Yoloha! Oahu and Kauai

Leaving Kona and the Rogers was sad, but we ended our visit with a great lunch at the Harbour near the airport. While we had lunch a boat cruised by that had a name of ‘Aloha Kai’ – we thought this was a good sign to island hop to Oahu. 

After two weeks of living without our backpacks we were excited to put them on again. We had flights booked on an airline named ‘Go!’ – which apparently has a reputation of cancelling flights if there’s not enough passengers. The locals call it ‘No Go!’ – or just ‘Go?’ Luckily we had no problems and we got going as scheduled.

Arriving in Honolulu was strange seeing such a large city with high rises and five lane highways. It felt more like Los Angeles than Hawaii. We had planned to get out of the city and up to the North Shore of Oahu – where the waves are big and the population is small. Upon renting our car we were offered a special upgrade to a Jeep or Mustang convertible for only $10 more per day (we already had a great deal for $12 per day with a Ford Focus). We were torn between the choices. What would Geir think if we took the Jeep over the Mustang? Our decision was made easy with Kai offering to pay half of the upgrade cost if we chose the Mustang. So convertible it was. Sorry Geir!

cruizin’ in our mustang convertible in Oahu

The north shore of Oahu is know as the surfing capital of the world. Northern ocean swells hit the shore directly in the winter months without any other obstruction – so it’s pure Pacific power. There was a high surf advisory when we arrived – calling for 15-20 feet wave heights, but also with strong trade winds. We were excited to check out all the famous surf spots – like Banzai Pipeline, Sunset, and Waimea Bay – and hoped that there would be some great surfing to watch.

While at Waimea Bay we noticed a bunch of people body surfing in the shore break – so Kai and Norrie decided to try it out. This would be a lesson in respecting the ocean conditions and following ones instinct…. After playing in the modest waves for 15-20 minutes a large set started to roll in which built larger with each subsequent wave. In what seemed to be an instant, they felt out of their comfort zone and had to duck dive the seventh wave in the set which must have measured 15 feet. In between sets they were able to make it out of the shore break safely – exhausted and relieved… and so were Kari and Vea!!!

This mural on the North Shore of Oahu captures how Kai and Norrie felt while being caught inside the shore break at Waimea Bay.

The next day we decided to stay out of the water and went for a walk in Waimea Valley – which provided a great home schooling lesson on Hawaiian culture and native & endemic flora – and at the end of the trail there was a beautiful waterfall to take in. Vea had a blow-out on her flip-flops mid-way through the trail and had to improvise to make it through without any sore feet.

The rest of our time in Oahu was spent exploring the island top down in our Mustang with picnic lunches on the beach. We only had a couple of days on this island – but were happy to have experienced some of the north shore surf culture here.

The North Shore of Oahu is the surfing capital of the world.

Our last Hawaiian Island was Kauai. This is known as the ‘Garden Isle’ because it’s the oldest of the Hawaiian Islands with lush vegetation and jagged mountain peaks. We had four days to explore Kauai and were able to explore the entire Island. We stayed nearby to the airport in an area called Kapaa – which proved to be a fantastic base for exploring.

Our fist day we rented some ‘cruiser’ bikes and explored the coastline on the ‘Pineapple Coast Trail’ which passed by some amazing beaches and coastal scenery. Biking is a fantastic way to explore new territory. It’s wonderful how much more conversation there is between Kai and Vea during a bike ride compared to during a car ride. In fact – at times we’ve had to resort to handing out ‘yellow cards’ to Kai and Vea while driving in the car for their behaviour in the back seats. Two yellow cards is a warning for a red card to follow. We haven’t yet had to deliver a red card – hopefully we never will.

Cycling the ‘Pineapple Coast Trail’ in Kauai.

We had heard great things about a hike on the north shore of Kauai on the Napali Coast – so we left early on our second day packing snacks and water for our hike. It was a beautiful sunny day – but we also packed our rain gear since the rain clouds come and go quickly on this island – hence the lush green vegetation!

Napali coast was awesome with stunning views of the rugged north western shoreline. This is the area where Jurrassic Park was filmed – and we certainly felt like we were in a special place. The trail was a bit slippery and muddy at times because of the intermittent showers – so we made sure that Kai and Vea hiked close to the inside of the trail away from the 1000 foot drop-offs!

The amazing coastline of Kauai’s north west shore viewed from the Napali trail.

We now feel like we’re back in our travelling groove and have had some good home-schooling sessions with Kai and Vea while we’ve been here. Another focus these past days has been to try and finalize plans for our New Zealand tour. Most importantly we needed to book our campervan – and we spent a great deal of time researching different rental details and companies. There’s such an array of options and mixed reviews on rental companies – we felt pretty overwhelmed. In addition, we’ve learned that this is the busiest season in 10 years for motorhome rentals – so availability was very limited, especially one week away from our arrival in Auckland!

Luckily we found a great family run rental company called ‘Walkabout Rentals’ which has been fantastic to deal with and we were able to secure our campervan rental for the full month of touring the north and south island of New Zealand. A great relief to have something booked. We’ll see how it all pans out once we get to New Zealand!

Our last day in Kauai was exploring the south western coast and Waimea Canyon which is known as the ‘Grand Canyon of the Pacific’. It was pretty incredible to see the huge canyon gorge after climbing over 3500 feet from the coastline (we drove to the top – not hike!)

Waimea Canyon is known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

We ended our day by hitting Costco to stock up on food supplies that we could buy in bulk for our New Zealand motorhome tour. We decided to purchase an extra $8 duffel bag to store all of our supplies – which included good coffee, real Maple Syrup (for Kai), coconut oil, almonds and of course…. a small waffle maker! Who could travel New Zealand without a waffle maker??

Tonight we have a long over-night flight to Fiji. We actually loose an entire day when we cross the international date line – and we are all trying to figure out the time difference from home in Halifax. This makes us feel quite far from home as we are a full day ahead and half way around the world!

We’re very excited to experience Fiji – which is a place none of us has been to before. We hear that the Fijian Islands are renowned for their warm hospitality and friendly people.

As we leave Hawaii, we feel very fortunate to have enjoyed so much Aloha with family and friends from back home, and that we’ve been able to explore four of the Hawaiian Islands – Maui, The Big Island, Oahu and Kauai.

Here’s some photos from our week of Hawaiian island hopping.

Yoloha for now!