So I decided that I should go to Hawaii. Why? Umm...I've never been before and I figured being on the central coast of California was pretty close (well, as close as you can be to Hawaii and still stand on dry land) so I cashed in some airmiles and took off after work on Friday. Direct flight from San Fran to Honolulu and landed about 10pm. Shacked up in the
Marriott Edition on one end of Waikiki beach, pretty cool urban hotel with a young and adventerous crowd. I was up quite early Saturday morning and decided it was time for me to find some transportation on the island. Various guide sources (mostly
tripadvisor.com) had indicated that the local bus system was cheap, efficient, and easy to use. Yeaaaaahh.... I'm not really one for buses, especially when you can walk down the street and rent a scooter!
Armed with my mighty Sym 200cc scoot scoot, I set off for the
local farmer's market. Managed to gorge myself on plenty of local flavors: coffee, some sort of ginger pineapple orange juice, gigantic omelette, pulled chicken bbq....I shouldn't be writing this before lunch because now I'm salivating and lunch is still an hour away.
Rode out to Hanauma Bay, rented some snorkel gear and dove in the crystal blue waters for several hours. Had to wear my teeshirt to avoid being fried alive by the sun and even that was only mostly successful. Copious amounts of sunscreen was lathered but yikes, that sun is POWERFUL. I swam out beyond the reef and did a lot of free diving, slowly building my lungs up for deeper and longer dives. I watch people scuba dive and it looks so....cumbersome. All that gear and those rules and blah blah blah. Fins, mask, snorkel and hold your breath, that's the way to go. My brother Joe has taken skin diving to extremes, he claims he's gone over 100 feet deep and well, wow, I am happy with about 1/3 of that depth. I am quite jealous of some of his diving adventures in Thailand, maybe that will be the next destination....
Just a couple of pictures from the southern shores of Oahu. Yep, pretty much gorgeous.
Here is some proof that I was actually there. Traveling solo makes it difficult to document your presence in the environment so it's a good thing I have long arms. You can see that my face is already starting to turn the same color as my teeshirt despite the gallons of sunscreen I had applied that day.
Saturday evening I spent the night at a different
Marriott on the other end of Waikiki and had a magnificent view of the sunset from my balcony. I was pretty exhausted from a full day of riding, swimming, sunning, swimming, eating, swimming, sunning, riding, etc.
Sunday morning I was up with the sun again and out and on the move. Easter breakfast at my hotel and then on the scoot scoot and up the middle of the island to the North Shore, site of the famous Banzai pipeline and outrageous surfing. Unfortunately, the pipeline is pretty calm this time of year so the dude at the tiny little surf shop told me the snorkeling was going to be way better and, well, he was right. Picture is of Sharks Cove and I spent another day mostly below water swimming through caves, hanging out with sea turtles, and trying to keep track of the hundreds of different kinds of fish I saw.
After I exhausted myself snorkeling and had a fantastic grilled Ahi sandwich for lunch at the
Sharks Cove Grill (which is really just a lunch truck that has become a permanent fixture) I scooted down the east side of the island with huge cliffs draped in all manners of foliage on one side and the azure blue waters of the Pacific on the other. To others I probably looked like a spectator at an imaginary tennis match with how frequently my head turned left and right to capture all that was before me.
Finally returned my scoot scoot, grabbed some quick grub and relaxed on the beach to watch the sun set on paradise one last time before high tailing it to the airport for the red eye back to reality. Aloha and Mahalo.
