February 25 - Driving the East and North shores, Surfers on Sunset Beach

      We spent the day driving counterclockwise along the coast from Kaneohe to Waialua.

It looks like a long way, but it's only 65 miles.

 Approaching the tunnel on H3.

We walked along the beach on Kahana Bay for a couple of miles.  In this selfie we show off our new caps.  (Actually, I got mine back on the Big Island.)

And here we show off our weirdly tanned feet.

 We couldn't figure what this is for.

Mangroves encircled this small brackish cove.

Night heron stalking the elusive fish swimming in the cove.

Back in the parking lot, these Red-crested Cardinals stalk elusive birdseed.

Offshore, this naval ship passes by. Not surprisingly for an island rimmed by naval bases and covered with airfields and barracks, the military presence is pervasive.

The sound of choppers flying overhead is a regular occurrence. 

 We got back in the car and drove on north.  Along this part of the coast the road is only feet from the ocean.  The offshore reef protects the road from large waves.

 La'ie Point has interesting recently formed lithified sandstone rock formations.

      After turning the corner at the northern tip of Oahu we got to the North Shore, home of Sunset Beach and the Banzai Pipeline.  We watched the surfers for a couple of hours.

They say this beach is for very experienced surfers only - not necessarily just for the size of the waves or the tricky currents, but because of random areas of coral all along the shore. A fall there would be injurious.  And yet, along the three mile beach there were hundreds and hundreds of surfers waiting for a good wave.

  When this wave came along, four guys jumped up on their boards for a ride.  

 This guy had a nice long ride, at one point tucking inside the curl of the wave.

"Hey, dude, where'd my board go?"

    

"Hey, dude, where'd our masters go?"

Why did the chicken climb the tree?  

To get a better view of the surfing action.

This guy caught a good wave.

     We hoped to catch a nice sunset while at Sunset beach, but the sun sank behind clouds and the sky just got grayer and darker.  We watched several surfers take last runs, but there were still hundreds floating in the ocean waiting for another wave when we left.  

     The whole North Shore is lined with surfer communities.  There are a few magnificent vacation homes along the way, but for the most part the houses are pretty basic, verging on shacks in some places.  (I just looked up houses for sale on Zillow - best deal I could find for an ocean front house was an 1,850 sq. ft 3 br house on a 5100 sq ft lot for $1,995,000). And there are many food trucks and hole-in-the-wall T-shirt and jewelry stands scattered along the road.  

     It was dark by the time we got to the town of Haleiwa, so we postponed checking it out for another day and drove home for dinner and a movie.

February 24 - Not much goin' on

     After several days on the go and with not much time to catch up on business stuff and writing, we took day off.  We've got a five day stay in an Airbnb in a top floor apartment of a ten story building in the town of Mililani, about five miles north of Pearl Harbor.  Mark is our host, who is himself renting the Airbnb from a guy who rents the apartment from some lady.  I know, it's complicated.  Mark has a small winery in Oregon and runs a tasting room in Portland.  Since he makes some tropical fruit wines, he decided to try opening a store in Waikiki, so he got this place from Airbnb two months ago.  He's really busy with the store opening, and takes his handsome and well-behaved black lab Pinot everywhere he goes, so we've pretty much had the place to ourselves.

"Good morning, Kevin.  I hope you slept well.  Would you like me to make some coffee?  I assume you like it black."

View from the deck.

Looks a little like cell-block D at Alcatraz, doesn't it.  We made the mistake of leaving the windows of our bedroom open to the cool evening breeze our first night.  They face the interior "courtyard".  Spousal disagreements, loud cars and motorcycles, barking dogs in neighboring apartments, TV's and blaring music - it all made its way up this interior sound chimney and affronted ears more attuned to the quiet countryside.  Closing the windows and turning on the ceiling fan the following nights helped a lot.

 It's starkly furnished.  Mark is living out of a suitcase, and we have more stuff in the frig than he does.  However, there is a big screen TV with Netflix, so we've stayed up until ten or eleven every night watching movies or TV shows.

 Working on the blog.

One of our favorite things about staying in Airbnb is the use of a kitchen.  I made this last night.  We bought a pound of ahi poke - diced raw tuna and garlic normally eaten as an appetizer or a quick meal  - and fried it with broccoli, onions, and tomatoes.  Then I mixed it with bow tie pasta, pesto, and topped it with parmesan cheese.  

Diana's contribution to dinner.  Those of you who know her well won't be surprised that she bought five deeply discounted Valentine's Day chocolate samplers on February 15th.  

February 23 - Kayaking on Kaneohe Bay

     We rented a kayak to explore the expansive "disappearing sandbar" in Kaneohe bay, which lies on the Windward Coast across the island from Honolulu.

     The bay, which is the largest sheltered body of water in the Islands, is about 8 miles long and 3 miles wide, and is protected by one of only two barrier reefs in Hawaii (the other is off of Molokai).  There are many coral reefs within the bay where people snorkel and dive.  We brought our snorkels with us, but our goal was to kayak out over the large sandbar the occupies much of the center of the bay.  We kayaked about a mile through slightly choppy water to reach it.

We arrived near low tide, and in spots we had to exit the kayak and pull the boat through the inches deep water.

It's a little strange being a mile from shore in water that laps at your ankles.

Here's a little video of the sandbar.

 While we were floating around we heard the roar of aircraft coming from the Marine Corps Base on peninsula on the east side of the bay.  At first I thought it was helicopters, but then we saw these two fighter planes "attacking" the base.

By the way, the first attack by Japanese wasn't on Pearl Harbor, but actually occurred here nine minutes earlier, when bombers attacked the Naval Station here.

 I couldn't identify the planes as the flew over our heads.

     But they were loud and made some amazing maneuvers.  Later, I did a little googling, and found out they were F-22's, the most advanced fighter planes in the world, and at $417 million a piece, they better be. A total of 187 were made. 

      One of the supposed attractions of kayaking over the sandbar is observing fish, rays, and turtles as the  swim beneath your boat.  We meandered around the perimeter of the sandbar for about an hour, and did sea some schools of silver fish.  We didn't see any of the colorful reef fish that we've seen while snorkeling on other occasions, but that makes sense, because here the bottom is covered with sand. 

     We paddled out towards Kapapa Island, which sits just outside the barrier reef and is a refuge for Shearwaters.  The waves were breaking in two foot high white caps, and we didn't want to try to get past them with our camera protected only by three year old WalMart dry bags, so we turned back.  We did get a nice push from one of the waves, allowing us to surf about fifty yards before it ran out.

     We only had about an hour to return the kayak before closing time, so we headed back.  We hadn't snorkeled, and Diana wanted to at least dip her head into the water to see what she could see.  We had a fifteen leeway, so she stepped off the boat and looked around.  Just then, a green sea turtle swam near, and from my vantage point above the water I was able to direct Diana towards him.  Curiosity drew them together, and she got within 20 feet of the turtle before he turned and swam away.

     We raced back to shore, muscles and lungs burning a little from the effort, making it with minutes to spare.

February 22 - Jungle Walk and Roly Poly Pigs

     We camped for two nights at the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Gardens just across the Ko'olau Mountains from Honolulu.  The way the mountain range was formed is rather impressive, and scary. Around 2.5 million years ago the volcano that formed half of Oahu began erupting from the ocean floor, eventually rising to an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet.  After half a million years, the shield volcano went silent and began to erode.  Oahu probably would have looked a lot like Kauai, except something bad happened.  At some point, the weight of the built-up lava made the whole volcano unstable, and half of the mountain just collapsed and slid into the ocean, creating a tsunami that scientists estimate was 1000 feet high.  It's believed that the current buildup of lava on the western slope of Mauna Loa by the Kilauae Volcano on the Big Island could result in the same thing some day, dumping most of the Puna district into the sea.  And they're worried about a little lava flow.
     Anyways, the Ko'olau Mountain range is the ragged remnants of what's left - the southwestern slope of the original volcano edged by a steep cliff facing northeast that runs nearly the length of Oahu.  We set out to explore it.

 Our hike began at Nu'uanu Pali Overlook above the tunnel that allows route 63 to burrow through the mountain.

 The first mile of the trail follows the old Pali road, abandoned over fifty years ago when the new road was finished, and slowly being reclaimed by nature.

Over 200 inches of rain a year keep the nearly vertical cliffs green.

We left the old Pali road where it heads down towards the coast and began walking along the Maunawili trail. 

 This ...

... opens into this.

 Tree fern frond just unfurling.

Another reaching well above our heads.

 After walking through jungle we came around a corner and saw the cliffs on the south side of Maunawili valley.

The eroded face of the slip zone where the original volcano collapsed.

Clouds come and go over the tops of the mountain.

      The trail winds for about ten miles along the base of the cliff.  We turned around after we were about three miles in.  The gates of the gardens close at 4 pm, then reopen from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm., and we wanted to get back in time to take showers (cold water but who's complaining in such a warm climate ... well, I guess I am.  Actually, it felt pretty good) before going into town for dinner.

     We ate at a small Thai restaurant in Kanehoe-I had yellow chicken curry, Diana the green version, and both were delicious - then returned to the gardens just before the gates locked us out for the night.  We made a driving tour of the grounds as the sun set and the pigs came out.

The gardens are beautiful, a wonder place for local residents to hike, jog, and picnic.  Once the gates closed we had the place nearly to ourselves.  There are about 30 camp spots that can be reserved online, but on this Sunday night I doubt if many more than 5 were taken.

The last bit of sun on the mountains.

Clouds creep down the mountainside.  It sprinkled during the night, but our picnic table was dry when we had breakfast the next morning.

 Like deer at dusk, the piggies come out to play when the sun goes down.

The little ones ran at the sight, or more likely, the sound, of our car.

 The adults didn't care.

Either that or they thought that by hiding beneath the trees we couldn't see them.

By the way, I haven't told you about our car rental luck yet, have I.  We reserved a compact car for our two weeks of driving on Oahu.  (We'll turn it in and spend the last six days exploring Honolulu without wheels, using the bus system and saving ourselves the headache, and cost, of trying to find parking.) While I waited with our baggage after landing in Honolulu, Diana went to the rental desk to fetch our car.  When she returned she handed me the keys and said our car was in spot 101.  I looked, and there was this lovely Volvo S60 sitting there.  I thought, it had to be a mistake.  Looking at the key fob, I saw it was the right car.  "Did you pay extra for this?"  "No, why?"  "It's a Volvo!"  "Yeah, I'm glad they gave us a free upgrade to a bigger car." "Yes, it's a bigger car, but don't you see, it's a VOLVO!"  "Yeah, nice."  So Diana isn't as impressed with fancy European cars as I am.  But we both like the leather seats and moonroof, although some of the other luxury amenities are wasted on us.  However, I'm glad for the quick acceleration and lithe steering as I maneuver busy Honolulu streets and winding mountain roads.