Tag: oahu

Friday, July 12–our second day with the rental car–found us still up and at ’em before sunrise.

Once the sun finally joined us, we headed out for a quick breakfast before a hike. Leonard’s malasadas are pretty much a legend in Honolulu (at least according to Google and any cab driver we encountered) despite the fact that they are actually a Portuguese, not a Hawaiian pastry. These hole-less fried doughnut-type thingies were pretty good, according to the boys. Get the plain sugar or the cinnamon-sugar regular malasadas and don’t mess with the malasada puffs, which are way over-stuffed with gooey, super sweet cream filling. Theo made an unfortunate order of a dobash malasada puff that was pretty much inedible until he squeezed out all the chocolate pudding filling.

And he squeezed that filling out of the window of the rental car–right onto the door of the rental car…without us realizing it had dripped on the door and had begun its slow slide downwards. [Foreshadowing.]

We were headed a tiny bit outside of Honolulu to Manoa Falls, but first, since we were only about two miles from the butt of a very funny high school joke, I forced my family to take a side-trip…

…by Chaminade University. Give it up for the mighty Silverswords!

(If you graduated from Vidalia High School back in 1989, you might be in on this joke, especially if you were stuck in homeroom with us cool kids whose last names started with A-Ca. Otherwise, I apologize for taking up a few paragraphs on this.)

Obviously, way back when we were applying to college, there was no such thing as the internet. And because it was over 4,600 miles away from Vidalia, no one–including VHS’s somewhat intimidating, opinionated, and homegrown college guidance counselor–had ever heard of this little university with an undergraduate enrollment of around 1,500 students (at that time)…no one, that is, except my dear friend Brian. (How he dug up info on it to begin with is beyond me.)

So while we endured presentation after presentation from our sweet-but-less-than-savvy guidance counselor on “choosing the right fit for you” and what she called “the benefits of staying close to home,” Brian would mumble under his breath something along the lines of, “nah, man. That’s not what they tell you at Chaminade.” It also did not help that our class had someone being recruited all over the southeast to play football; he’d come to school each morning talking about yet another college or university that had contacted him, to which Brian would reply, “yeah, well, the Coach from Chaminade had me on the phone half the night, too.” Or, “I’m really thinking Chaminade’s the place for me. It’s the right fit.” It was all stunningly ironic and incredibly dry humored, and Brian’s long distance love for Chaminade spread amongst my best friends. Midway through our Senior year, we were all Chaminade fans for life, sight unseen.

Trust me: it was really funny. (To the best of my knowledge, no one from my class (much less the guidance counselor, who grew beyond peeved at hearing random shouts of “Go Chaminade!” at all her mandatory guiding lectures) so much as ordered a brochure from this little gem of a school, much less applied to it.)

It took all of about 4 minutes to drive the loop through the Chaminade campus. If we could’ve found the bookstore, I’d have wiped them out of t-shirts.

Anyway, I knew if I’d gotten that close to hallowed ground, I had to follow it through to the end–hence the photo above, which won the Facebook for the day (well, at least the Facebook of my friend Brian for the day).

And with that, we’re on to Manoa Falls…

After climbing Diamondhead Crater, Jack mentioned that he really enjoyed hiking, so we began searching out other [manageable] hikes. Manoa Falls is the second most frequently hiked trail in Oahu and clocks in at just under two miles round trip, but don’t let that short distance fool you; there were some tricky, slippery parts on this muddy, rocky trail leading up to a 150 foot waterfall.

We were quite sticky, hot, and sweaty when we climbed up the last few steps to this:

Please note that large sign on the left: DANGER. STOP! Please also recall yesterday’s ridiculous cliff jumping episode. Clearly, “stop” and “no” are not well understood by some members of my family. (How did I fail so badly at this one aspect of parenting?) (<–P.S. That link is worth clicking, just saying–skip the ads.)

Thankfully, the two daredevils made it back from their dip in the freezing cold pool in one piece and without contracting leptospirosis. (<—proof that I’m not just a Nervous Nelly for funsies; I fear things for valid reasons.)

We wrapped up our hike and headed from one danger to another: the Halona Blowhole.

The blowhole was formed by lava from many volcanic eruptions thousands of years ago. The lava flowed down into the sea and quickly cooled into tubes through which water shoots out, like a geyser. It doesn’t sound too impressive on paper, but trust me: it is. Watching the Halona Blowhole erupt kept our attention for close to an hour.

Did the daredevils want to climb down to the beach pictured above? Of course they did. However, this time, Russ and I were in agreement that such an adventure was a hard no. Just a few days before we were there, two people were washed out to sea from Halona and drowned. (And few days after we were there, two more folks were hit by a huge wave and sucked out into the ocean; they were luckier and managed to be rescued.) The Halona area is not one to be messed with.

We pulled ourselves away from the mesmerizing blowhole and drove back towards Waikiki a tiny bit to the Koko Marina to grab lunch. There were tons of options, and we wound up having a perfectly lovely meal at the Kona Brewing Co. overlooking the marina.

From there, we headed to Hanauma Bay to spend the afternoon on the beach.

Hanauma Bay is a state park and beach nestled inside the caldera of an old, old volcano–a location that’s a magnet for cool sea creatures to call home. You pay (a minimal amount) to enter/park, and they make you watch a short video about the conservation of sea life before you can take the 5 minute hike down to the beach.

We had snorkels for 4, so that meant we rotated through them with the odd-man-out in charge of guarding our stuff on the beach.

Snorkeling here was terrific; there were many, many more things to see than at Shark’s Cove (though don’t let that turn you off from visiting Shark’s Cove; it’s still absolutely worth it).

If you can handle a little bit of shaky filming, here’s a pretty cool video from Tucker.

Once our fingers and toes were all puckered from being in the ocean so long, we packed up and headed back to the hotel to shower and then out to dinner on our next to the last night in Honolulu. We took the path of least resistance and walked over to the Tiki Bar & Restaurant above the Aston Waikiki Resort right next door. The live music and sunset views were pretty doggone solid, and everyone left happy.

The purple taro rolls were an added bonus (this one was accidentally dropped on the floor which is why it’s rudely lounging on the table rather than a proper plate…).

Part One of our Big Trip was coming to an end mighty quickly. We had just one last full day in Oahu…