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Published: July 18th 2014
Aloha again.
I think that last I wrote was the photo catch up at McDonalds at Hale’iwa so I’ll continue from there.
We carried on driving up the west side of the island to a beautiful botanical gardens at a placed at a little place called Waimea Valley. This is a privately owned and run gardens that features a 1.2 km gently uphill walk through a ‘man planted’ tropical rainforest of plants and trees etc. from all over the American continent and the Pacific. It is truly magnificent in the number of different plant, flower and tree species that had been planted. It was in a big valley that was bounded by very tall rock escarpments on both sides with a creek/small river running right along the bottom of it. That water all came via a lovely, not really big but still impressive, waterfall which was right at the end of the walking paths.
Joy had spotted a write up about in her various trips to Google and really wanted to see it. It was well worth the longish drive and the effort of walking up the ‘gentle’ slope in what was
about 85 degrees F and humidity of at least 99%!!!!. It was like being in a sauna surrounded by all this very green vegetation. Thankfully many of the trees were a thing called ‘Monkey Pods’ which are incredibly big spreading canopies and are grown for their shelter…..and that they did very well. However it didn’t stop us both from being absolutely saturated within the first 200 metres!!!!
However it was a really lovely place and in true entrepreneurship fashion they had an ice cream and soft drink stall at the waterfall so needless to say that was a very welcome sight.
After wandering back downhill to the car park we drove a little further up the coast to try to see the famous ‘Banzai Pipeline’ surfing beach. We found it no problems but the surf was flatter than the proverbial pancake so no big curlers to see. There weren’t even any surfers there. Must be the wrong time of the year for the big surf as we haven’t seen a decent wave anywhere.
We continued down the west side of the Island and loaded Pearlridge Shopping Mall into the GPS as
we had to head to the ‘licenced’ NBA shop there to try to find an NBA short for grandson Jodus…..special request. Those GPS’s are marvelous machines!!!!! Took us straight to the mall….AGAIN…and we found the shirt requested….Dwayne Wade from Miami Heat. Just an aside to show how fickle the sports fans are over here. If you follow sport you will have seen that Le Bron James, arguably the best NBA basketball player going around at the moment has just left Miami Heat, after they lost the NBA finals, and gone back to his old team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. This only happened a week ago and already his Miami Heat shirts are half price!!!!!
Joy also found a couple of tops in a shop next to the NBA shop that she liked so they went in to a bag as well and we headed home to the condo. It was getting on a bit by now and the traffic was a little heavier but got back OK and headed to the 16
th floor.
We went to a ‘buffet’ dinner place just on the corner down from the hotel for dinner.
Tuesday was
a really special day. We had booked a 10am appointment with the Dolphin Excursion Company at Waianae which is out on the West Coast on the leeward side of the island. This was billed as a ‘snorkel with the dolphins, turtles and reef fish’ experience and that’s just what it turned out to be with a big bonus, which I’ll get to shortly.
We drove the hour long drive to Waianae which is an a very different part of Oahu. Being on the leeward side of the island means that it is very dry and arid as opposed to the north and west side where we had been yesterday. This was lush and green and very tropical rainforest due to the rain they get. Waianae was almost like Hawkes Bay in a drought!!and it is a very undeveloped part of the Island compared to many other areas. We drove through a huge industrial park that had all sorts of businesses including a huge oil refinery and through more ‘normal’ residential suburbs before hitting the marina at Waianae.
They kitted us out with life jackets, fins, masks and snorkels and we walked, with about 20
others down to the big aluminium pontoon type boat with 2 massive Yamaha outboards and headed out to sea. It was a very hot sunny day and we smothered up with sun lotion as best we could. We felt very old on the trip!!!!!definitely the grandparents….as everyone else was about 20 years old apart from one couple from somewhere in the States with a couple of young boys. What a fantastic experience it was. We motored out off shore until they found a big pod of ‘spinner dolphins’ that were moving down the coast. They told us a bit about the animals etc. and waited their turn to take us in to get into the water with them. You can’t get anywhere really close to touch or anything like that but they took us up ahead of the pod and we got into the water and watched as they all swum past us either on the surface or just underneath us. We did this twice and got fantastic views of dozens of them swimming past us, about 10 – 15 feet away….MAGIC!!!! Got some good shots on the under water camera which hopefully will upload to the blog….when we get
internet access.
We then headed back up the coast towards an area where there was a large reef under the water where green turtles and reef fish lived and we were to snorkel there as well. However the skipper, a lady marine biologist said that she had a feeling that there was something going on at sea judging by the way the dolphins were behaving. They apparently appeared a bit agitated so she went further out to sea to see what was happening. We ran into a huge pod of pilot whales!!!!!something that happens very rarely, maybe 2 or 3 times a season so LUCKY us. (The dolphins are apparently quite scared of the pilot whales hence their agitated behavior recognised by the marine biologist,) She stopped the boat and allowed the whales to head past us but they got really curious and turned around and some of them came right over to the boat, bobbing their heads up out of the water to look at us and making those loud squeaking sounds that whales make. They eventually went ‘down’ and we thought that would be it but we just sat there for a few minutes more
The 'Alae ula'
Saw this at Waimea and thought they had stolen our Pukeko but it is named as above and is a native to Oahu but is endangered species hence all the rings on its legsand back some of them came. At this time the other marine biologist on board, Jim, who had a big underwater video and still camera got into the water and just either laid on top or dived down a little to get some photos. One of the whales, a juvenile, got really curious and came right over to him and swum around him giving him the eyeball treatment and really vocalising at him. It was just an incredible thing to see and a real bonus for us.
They all eventually went down again and with the marine biologists on board on a real high we headed for the reef. We snorkeled on top of it for 30 minutes or so as several large green turtles swum around below us along with heaps of coloured reef fish.
We eventually headed back to the marina after 3 hours of wonderful experiences on the water, got changed and had lunch which was part of the tour deal. We purchased the photos taken by Jim throughout the whole time and are looking forward to getting them by email sometime in the next week or so.
We decided to head back up the north side of the Island and back down the east side as much as time would allow so headed off, stopped again at McDonalds in Hale’iwa on the way past to check emails and check on the debit card balance!!!and then continued on around the Island. We stopped and went into Turtle Cove right at the northern tip of Oahu where there is a huge resort including a big Arnold Palmer designed golf course. We walked down to the beach and had a look around before continuing to drive down the eastern side taking in all the scenery on the way. This part of the Island is very underdeveloped as far as the tourism side of things go and while it has a lot of nice beaches there are no resorts, just local residential areas and some of it is fairly basic. The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) have a huge ‘city’ over here with a massive temple and a university and they are building a hotel next to the university which won’t be finished until 2016. Even the big shopping centre over here closes on Sunday which is a bit unusual, but in
keeping with the fact that everyone is part of the Church.
We headed back down the coast and eventually took the road that headed over the Likelike Highway near to the middle of the Island and back to Honolulu and the condo.
Wednesday was to be a very early start, being picked up at 5am for the all day photography tour that Joy had pre-booked before we left home so we opted for a takeaway meal from a place called the ‘Food Pantry’ just round the corner where as well as having a huge supermarket, they have a very nice counter serving takeaway meals so some nice steak, veges and rice for me and a BBQ chicken and rice with green salad for Joy and it was back upstairs to eat, download some photos and off to bed reasonably early by our recent standards, about 9.30pm.
It is now Wednesday and we hit the showers at 4am and headed downstairs to be picked up by Alex from Oahu Photography Tours for what was called the ‘Sunrise’ tour. It was pitch black outside when he picked us up and we were the
only people on board as we headed out through Waikiki and up the east side of the Island to a beach where we watched the sunrise etc. This was Joy’s special day for photography and Alex was really great with her, teaching her heaps about how to get the best out of her Canon with all the various settings etc., many I’m sure she knew nothing about. She had a ball taking over 800 photos during the course of the 10 hour tour and learning so much about how to use the camera and also how to make the most of what she was actually seeing and getting great photos at the same time. We stopped at heaps of places that we probably would never have either found or got to if we had been by ourselves. I did a bit of videoing at many places but it was a great way of really seeing the Island as well. We stopped at a little country food market and had a ‘breakfast bagel’ and a drink for breakfast and later in the day stopped at a local fruit and vege market where they did a local delicacy…..banana wrapped in a pastry
type wrap and deep fried……YUMMMY!!!!! Also bought some ‘banana/macadamia’ bread here for later at the condo.
We saw a huge Banyan Tree at one beach that was about 150 years old and has featured in many movies and TV shows like Pirates of the Caribbean and Lost. Saw a huge ‘limestone’ rock just of shore that had a huge hold punched through the middle of it in a huge tsunami in 1946 and we finished the day at Turtle Bay watching heaps of very large green turtles swimming around in a small bay right close to the shore. Alex drove us back to the Condo where we arrived at 3pm, ABSOLUTELY KNACKERED!!!!!!
All in all it was a fabulous day, very sunny once the sun got up, and plenty of sun screen on top of the already sunburnt arms and legs after yesterday on the water and a great way to see much of the Island. It certainly doubled as a photography and sightseeing tour and was well worth the money.
After a short ‘read’ on the bed!!!!!we headed down into Waikiki to do some bits and pieces of shopping that
Joy had on her ‘to do’ list, buying bits and pieces to take home to people.
We finished the day with a lovely meal at a restaurant called ‘Chilly’s’ just around the corner where they had the most varied and extensive menu I think I have ever seen in a restaurant and what turned out to be the most fantastic food we have had when eating out for a long time. I had a combo steak and pork ribs with mashed potato and steamed broccoli and Joy had chicken enchiladas and honestly it was food to die for and very reasonably priced to boot.
Tomorrow we have a 45 minute helicopter ride booked for the afternoon and will probably go snorkeling at Haunama Bay in the morning but we will see what the new day brings!!!
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