This is our last full day in Hawaii and we've booked a tour of Oahu and the North Shore. It turned out that we were the only four in a 16-passenger van. John was a great guide and talked a lot about the different areas and had lots of information. Driving past Waikiki Beach, he told us that sand is imported from Australia for the beaches and some comes from Louisiana!
Maunalua Bay - You can see Amelia Earhart Monument
the surfers waiting for a wave!
Mars went to school here
Here to Eternity" filmed here
Eternity Beach
Something was going on at Eternity Beach. We weren't sure if it was some kind of ceremony or if they were filming a movie. There was a group of people on each side of the water and they were singing back and forth to each other. They had on matching clothes. It's a gorgeous beach and I would loved to have gone swimming there.
Britney Spears' house
They used to raise rabbits on the large island for eating,
but now it is a bird sanctuary. The smaller island is home
to monk seals.
Another beautiful mountain
Byodo-In Temple Inside the Temple
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| Inside the Temple |
The Byodo-In Temple was established on June 7, 1968 to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The temple is a smaller scale replica of the over 950-year old Byodo-In Temple, a United Nations World Heritage Site in Uji, Japan. It is a beautiful spot.
View from the parking lot
Mokolii, also known as Chinaman's Hat, is a
basalt islet in Kaneohe Bay.
Our next stop was at Tropical Farms - The Macadamia Nut Farm Outlet. There were free samples of all the flavored nuts and their coffee. We tasted lots of the nuts.
Samples are in the bowls Wooden figures in front
Tree with lots of vines
Sunset Beach
Sunset Beach
Sunset Beach is where the surfing competitions are held. The Eddie is the premier event in the sport of surfing - The Super Bowl of Surfing.The Eddie Big Wave Invitational celebrates the current lineage of big wave surfers, as well as the ones that came before. The legend of Eddie Aikau is an important part of Hawaiian Culture. Eddie Aikau was a championship athlete, a waterman, and a family man who truly cared for others. Eddie was not just the first lifeguard at Waimea Bay; he was the first lifeguard for the entire North Shore, and saved over 500 people throughout his career. Eddie would brave the waves that often reached 30 feet or more, when no one else would go out. It's important to keep his legacy alive and inspire the next generation to live like Eddie did.
The Eddie Big Wave Invitational is known for a unique requirement that open-ocean swells reach a minimum height of 20 feet before the competition can be held. Open ocean swells of this height generally translate to wave faces in the bay of 30 to 40 feet. As a result of this requirement, the tournament has only been held nine times during the history of the event, most recently on February 25, 2016. The competition window is between December 1 and the last day of February annually. If the minimum conditions are not met during the competition window, the event is not held that year, and the process repeats itself the following December.
Our next stop was on the North Shore at Haleiwa Beach Park. We had the option to snorkel here and stay for 2 hours but we decided not to snorkel and just enjoy the beach. We saw a couple sea turtles in the water but could only see their heads sticking out. It was fun watching the surfers and stayed here about an hour.
Conrad at Haleiwa Beach If you look real close, you can
see the turtle head near shore
Since we left the beach early, we were able to go in to the town of Haleiwa. John dropped us off at a little shopping area. Our first stop there was at Matsumoto Shave Ice.
Shopping in Haleiwa Darrell & Conrad - at
Matsumoto Shave Ice
Our last stop was at the Dole Pineapple Plantation. Originally operated as a fruit stand beginning in 1950, Dole Plantation opened to the public as Hawaii's "Pineapple Experience" in 1989. The information signs were interesting and the gardens were beautiful.
Pineapple plants
The pink is the pineapple
Another pineapple
Garden at Dole
Palm trees at Dole
We repacked our suitcases when we got back to the hotel. It was getting cooler and really windy out when we headed out for dinner. We ate at the California Pizza Kitchen. It was actually kind of cold! We sat out on the balcony to eat but were lucky we were kind of tucked back by the building. We did see some people in winter coats!
Monday, February 10 - Honolulu, Oahu
After breakfast, we walked back to Waikiki Beach to get some more pictures. We walked through the shopping center there and used the "fancy" bathrooms! We made a final stop at one of the many ABC stores and bought a couple more souvenirs.
Rain here seems to last only a
couple minutes.
Then it was back to the hotel to get our luggage and to call Charley's Taxi to take us to the airport. We had an interesting driver who was from the Phillipines and had been in Hawaii for 15 years. The driver told us he pays $3,000 a month for a license to drive the cab and has to furnish his own vehicle. He takes his family back to the Phillipines every year for a month in the summer. He has a farm in the Phillipines that is run by his in-laws and friends. Drivers for Charley's are CPR trained, background checked, fingerprinted, and all cars have cameras installed. The drivers can't have any tickets or wrecks or they are demoted to Yellow Cab. They have to be friendly and not get any complaints against them. It was a great cab experience!
We had to be cleared through the agriculture check point and then checked our bags and got through security. We ate lunch at a burger place in the airport. Our flight from Honolulu to Atlanta was "only" 8 hours but it was a LONG 8 hours! None of us got any sleep this trip either. We arrived in Atlanta a little early and our flight leaving there was on time and arrived in Little Rock about 10 minutes early. Jan met us at the airport and brought us home. Carolyn made us a breakfast casserole that was hot when she brought it over. We loaded Darrell and Connie up with coffee to make the 5 hour trip back to Bartlesville. They made it as far as Russellville before having to stop for more coffee and got home safely about 4:00.
It was a wonderful trip and we'll always remember it. But, in case we don't, we can go back and read this and look at all our pictures! Thanks for taking this trip with us!
Here is some trivia we learned about Hawaii, in no particular order. Note: this is what we were told by our tour guides and may not be completely true!
🔺 Bats and seals are the only two native animals on the islands.
🔺 Coffee grown in the Kona area is grown on the hillside. It is all hand-picked because of the hillside. The trees look more like shrubs instead of a tree. They only let them grow about 6-feet tall. They will cut off a limb and a new limb grows in its place. This way the tree will produce coffee for many years.
🔺Most coffee farms are small in Kona. A farmer can grow 40,000 to 50,000 pounds a year on a 10-acre farm.
🔺Coffee is also grown on the south end of the Big Island but it cannot be labeled 100% Kona coffee.
🔺One bus driver pointed out a tye dye store and said he had stopped there once and the owner told him that he had to go to the bathroom and asked if he would watch the cash register! (He wasn't driving a bus that time. He was with his daughter.)
🔺Coffee beans grow inside a cherry. Most cherries have 2 beans inside. Sometimes there is only one bean and that is called Peaberry Coffee. Those beans are separated and they make Peaberry Coffee. It is really expensive.
🔺Since the coffee beans are hand picked, only ripe beans are picked.
🔺Coconuts float but will sink after three days. This was discovered in a very expensive government experiment. A GPS was attached to the coconuts to see how far they would go.
🔺We saw lots of sweetbread trees. They told us the fruit tastes like bread.
🔺 Up to the 1890s, sugar cane made up 80% of the crops.
🔺 In 2011, Kauai was the last island to grow sugar cane. No sugar cane is grown now except Kaloa Rum Company grows some for their rum.
🔺 It takes a 3-foot sugar cane stalk to make 1 cube of sugar!
🔺 For awhile, heat from the volcanoes was used to produce electricity.
🔺 Connie had said everyone looked like walking advertisements in their t-shirts. One morning we saw a guy on the ship that had one on that had a big flame, advertising "firewood, cut, split and delivered" and his phone number!
🔺 Mt Waialeale is the wettest spot on earth. It rains 350 days a year and gets 33 feet to 55 feet of rain per year.
🔺 There are 132 islands in the Hawaiian chain but only 8 are inhabited.
🔺 In Kauai, nothing over 4 stories can be built on the island. Buildings cannot be taller than the tallest coconut tree! Wonder who had the job to go measure the trees? There is one hotel taller that was built before the law went in to effect. It is 11 stories tall.
🔺 Farm land has a lower tax than other land.
🔺 Coffee is the #1 industry. Hawaii is the only state to grow coffee.
🔺 Kids take their shoes off when they go to school.
🔺 The Polynesians brought in wild boars. They got to be a problem so now they are hunted year round.
🔺 After whales give birth, the females don't eat anymore. When the mother gives birth, another female is always with her. The two females will push the newborn calf to the surface of the water for its first breath.
🔺 One driver told us they had gone to the store to get a gallon of milk for a relative. There were only two brands. One was $5.48 a gallon and the other was $9.99 a gallon.
🔺 Red coffee beans are more bitter. Yellow coffee beans are smoother.
🔺 Coffee trees can live 50 to 60 years.
🔺 Every 7 years or so, the coffee trees are cut back to about two to three feet tall.
🔺 It takes 7 to 10 years for a macadamia nut tree to produce.
🔺 In the town of Poipu, you can rent a house across the street from the beach for about $7,000 a week!
🔺 There are no beef processing plants in Hawaii. The cows are flown to the mainland US to be processed and the meat is flown back to Hawaii.
🔺 One pineapple plant can only produce two pineapples in its lifetime.
🔺 Mauna Loa Mountain is the 2nd largest mountain in the world. It is 56,000-plus feet tall. A lot of the mountain is under water.
🔺 The water inside a coconut is sterile. In old days, it was put through a filter and used as saline solution.
🔺 The average cost of an average home (less than 2,000 sq ft) on Hawaii Island is $365,000. It is more than that in Kona.
🔺 Hawaii is #2 in the world for growing macadamia nuts. The islands produce over 40 million pounds a year. Australia is #1.
🔺 Mauna Loa Macadamia Plantation used to be owned by Hershey until about 8 years ago.
🔺 Steven Spielberg was preparing for the final day of on-location shooting for the first Jurassic Park movie when Hurricane Iniki struck the islands in September 1992. It was a Category 4 hurricane. Spielberg included footage of Iniki battering the Kauai coastal walls as part of the completed film, where a tropical storm makes up a pivotal part of the plot.
🔺 It takes 1-1/2 to 2 years to grow a pineapple.
🔺 The mountains we could see coming in to the Nawiliwili Harbor are the mountains of Jurassic World.
