Day 7 - Goodbye Dear Enchanted Island of Beaches, Rainforests, and Shave Ice

Goodmorning!




Good Afternoonish...kinda still morning...




30 hours awake, 22 hours of travel and we arrived home following day at 9:00 pm. Finally we get to hold Jonas!!! we missed him sooooo much!!!

Thank you God for safe travels, beautiful days, amazing creation and Jonas!


Don't call! We're still sleeping...yawn!!!


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Day 6 - 2 heads are better than 1...right...

So, back on track...Day 6....ahem....

With only one more full day the pressure was on to finish our hiking...We both wanted to hike Diamond Head and Koko Head. Easy enough...we decided to do 1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. After packing 2 bottles of water and a granola bar we headed toward Diamond Head on foot. The bus fare was $5 and we were running low on cash...so we walked the 2 miles to the base of the crater.




Through the crater wall




Up the footpath, many many many stairs




To the at famous lookout on Oahu





We hiked back down the mountain, through the crater wall and down to the bus stop. We figured we would splurge on the 8 mile trip to Koko Head.

At this point we have 1/2 bottle of water left, no snacks, and no sunscreen...

The bus drops us off and we walk another mile to the base of Koko Head where, for the first time I realize 2 Heads are NOT better than one...especially when tuis one has over 1,100 "steps" up an incredibly steep incline...

See the specks behind us? Those are people...dumb ones, like us who thought hiking this mountain at mid-afternoon, with no food or water all day would be fun.




That's not me in the picture below....no I am on the edge of the cliff trying, crawling, and crying to make it up the last 100 steps...if you look close you can see my hand grasping over the edge for dear life...


The view from the top is of course incredible...was it worth it? Well, from the top it was...good thing I couldn't speak coming up...


I am smiling in this picture, but it is just to keep from weeping.

Now, just so you don't get the wrong impression...I am not a wimp...I have hiked Delicate Arch, Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Angels Landing, Manoa Falls (the day before) and many other short strenuous hikes...but let me tell you...do this hike early, with fresh legs, plenty of water, and a don't back down attitude...

I thought I would roll down...it would be quicker and probably way less painful...my legs were total jello...noodles...shaking uncontrollably..but thank God I made it down that mountain...

As we neared the bottom I realized we still had to walk to the bus stop...up hill...

We made it to Cheeseburger, where we drank 1 large water and 37 cokes!!!

Would I do it again?


Yeah...


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Day 4 Pearl Harbor

Hello, this is Patrick. We had planned a long day for day 4. First, we signed up for the Pearl Harbor Tour. We rode on a tour bus from our hotel to start off. It was late, so we made some friends. It seemed like any time we had down time we were looking for people to talk to. Oh well, it was cool and we got to meet different people. Finally, the bus came. We rode to Pearl Harbor. When we got there, there was a long line for the video. You start by watching a 20 minute video. So, we took a tour of the city until the line went down. We saw the capital, a temple, the palace of King Kamehameha, and some other cool sites.


The capital of Hawaii




Statue of King Kamehameha at his palace
It is life size. He was around 7' tall.

After our city tour, we headed back to Pearl Harbor. When we arrived there, we watched the video. WOW, January and I learned a lot. It is crazy how every thing that happened on that day just fell into place for the Japanese. If you don't know the history of Pearl Harbor, I would suggest you look it up. Hopefully the search will tell you the same things we learned. After the video, we rode on a boat to the monument of the Arizona. The Arizona was a ship that was sunk, that is directly below the monument.










After that, we rode back on the boat and hopped on the bus to head back to Wiakiki. We had planned to go and hike Diamond Head Crater. But first, we decided to take a quick nap. By the time we got ready to go hiking, Diamond Head was about to close. So, we did the next best thing and walked to a grocery store. When we got back from shopping, we went to eat at a pizza place called Giovanni's. It was GREAT. There were like 12 TV's with baseball games on every one. I loved eating there. January was very nice to me and did not get mad that I was watching the games instead of gazing into her beautiful eyes. When we finished eating we called it a day.



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Location:Oahu, Hawaii

Day 3 Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and Luau

We are getting our under water pictures developed. This is a picture of Hanauma Bay. It was absolutely beautiful.



OK, so our day started off by going to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling. January was talking so big and bad. There are 3 different levels to swim (basically shallow, medium, and deep with bad under tow). You know the deep part is bad when it is called toilet bowl. Well, J said she was going to do all her swimming in level 2, because level 1 wasn't deep enough to see the big fish. Well, I wanted to stay close. If you know me very well, you know that swimming is not one of my strengths. So, January was giving me a hard time. So, I told her I would do it. Well, the water was just too cold for the tough ol' girl. She snorkeled for a total of about 10 minutes. I had to swim all alone. It was fun though. There were plenty of coral reefs in the level 1 , as you can see in the picture above, that had plenty of fish swimming in them. Yeah, snorkeling was great. The water was so clear and beautiful.

When we finished, we got back on our bus and went to our room to get ready for the Luau.

The place we went was called Germain's Luau. It was a lot of fun. The music was good, the dancers were good, and the food was good. They buried the pig that morning and started smoking it. They pulled it out when we got there. Needless to say, J nor I ate the pork.








Yeah, that is the pig's skull. Here are some photos of the dancers.




He is not grabbing her, it just looks like that.






As the show went on, one of the guys came out twirling fire. He was amazing. He stuck one lighted stick in his mouth and transferred the flame to start the fire on the other stick. INCREDIBLE!









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Location:Oahu, Hawaii

Day 5 Manoa Falls

I have to skip to this day because it was so incredible...and as always with places like this, pictures do not do it justice.

At the Luau the other night, the narrator said that Hawaiians are very spiritual people. There is no way you can see what we saw today and not at least acknowledge that a creator exists...

We caught two city busses to get to the Manoa Falls trail. We left behind a tropical beach and sun and 15 miles away we had arrived in a tropical rainforest! There are 150 climate categories in the world, Hawaii has almost all of these climates. The closer we got the bigger and greener everything got!!!! we felt like we were in the Alice and Wonderland movie set!





















Manoa Falls




At this point most people turn around and walk back to the bus...we found a small trail climbing up the side of the mountain in the rock. Of course we headed up the mountain!!! It's always worth it to go off road!! Just a little side note-wild boar roam the mountains here-so as a precaution we told Beka to call in the troops if she didn't hear from us...





This is one tree. The roots grow down to the ground from the limbs.




Most parts of the trail were very narrow and had steep drop offs. You couldn't tell on some parts because the foliage was so thick.




We walked for about an hour up up up the mountain. Some parts got really dark and thick and some parts were rainy. It looked just like Fern Gully!!! We finally got to a clearing. Off to the left a small foot trail followed the rim of the mountain. Literally 4' width at the top and steep drops on either side. The wind was very very strong, clouds were starting to settle over the mountain, our cell phone battery's were dying, we had no idea how far the trail went so we walked until we had to turn back to give ourselves enough time to get back down the mountain.










One of the bamboo forests we walked through...It was very dense and very little light gets through even in the middle of the day!


At the bus stop we were able to identify where we had just hiked. If you look about 1finger width from the left of the photo you see a small clearing. From there we hiked to the right up the dip, across the flat (looks flat from this view...nothing was flat) part, up up up to the peak of the tallest part, across that peak and then turned back...we weren't sure if it looped back around and we were running out of daylight.




This has been my favorite day so far!!! I feel ALIVE in the outdoors!!! Whether it is in the red rock of Moab, the coffee colored river in Branford, or the rainforest of Hawaii...I choose this over commercialized, man made activities and things any day of the week!!!


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Location:Oahu, Hawaii

Day 2 Part 2 - Circle Island Tour cont...

Correction: This is Gilligan's Island



Cliff Diving



Sea Turtle








Pineapple Rows: Takes 1 1/2 years to grow 1 pineapple. After the first harvest they produce up to 10 more within several more months. They get smaller and smaller, but sweeter and sweeter.












We got Lei's made from seashells for our Anniversary!







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Location:Oahu, Hawaii