure I know where the beach we’re going to is.

“I have a confession to make.”

Uh-oh.

“We aren’t going to see baby turtles.”

G’damnit. I love turtles, and babies are just so damn cute!

“I was thinking about how we always go away for my birthday, but not for yours, so how about we call today your birthday, ok?”

Ooookkkk…

We take a left at Dillingham Airport, which I’m later told is totally a coincidence that it’s 3 minutes down the street from our place. A lot of things are running through my mind – what would we be doing at an airport at 5am? We park the car and she leads me towards a hangar that has a light on, containing…

Powered hang gliders!! Aka, trikes.

We’d looked at this activity some months ago but had dismissed it and had a ton of other stuff we wanted to do, so never looked back. I’m told that Miranda has instead started talking with the owners about how to orchestrate a surprise sunrise flight for me! They had instructions that if I were to call, they would claim to be busy. My lady love did a phenomenal job of keeping this from me, even while she apparently wanted to tell me about it the whole thing. I claim “lies!” 😛

Flying is a funny thing. They can’t give “rides”, it’s not allowed. They can give instruction though! So Denise and Thomas, a husband and wife team who love flying and run Paradise Air, taught us a whole bunch of neat stuff about flying around this end of O’ahu with trikes! These things are seriously badass – like a little motorcycle with a hang glider attached to it, they drive up to 90mph with an accelerator and a bar in front of the pilot to control lift, descent and turning. A lot of principles from paragliding apply, so I had a leg up on the instruction.

We flew down to our last place in Hau’ula, across the pineapple fields at 30 feet, above and over the clouds along the coast, back along past Sunset Beach and Hale’iwa. An hour of effortless flying, and I got to control the device for the most part (with Tom telling me where to go, via the finest mic/headset combo I think is possible).

I’ve got some photos to post from a DVD, but let me tell you – if you have the time, the money and the desire, do this! So amazing.

We drove home to Cafe Hale’iwa for breakfast and had pancakes! And then…home for a nap. Happy birthday! 😛

Unfortunately, after that both of us were pretty sleepy for the rest of the day. The sort of sleepy where you can barely keep your eyes open, and find that it’s 9am and then 1230 and then 3, when you expect it to be 1230, 3 and 6. We made lunch at our place and then went outside to visit the ocean at our doorstep. It was pretty wavey, with a rocky bottom that made standing in it difficult. After a while, Miranda decided to go in and I went swimming. My goal was to find a narrow underwater channel that I’d seen from the air that morning. I swam for probably 45 minutes through a ton of coral and fish and rocks until I decided I’d had enough, got out and took 7 minutes walking back to where I’d started. Fish are dumb, walking rules.

We drove into Hale’iwa and found the North Shore Tacos truck. We enjoyed their static location in La’ie, and loved their truck just as much. This place is hands down the best food I’ve had on the island, if you’re in O’ahu eat here. We only had a single taco each, as we had a plan to go to Killer Tacos and do a comparison. Science!

First, we wandered through town. I’ve described Hale’iwa previously, and it stands. It has a lot of touristy surf shops, a bunch of knick-knack shops and a ton of restaurants. We wandered in and out of shops and I bought a shirt and Miranda got a neat turtle-themed bottle opener and a present for her mom.

Killer Tacos did not compare. The food was good, but it didn’t hold a candle to North Shore Tacos.

At night we watched a few more episodes of Lost and then passed out from a long day!

Hawaii

What to do?

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For whatever reason, on this trip we’d left the planned activities to a minumum. We usually have something every other day that we’d booked or scheduled, but for this we left it mostly up to a spur of the moment decision.

This hadn’t worked out so well, simply because you expect Hawaii to be sunny and warm and we had gotten rainy and overcast all week. Turns out that’s what happens when you spend your days on the windward rain forest side of the island.

Hoooowever, Thursday morning the sun was out and the clouds were light and fluffy and I was determined to get  out in the sun! I had been eyeballing a kayak trip in Kane’ohe Bay – you paddle out about a half hour and spend some time on a sunken island – at low tide it has about a foot of water over it, and it’s about 2 miles by 1 mile of sand. We drove down the coast again and rented one double kayak and started paddling!

This was a terrific idea, we had a ton of fun. The sandbar was really neat to see, and it was great to make it there on our own steam. There were numerous tour boats driving in and out of the area, but we got to paddle around, drop anchor, snorkel a bit and then rinse and repeat. We spent about 3 hours on the water, heading back after that long because both of our arms and backs were tired – neither of us paddles very often. 🙂

We got back in the car and drove back up the coast towards our accommodations for our last few nights on the island. Just past the town of Hale’iwa, which is famous for it’s North Shore surf breaks during the winter. It’s a neat little town – big enough to support a huge surf population during the winter, but winding down because the winter season is just ending this week or last.

We found another shrimp truck, Macky’s, and decided that it wasn’t as good as Giovanni’s from the other day.

That night Miranda convinced me to go to sleep very early and wake up very early to get to a beach on the westernmost tip of the island to get an early morning glimpse of turtles. I’m always up for waking up early for something exciting, particularly on Hawaii where we tend to stay on Vancouver time just to be able to do these early morning excursions.

We watched a few episodes of Lost (filmed near here…) and then went to sleep listened to the ocean. Our new place is literally right on the ocean – at high tide I can take 10 steps and be in it.

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!