My Mom and I have spent the first five days on the 'windward' or East side of Oahu, in the area of Hawaii Kai or East Honolulu. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast of a retired couple that has been living on the island for over 35 years. After traveling most of the day Wednesday, I picked my Mom at the airport around 4:30pm and we spent some time in traffic making our way to our place. We were both pretty tired, me because of the camp life mentality up by sunrise, asleep by dark. My mom had been up since 3am East coast time so it had been a long day. We went to Kona Brewing Company for a quick dinner and then went to bed. We both really liked the ambience of the restaurant with big open wooden beams and a nice breeze off the marina but the food was so-so.
Thursday morning we decided to head to Hanauma Bay and spent the day relaxing at the beach and snorkeling in the bay. Hanauma Bay is a marine nature preserve and there is an admission fee. Because of how crowded it gets you actually have to watch a video about how to protect the coral reef and be safe while using snorkel equipment. Despite, the large crowds there were a lot of fish in the reef but no turtle sightings. The water was much too shallow for turtles. You would have had to go pretty far out before the reef finally dropped off. That night we had a pretty low key dinner at a Greek restaurant by the house and went to bed pretty early again. There were four other people staying at the BnB; a couple from Japan that barely spoke any English, and a guy named Tom from Milwaukee with one of his employees from his pet store, who never spoke a word to us. Needless to say, there wasn't much deep conservations or wild parties happening back at the house.
Friday we woke up early and went for a hike at Manana Trail. This was a 6 mile loop that led to the Waimano waterfall. Unfortunately, the waterfall was more of a trickle but the hike was a lot of fun with ropes to climb and some steep rocks to maneuver. The trail was near Pearl Harbor which is why we chose it. Afterwards, our plan was to go visit Pearl Harbor for the rest of the afternoon. To get to the hike and Pearl Harbor from where we were staying took close to an hour due to traffic. When we got there and parked we discovered that the tickets to the Arizona Memorial were sold out for the day. We did not look into going to Pearl Harbor ahead of time at all. We were pretty certain there wasn't much to it if you didn't go to out to the Arizona Memorial. We decided we would come back another day because we had to go all the way back to the car because no bags or purses were allowed in anyways.
Since we had the whole afternoon ahead of us, we decided to hike Diamond Head Monument which is less than a 2 mile hike but uphill and provides awesome views of Honolulu. We had a great time through the tunnels and running up the stairs, laughing and enjoying. Those types of hikes I typically tend to avoid because they are tourist traps and people who shouldn't be hiking are all over the trail with little kids, it's so crowded! I think despite that it was a fun hike and we enjoyed it.
After Diamond Head we didn't want to head back to Hawaii Kai during rush hour so even though it wasn't something we would typically do we decided to head to Waikiki and watch the sunset and go to happy hour. Waikiki was pretty ridiculous. All high-end stores; Fendi, Chanel, Louis Vuitton. I don't know why anyone from the mainland would buy anything from these stores? In New Jersey with tax free shopping it would make zero sense to pay 4.5% sales taxes on already overpriced luxury items. The sunset on the other hand, was gorgeous! One of the best I have seen on this trip! The ocean looked so clear, so blue. The only part of this beautiful scene was all the crazy protesters that came storming down the street.
Don't get me wrong I think some of things Trump has said and done is unacceptable for someone holding office. I also find it kind of silly that people with no real positions that didn't even take the time to vote just want to be upset and think their time is best served protesting something that has already happened. He is the president, we need to deal with it. We need to focus on things that are important, not how many people were at his inauguration or that some idiot from SNL bullied an innocent child. It does concern me that he already gotten rid of Obamacare, which may not be perfect, but is necessary and he is moving forward with the pipelines in the Dakotas, which Obama opposed.
Enough politics, on Saturday the weather was a factor, with rain and strong winds in the forecast. I wanted to hike the Lani kai pillboxes, can you guess why? As a pharmacist I was intrigued by the name of this hike! The "pillboxes" were actually old bunkers from World War II. In the beginning the wind was so intense it was actually kind of scary at times that you might blow right off the mountain. By bunker 2 it had started to rain so we took shelter for a bit and waited for it to pass. Someone told us you could continue on and there was a third bunker that was hidden and then the trail led down to a neighborhood and you could walk back from there. We decided to go for it and in the pouring rain trecked up and down the mountains, sliding at times! Even with the wind and rain we really liked the hike and had a great time, plus the views were incredible! We went to Kailua Beach Park after the hike but the wind prevented us from staying there for too long.
That night we went to Roy's. A nice restaurant in town that offered a pre-fixed menu. We both agreed that the pre-fixed menu was a good deal when compared to the rest of the prices on the menu for single entrees, neither of us were thrilled with our entrees and were happier at the Greek place for $15 a piece. There is definitely a ton of sushi and Asian style food here; Korean BBQ, Thai, Pho, you name it. Roy's was an upscale Hawaiian-Asian fusion type restaurant. I had macadamia encrusted mahi-mahi and my mom had salmon with a cold Asian noodle side. My favorite part of the meal was dessert, a molten lava cake and macadamia tart with prosecco and I'm not big on desserts.
Sunday we were back at Pearl Harbor with reservations to take a boat out to the USS Arizona Memorial. Once we arrived we discovered that no boats would be going to the memorial due to strong winds! As previously mentioned it took us about an hour to get there from our place and of course since we thought we planned in advance with tickets we never dreamed to double check that boats would be running. We went and walked around the museums and looked at the memorial from afar and realized it was not meant to be. We wanted to do another hike after leaving and thought we would finally make it to KoKo head, another big tourist area hike. We decided to do the Kuliouou Ridge Trail instead because it was a longer hike, around 5 miles out and back. It was great! Amazing views and a really fun trail with even some of the stairs KoKo head brags about.
For our last morning on the windward side we wanted to check out the Makapu'u tidepools and Manoa Falls. The weather yet again was a factor. The tidepools with the wind made it too dangerous to go down but we still enjoyed the hike up to Makapu'u Point. We met an interesting man who was hiking there with his family who were visiting from California. He asked us to take their picture and he took out a box of his wife's ashes. He explained that it was her favorite hike. We chatted for awhile about his life in Hawaii and about his daughters living in California, one of them in San Diego. I told him good luck spreading the ashes on such a windy day and he informed me he wasn't planning to spread her ashes but that he just brought her with him while he did the hike. The plan was once he died then his ashes would be mixed with hers and spread over Makapu'u Point. We left and headed for Manoa Falls which was closed due to high winds! A disappointment but we decided to head to the Dole Plantation instead.
The Dole Plantation was actually pretty cool. Totally geared for kids with a Pineapple Express train tour and a giant pineapple maze, but we actually had a great time. Of course the pineapple whip was delicious and my mom found more of the secret stations in the maze than me.
Now we will spend the rest of our trip on the 'leeward' side of the island, a small town called Waianae. Much more remote than Hawaii Kai we are right on the ocean, with gorgeous sunset views!
AROOOOO!!! 🌈🍍🌺🕉🐋🐢🌦💨
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