Advertisement
The ship is docked in Honolulu, Oahu today. Myself and a couple girls had planned to go to Pearl Harbor, then in the late afternoon do a tour of some film locations. You can’t make reservations at Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona Memorial; it’s just first come first serve tickets. We’d heard that the wait time at Pearl Harbor could be long, so we rented a car to enable us to get around the island more quickly. As soon as we were able to get off the ship, we were out and off to the rental car company. We got our car and headed to Pearl Harbor. I dropped the girls at the gate to not waste time with parking. We did everything possible. We arrived there by 9:30am. The tickets we were given were for 2:45pm! Even if we wanted to wait until then to see the memorial, it would have made getting to our already paid and booked film tour - on the other side of the island - impossible to get to. So the plan to see the Arizona Memorial - at least today - was abandoned.
We got back in the car and headed
off on an adventure to explore Oahu. It became a great spontaneous day!
We took the highway that cut up through the island towards the North Shore. Along that highway, we stopped at the Dole plantation. The Dole plantation is definitely a big tourist trap with prices to match. But it was interesting to walk around and see what they had there. There was a little garden with different types of pineapples growing and sign talking about the different types. Coming from a farm family, I appreciate the work put into growing and harvesting food. It astounded me when I read the numbers this plantation deal with - and that every single pineapple is planted and harvested BY HAND. It boggles me to think about the grocery store aisles with the shelves filled with canned pineapple and that all of that fruit - let alone the fresh stuff - was planted and harvested by hand. Mass food production is crazy.
The plantation had a bunch of different activities you could do - the world’s largest maze, a train ride, more gardens - but they were all paid-entry events and we wanted to save our money for other things
in Hawaii. We spent some time in the huge gift shop checking things out. I got a pretty fun t-shirt - bright yellow with a cartoon pineapple that says “hug a pineapple”. It’ll be fun to wear to teach dance classes in the summer.
Then we were back on the road. We passed by the pineapple fields with rows and rows of plants. Then we reached Oahu’s North Shore. We detoured off the main road to go see the town of Haleiwa. It was a very cool place, a real surfing town. Almost every shop had boards out front, or surf clothes, or sarongs hanging up. We had a quick lunch at a little café restaurant. The girls then went to check out some surf clothes. I went to experience what had me most curious in Haleiwa - Hawaii’s Best Shaved Ice.
Shaved Ice stands are all over the place in Hawaii. I had some in Kauai the other day. It was good, pretty much like a snow-cone from back home, except that I could get mango flavour (mango anything is my favourite). I was curious to know what the best shaved ice in Hawaii was like. They
sold it in a little general store. I ordered a mango ice. I asked the guy making it if I could take his picture for my blog; he laughed and said that he didn’t really have to do anything to make it except turn on the machine. Still, we tried to make it look like he’s hard at work for the photo! While he was making the ice, I read a sign they had up about what makes their shaved ice the best. There were a bunch of reasons - from the way their ice is made, the type of syrups, the temperatures each part is made, stored and served at. The last thing the sign said was something like, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make the best shaved ice, but that it is a science. Then I got my dish of shaved ice. And it really was incredible! It was so soft and smooth, it almost had the texture of ice cream, not as creamy, but pretty much as smooth. It just melted away on my tongue. And of course, it’s mango so I loved it.
After Haleiwa, we went back out on the road, travelling
along the North Shore. It was pretty. Nice beaches, lots of crashing surf waves. Some little villages along the way.
Then we made a stop at the Waimea Valley. I’d read that it was very pretty there and the pictures in the tourist brochures sure looked nice. So we paid the entrance fee and went in to check it out. The valley is like a massive garden, there are plants and trees and flowers from all over the world, not just Hawaii. It was really really beautiful to walk through. Big gorgeous lush trees everywhere. Little paths cutting through bushes and flowers. And of course, because it was a valley, there were big towering green mountains surrounding it all. At the far end of the valley’s path, about a 25 minute walk, was a waterfall. It was beautiful there. And you could swim! I really wished that we had the time to swim there. Pictures instead.
And then it was time to head off for our film location tour. That will be another entry . . .
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 12; qc: 26; dbt: 0.045s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
swills82
Sarah Willett
More gorgeous photos. Thanks for sharing them :) The pineapple t-shirt sounds totally awesome and campy :)