Aloha Hawaii! What a fabulous place to arrive after a whole month of winter…(has that made you sick yet)?! Hawaii memories seem to merge into one big relaxing smile, so I shall summarise as best I can…
North Shore Backpackers
We decided to stay here for the full week and have a 'base' as such after so much moving around. We opted for a private room in a shared 'tree house' which was pretty chilled out. It had a great communal area with a kitchen and big sociable table as well as a veranda which stretched the whole way around the front of the building filled with squashy sofas. As the name suggests, we opted for the quiet and relaxed north shore of Oahu rather than the built up and popular area of Wakiki, just south of Honolulu. Boy did we make a good choice, I fell in love with the North Shore immediately. The staff at the Backpackers were good fun – one played the guitar and we spent many a night sitting on the veranda reading listening to him strumming away in the background mixed in the with the sound of the waves. We went to a BBQ they organized one night and met some other fun people with who it was great to share travel stories with.
What did we do?
For the first few days? Bugger all! I read about 4 books, went swimming and just generally had a very relaxing time!
Cycling
However, incapable of being inactive for too long, we hired old rusty granny bikes one day and cycled off along the shore in search of a dive shop, which we found in Halei'wa, the main hub of the North shore. The bike ride was great, passing many gorgeous beaches to our right and lush hills on our left. Halei'wa is a fun little town with great coffee shops, an excellent marina and loads of surf shops (MT: and great shops selling tiny bikini's). The sign outside the dive shop confused us a little stating 'parking in rear.' We opted to leave the bikes out in the front. We booked a dive & also treated ourselves to new snorkel and masks as we were bored of the hire ones always filling up with water. I bought a new bikini then we cycled back towards home stopping at one of the beaches to snorkel with the resident Giant Turtles which come up onto the sand to sleep in the day. It was fantastic being in the water with them – they are so big, gracious and of course, ancient!
Diving
We got up early and rode the granny bikes the 5 odd miles down to Halei'wa marina. We went out to a couple of sites – the visibility was excellent and the scenery underwater very different to any other dive location. Huge volcanic mounds have created eerie looking stumps and holes in the lava which are great fun to swim through. There were also very cool air bubbles coming from various rocks on the ground and if you looked up when you were swimming through a cave, you could see the bubbles stuck on the ceiling, looking like something out of the Terminator films. The first dive took us through a turtle cleaning station where we saw the huge creatures relaxing while other fish kindly attached themselves to the shells for a bit of spring cleaning – rather like a carwash for turtles. We saw a few Moray Eels, a sting ray and lots of nudi banks. We perhaps did not see as much marine life as other places but the lava tube environment made it a very special dive, and besides, you never have a bad day diving!
Beach life
The hostel was located right next to a great little beach but then all the beaches in Hawaii are fab. We were 5mins walk from the famous Waimea beach where all of the big surfing contests are held each winter. Luckily the waves are small in the summer, so you can swim safely and also snorkel. Shark's Cove is another place where the season was a bonus as in the winter, it's apparently just a wash of foam and during the summer there's fantastic snorkeling in calm clear waters. Armed with our fancy new masks, we had a great time snorkeling and saw lots of fish/turtles, etc. There's a great swim you can do from one beach to another which goes around the point and takes you more into the open ocean. It's quite exhilarating being so far out and I was certainly glad that I had my mask so that I could see what was going on beneath me – still good fish and definitely more of a chance of seeing macro-life.
Surfing
You cannot come to Hawaii and not try out the surfing, if you like that kind of thing. Having had a taster in Australia, Mark and I were very keen to give it another shot. A dude at our hostel called Craig who has lived on the North Shore for years offered to take us out and we waited every day to get the word from him that the surf was big enough, which it was not, until our last day at about 5pm, where he said, 'let's go'! So we dropped everything, pulled on the boardies and jumped into his car. He took us to a spot which is not visible from the road and we could certainly see the white water breaking on the reef out at sea. The wave break point was a long way out, perhaps 300 metres and the waves stopped rolling just before the reef. Craig explained that there was a channel where we could swim out to behind the waves and not get too many breaking over us. He also kindly told me to be careful climbing over the rocks with my board and not to cut my toes and it attracts sharks quickly…I kind of wish he had not told me that beforehand, but I guess it was an incentive to catch the wave properly. Craig was a great guy – really laid back and totally obsessed with surfing. As we paddled out, the waves were getting bigger and bigger – he had explained that for some of the really big ones, we would need to jump off our board. It was pretty full on as some waves would be rolling up to us with Craig shouting 'get ready to jump off your board' with this big monster towering over our heads, then we wouldn't get the call and would bob over it. I remember looking at Mark knowing he was also thinking 'they didn't look this big from 300m back on the beach but this is awesome!'
So we got lined up to catch our waves – Miraculously I managed to stand up on my first one and ride it all the way back to the reef, which was so brilliant – the ride was so much longer than what I had done before. Mark also did well and caught them in too. On two of the waves, I stood up and then another wave seemed to come in on top of the one I was riding sending me through the washing machine and my board pinging up in the air. This was to be expected except I found myself caught in the middle of a big set of waves right at the breaking point and as soon as I came up another one crashed over me and to make things worse my board cord twisted around both legs so I couldn't kick, which was a bit scary. However, the set finished and I got back to the channel with a big 'doh' look on my face. Craig gave us a hand, giving a push to help us get enough momentum to get onto the wave. The funny thing was that he was obsessed with getting the biggest and best waves (of course) so we would sit out at sea bobbing around like seals waiting for 'the wave' – I was very happy to take his advice, although I did say to him a couple of times that I didn't mind not getting the 'biggest' wave, as the 'too small ones' powering in looked pretty big to me! The whole experience was so exciting – sometimes we saw a turtle popping up for air as we were sitting on our boards, the sun was setting and the light was beautiful and when you did manage to get a wave, it was such a rush. It was definitely an adrenaline rush and quite scary, but in a very good way. Big thumbs up for surfing in Hawaii and I think I may need some more practice before trying out the winter waves…JG
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