Mini Maui Vacation

Ever since we moved to Oahu, everyone has been telling us we needed to get off-island and see the other islands.  While we've wanted to do this for the past year, the logistics of having time off and someone to watch Molly have kept us from traveling.  So, with a lot of planning in advance, we had decided to take a long weekend at Easter to see Maui and celebrate Joe's birthday.

We took off on a Friday morning after leaving Molly at a doggie daycare and boarding place for the weekend.  The flight itself was only about 40 minutes long, but we flew through a front getting there and had a bouncy ride.  We had reserved a convertible for the weekend, so after arriving to Maui we got to pick our Camaro convertible out (I picked the red one...) and off we went.

The closest town to our cottage was Paia, a small, but very cute and active town on the north shore of Maui with lots of shops and restaurants.  We stopped for lunch at a place called Rock & Brews and in a "what a small world" moment, our waitress was from Richmond and had lived 3 blocks from me while we lived in the Fan District.  The food was great and it was a very fun atmosphere.

The place Joe had found was a great little spot on Airbnb, a little cottage on a 300 foot cliff at the beginning of the Hana Highway.  It was very quiet, very secluded, and allowed for gorgeous views.  That being said, it was 30 minutes from the closest town so we had to pick up a few essentials from the store.  So, by the time we had lunch and stopped at the store, it was time to check-in.  Good thing too, because at about that time the front we had flown through had caught up to us and the rain began.  We had been worried all week that it would rain all weekend, but luckily it was just for the first day.  We had some great views of the thunderstorm off-shore from our little cottage and, honestly, it was just nice to relax.  Our cottage was pretty much off the cell phone grid, so we were able to just relax and unwind the first night.

The next couple blog posts will talk about our excursions on the island, but I figured I could talk about the food on this one...

All our dinners were in Paia, and they were all good.  We ate at a pizza place called flatbreads on Saturday night and we both thoroughly enjoyed our meals.  It was a surprisingly large place, but they seemed to have trouble keeping up with orders as the night went on.  Despite that, it was quite tasty.  

Our best meal by far had to be at Mama's Fish House.  I had heard rave reviews of this restaurant on the Food Network and by people that had visited the island, so we had to check it out.  It's a bit on the high-end of the Maui restaurant market, but we were celebrating Joe's birthday and it was very much worth it.  I to a macademia nut encrusted, crab and lobster stuffed mahi mahi which was out of this world.  Joe got a filet mignon (not a big seafood fan), but his was outstanding as well.  We also had to try their Mai Tais, which they were very well known for.  Again, outstanding.  We highly recommend this restaurant if you get the chance to visit Maui, but make reservations as far out as possible.

We had an overall great trip to Maui and loved seeing how different it was from Oahu.  There is just so much more space, so many less people, and it just feels so much more natural and beautiful.  It's also so much easier to see the landscape even from just the car, it's beautiful.  Coming back to Oahu was a sad reminder of how over-crowded the island is and has us looking forward to our next off-island adventure.  Be on the lookout for the next couple of blog posts to hear about our Haleakala Crater adventure and our drive on the Highway to Hana.

Kaena Point Trail

With this post comes the end of Kathryn's visit with us.  It was a whirlwind, action-packed two weeks and we had a lot of fun with her.  Typical of her "go-go-go" spirit, we were doing activities up until she left (we literally came home from this hike, showered, ate, and left for the airport).

The Kaena Point Trail is well-known on Oahu as you can get there from two directions, the west side through Wainae or through the North Shore.  As you guessed, it is the point joining the north and west sides of the island.  We choose to go through the north shore access, as it has better views and is a little more established and safer than the west side.

When arriving for the hike, the road dead ends to a gate and we just parked alongside the road.  You are able to drive past the gate if you get a special permit and have a 4-wheel drive vehicle (Kat and I thought this would be a lot of fun on an ATV).  Once past the gate, you can walk the "road" for the vehicles or bear off and hike along the shoreline.  There wasn't much of an established path, but as long as the mountains stayed to our left and the water to our right, we figured we couldn't get lost.  The route was about 3 miles each way, and even with our route by the water, we moved along at a pretty good pace.  The waves were pretty big that day (30-35 feet) so it was pretty awesome to walk along the shoreline and see the power of the ocean.

I was glad we did this hike during the winter, because there is absolutely no shade.  No trees along the trails, nothing.  Once we got to the end of the trail, you reach a fenced-in nature preserve.  It was kind of interesting entering, there was a big heavy door to go through to enter.  It seemed a bit out of place to me as there wasn't anything built up around there to fence in or out, but I digress...

Once we entered the nature preserve, there is maybe another quarter or half mile of walking to the point.  Along the way, we passed plenty of Albatross birds that are protected here and very animated.  We caught a couple of males in a fight for a female, and then we cracked up when she flew off and left them to their dance.

When we got to the actual point, we were holding our breath.  One of the biggest things this trail is known for is the congregation of monk seals that meet up on the point.  Monk seals are seen more on Kawai, so they are a treat on Oahu.  We were worried that with the surf so big, they wouldn't find their way safely in, but we worried for nothing.  We found two big, lazy, sleeping seals laying out on the rocks in the sun.  The few people there were respectful and kept their distance, letting them sleep undisturbed (it took everything in me to not go stretch out next to them, haha!).

After watching the seals for a bit, we saw the time and decided to head on back to the car.  We took the vehicle road on the way back so it would be a little more direct and faster, since someone had to catch a flight.  It was a fun end to Kathryn's visit, but we were sad to see her go.  I'll be looking forward to her next visit for sure!

We're heading to Maui this weekend for our first off-island excursion, so be on the lookout for some tales from that trip soon.  Aloha!

North Shore Horseback Riding

For any of you that knew me growing up, you know how big of a horse nut I was.  I started horseback riding with one of my oldest, best friends Lindsey when we were little (I think I was 5 or 6?) and kept on for many years.  We had weekly lessons during the school year and not a summer went by we didn't have horse camp.  As I got older, things got busier and I had too much time invested in softball to own a horse, so I made the tough decision to move away from horseback riding.  That being said, I miss it all the time.  It was always such a relaxing and peaceful activity for me and I truly miss it.  So while Kathryn was here, she brought up doing horseback riding and I jumped at the idea.

Kathryn did most of the leg work for this activity and after reviewing many places, she settled on this place called Happy Trails in Wailua in the North Shore.  We wound our way up a road with tight switchbacks and made it to the gate of the property.  After a little wait for the rest of the group to arrive, we were matched with our horses.  The owner buys primarily retired polo horses, which are usually well trained and follow commands well.  Kathryn and I ended up in the back of the group, but in the long run it didn't matter too much where we were.  We had a guide in the front of the group and then the owner caught up to us about half way through our ride.  The ride was all trails, up and down, and very muddy.  Unfortunately that meant nothing so much as a trot speed-wise.  It was still beautiful, though.  I spent a good portion of the ride talking to the owner about how he got into the horse ranch business (he was a polo player himself) and then ended up talking shop (I ended up leaving him with a home exercise program for a nagging injury he had...PTs are never off the clock haha...)

The end of the ride brought us out to a paddock overlooking the North Shore, which made for a perfect photo-op.  Kathryn and I both thoroughly enjoyed the ride, though we would have had a little more fun with a little cantering here or there.  Being back in the saddle brought back a lot of great memories, I guess one of these days I'll need to get back to horseback riding :-)

Kualoa Ranch Movie And ATV Tour

I One of the places we've heard about on the island over and over again is "the ranch".  There are multiple ranches across the island, but Kualoa Ranch is the biggest on Oahu and most well known.  While they still function as a cattle ranch, they have diversified into other areas of agriculture as well as tourism and entertainment.  Many movies and TV shows have been filmed here (Jurassic Park, 50 First Dates, Pearl Harbor, Lost, Hawaii Five-O) with more happening every month.  Even while filming, there are group tours on buses, ATVs (All-terrain vehicles), and horseback.  Everyone always talks about how the ATVing is the best, so we signed up for that.  Since we were already going to be out that side of the island, we decided to do the bus tour of the movie sites first and then follow with the ATVs.

The ranch is on the opposite side of the island from where we live, kind of  between the North Shore and Kailua/Kaneohe.  Once you get out of Kaneohe town, the Kamehameha Highway is a beautiful, mostly waterfront drive in the Hawaiian "country".  No major stores or stoplights, just a nice winding road.  Just across the street from the ranch is the famed China Man's Hat moke, famous for it's obvious shape.

The property that the state now owns that includes the beach park for China Man's Hat used to be part of Kualoa Ranch until World War II when the government occupied much of the ranch for its strategic location on the island.  They built bunkers, made camps, even made an air strip.  After the war was over, they returned "most" of the property, but the state kept some key pieces.  There is a ton more history to the ranch, but I won't bore you all with it here...

Now onto our excursions...For the bus tour, think school bus with no windows.  Not the most luxurious or comfortable modes of transportation, but you can't expect much when you're bouncing through dirt roads on a ranch.  The tour stops at several "famous" spots to get out and do a little exploring (like WWII bunkers used in many films, Hurley's golf course from Lost, Godzilla's footprint, "the log" from the first Jurassic Park.  Pretty neat, but we were ready for some excitement with the ATVs.

For anyone that has never been ATVing...it...is...fun.  I got my first taste of it many years ago in Louisiana when we were there for the softball world series and staying with an awesome host family (shout out to my Abbeville people!) and I was very excited to do it again.  Kathryn and Joe had never done it, so it was good we had a short practice drive before we went out with our group of 6 with a guide.  Part of the tour was a duplicate of the bus tour, but then we were able to go places the bus could not.  Most set pieces from films have to be broken down after filming is complete, but occasionally they keep some.  One of these was for the Gyroscope Ride platform from Jurassic World, which was way up the side of the mountain and very cool to walk out on.  We opted to do the 2 hour tour versus the 1 hour and we were glad we did because time flew by.  We were up hill, down hill, through streams, through brush and jungle...a little bit of everything.

The ranch has even more activities daily which we may need to check out when we have more visitors, but the ATV tour was definitely worth the trip out to the ranch and I highly recommend it to anyone with a little bit of an adrenaline junkie living in their subconscious! Aloha!

Kailua/Lanikai Kayaking

For a while Joe and I had been talking about kayaking out to the Mokes (the Mokulula Islands off the coast of Lanikai off the windward coast).  The trouble is, you have to get a permit to "land" on the islands and no permits are allowed on Sundays.  With both of us working Monday-Friday, that only leaves Saturdays open to do this and things always seemed to come up to keep us from going.  So, while Kathryn was here, her being the big kayaker she is, we decided to plan it out so we could be sure to go.

We rented ocean kayaks from an ocean rental company very close to Kailua Beach Park.  They gave us little trailors to haul the kayaks to the entry canal.  Kathryn had a single and Joe and I shared a double (I think I would recommend using a single just for the ease of getting in and out).  After hauling our kayaks and putting them in the kanal, we made it to the beach where we had to carry the kayaks to the ocean (at high tide the canal and ocean are connected, though with very shallow water).  

There are 3 islands around the Kailua and Lanikai area (Flat Island and the two Mokulula Islands).  Only one of the mokes has a place where you can land a kayak and flat island has a small beach as well.  The ocean report said that only very experienced kayakers should attempt the mokes that day while Flat Island was safe.  We weren't quite sure what that meant as far as difficulty (there are some real motor morons that rent the kayaks and I can understand them being told to stay in shore), so we figured we'd head out there and see what we saw.

We decided to paddle from Kailua to Lanikai first and eat our lunch we packed on the beach there.  From Lanikai we had a better view of the mokes and were able to eavesdrop a little on some paddlers that had made it out to the mokes.  Their stories told of kayaks being flipped, paddlers being thrown, and general chaos with landing and launching.  We still weren't quite sold, so we decided to paddle out that way and see how the surf was.

About half way between shore and the mokes, the surf did start to get big.  The report said 5-8 ft swells and I would say they were about 5 feet.  They were actually a lot of fun to paddle on since they weren't breaking on top of us.  We stopped about a quarter mile off shore to see how it looked and decided the landing would be just a little too rough.  

From there we headed to Flat Island off of Kailua.  On the way there, both kayaks passed turtles coming up for air from the reefs, which was pretty cool.  When we made it to Flat Island, there was a big group there, but once they left it was nice and quiet.  It's an interesting "island" made up completely of porous rock.  All throughout the rock, vegetation had grown to give it a very lush feel, but made stepping very quickly (it was hard to see where the big holes in the rock were when the plants made everything even-looking).  There were a few pretty tide pools as we made our way around the edge, but we weren't able to make it into the middle since it is a nature preserve.

From Flat Island, it was a pretty quick paddle back into Kailua Beach.  Our whole outing took about 5 hours.  The company we rented from offered half (4 hours) or full day rentals.  We chose the full day since it was only a little bit more and gave us a lot more flexibility.  Overall, a pretty fun little excursion.  I think next time we'll check the surf forecast to make sure we can make it to the mokes safely and get our own kayaks.

Hanauma Bay

*Disclaimer: I have been very blessed and am fortunate to have visited and seen many amazing underwater environments and have interacted with the marine life there.  As such, I am a bit spoiled in what I consider a great snorkeling or scuba location.*

Hanauma Bay is another one of those names that most of us have heard over time from magazines or people that have visited Hawaii.  It's usually a hot spot with tourists and occasionally hard to get into (there are a limited number of parking spots available and once full, they close the road to vehicle traffic).

After finishing at Diamond Head, Kathryn, we continued east to Hanauma Bay.  I think we timed it right going after lunch, because the morning crowd seemed to be leaving and making room in the parking lot.  We stood in line to get our tickets to enter (I think it was $7 or something like that) and then you wait in a line to see a video about Hanauma Bay.  I think it's good to have this because with the amount of traffic the area gets, it would be easy to cause a lot of damage.  They basically say "don't stand on the reef, don't try to catch the sea life, don't be stupid, etc.".  My gripe with the video is that they lead you to believe you're going to see a lot of things (the video shows turtles, eels, octopus, and tons of fish), which increased the let-down for us.

I hate to say it, but we were very disappointed with our overall experience.  It was EXTREMELY crowded (the guy checking our things into a locker said that day was the busiest he had seen it in 4 months), the visibility was poor in the water, there wasn't much to see fish-wise, and it was shallow (that may have been on us, I forgot to check the tide charts).  It was so shallow that we kept banging our knees on the reef and rocks as we were swimming across.  The surf was a little rougher that day, so I'm guessing that had to do with the visibility being stirred up, but once we made our rounds side-to-side, Kathryn and I were both ready to go.

In talking to other people, Hanauma Bay does have it's better days, but it's nothing like it was before the 80s and 90s.  Poor protection of the fish, animals, and reefs has led to a decreased abundance in what used to be the top spot for snorkeling.  With the number of people it draws daily, it does not suprise me that there is little marine life still hanging around.  When they created the visitor center, started charging, and requiring people to watch a video, the idea was to create a better educated tourist and help protect the area, but I think it was too little, too late.

We were told you can also scuba in Hanauma Bay, but I'm hoping they were talking about the area out closer to the ocean because it's so shallow I'm not sure why you would need to in the area we were in.

I'll definitely give Hanauma Bay another shot when we have more visitors that want to check it out, but I will be sure to check the tide charts before we go and try very hard to avoid going on a weekend.

Diamond Head

Diamond Head.  We've all heard of it.  You see any commercial, picture of Honolulu, or anything to do with Hawaii, chances are Diamond Head is in the background.  It is visible from almost all of the south and west shores as an imposing peak above Waikiki Beach and Honolulu town.  With that notoriety comes popularity.  With popularity comes crowds...lots and lots of crowds.

While Kathryn was here, we wanted to do this "hike" to check off her bucketlist.  We got there pretty early (I think like 8:30, which with a 50 minute drive from our house was early for "vacation"), but the small parking lot was already full.  We had to turn around and hike up from a park at the base of the crater.  It ended up not being too bad of a walk, but we were stopped by taxis on the way up and down asking if we wanted a ride to the top.  After passing through a tunnel through the side of the crater, we reached the tollbooth where we paid our small entry fee (I think it was $3 per person) and we were ready to begin.  Did I mention the crowds of people?

There were people congregated EVERYWHERE. Old, young, out of shape, in shape, fast, slow, in dresses, in flip-flops (slippers), in hiking gear...EVERYWHERE (disclaimer: I don't recommend dresses OR slippers on any of the trails. It blows my mind how many people do these hikes the wrong attire).  I knew it was going to be crowded, but I really had no idea (it probably didn't help that we came on a Saturday...).  The trail starts out nice and paved, then drops off onto a narrower, dirt/rock trail.  We were stuck behind a very large group walking 3-wide very slowly, and we were losing our minds.  We were eventually able to weave our way in-and-out of that group and get a move on.  There was a lot of weaving, but we made it to the top in under 30 minutes.  At the end of the trail you walk uphill in a tunnel and you think you're about to pop out at the top, only to find that there is a steep set of stairs, then another spiral staircase to go to get to the top (there was another option of climbing stairs more gradually, but we didn't realize that at the time).

Once we made it to the top, the views west to Honolulu and east to Hawaii Kai were beautiful, but you had to wait your turn to get a spot at the rail to see it and take a picture.  Don't even think about shifting your weight because somebody else is set right there to squeeze their way in.

Despite the crowds, we enjoyed seeing the views of the coast line and on the way back, the views of the crater.  While it was a check off the bucketlist, there are other hikes that provide similar views without the crowds, but it is an easy hike that young and old can accomplish.  I would recommend doing this hike in the morning if you want the best pictures of Honolulu or in the afternoon for your best pictures of Hawaii Kai (just the way the sun reflects and sets on the water). 

After working off those calories, Kathryn and I enjoyed a nice meal at Kona Brewing in the Koko Head Marina, then headed off to Hanauma Bay (that post to follow next). 

Until the next adventure, Aloooha!