last day in paradise

how did the last day arrive so soon?

we woke up early, packed up our one carry-on bag (this took around 7 minutes, give or take), ate free breakfast one more time, and printed our boarding passes.  and then a really long day commenced.

(this is how quiet we were in the prius hybrid.)

we saved several dry activities for the last day so we would be comfortable on the plane.  as i had learned earlier in the week, dried saltwater is sticky and smelly after a few hours!  logan was really looking forward to visiting the uss arizona memorial at pearl harbor so we blocked out about 3 hours thursday morning to explore this world war II site.  all of our guidebooks and even locals said to expect a 2-3 hour wait.  as it turned out, parking the car took the longest at around 30 minutes!  this was pretty funny because we creeped around the parking lot while trying not to act like we're stalking people.  logan said we were super ninja because we were silently rolling along in a hybrid, quiet as a mouse sleeping on a cotton ball.  yes, we were almost invisible except that cars are about 20 times larger than humans.

(atomic bomb = so scary!)

i like visiting historic museums with logan because he somehow knows everything about everything, so tours are like having my own personal docent.  he told me all about world war II and explained the history of nuclear bombs.

we saw the sunken arizona and learned about the events of december 7, 1941.  one of the coolest things about the pearl harbor memorial is that there were a couple of survivors walking around!  we spoke with a very elderly fellow named allen who was on another ship close the the arizona when it was bombed.  it was amazing to actually speak to someone with firsthand experience - one day this will no longer be possible!

after pearl harbor, we cruised over to chinatown to take in the sights.  because of hawaii's polynesian and asian influence, the chinatown in honolulu is pretty authentic.  there were tons of lei shops, markets with kinda scary meat-looking things that i didn't want to investigate, and, yay!, bakeries!  the chinese bakeries were really neat because their idea of sweets is so different from american culture.  sweets in chinatown consisted of fruit cakes, almond cookies, fig pastries, and moon cakes.  okaaaayy, okay, it was kinda yucky.  i think part of my disappointment was that i was expecting pound cake with syrup filling, dipped in doughnut icing, with powdered sugar and chocolate on top.  i'm american, guilty :-/

(chinese wedding cake on the left, black sugar moon cake on the right.  i tried to love it, i really did.)

(THIS is what i wanted)

what i was really looking for were those delicious chinese sugar biscuits that you get at asian buffets.  the fried, doughy ones with sugar on top.  i was very sad because they were nowhere to be found in chinatown, which makes me think they are only make-believe asian.  gah!!  i thought i was super cultured because i love those things.

after chinatown, we started searching for some really good hawaii coffee. they kind they served at our hotel was douwe egberts and might just be the best coffee i've ever had!  farmers of hawaii produce incredibly aromatic coffee and they do so with utmost care.  any coffee you see that is labeled "100% kona" was grown, hand picked, and hand roasted in hawaii.  we finally found a kona coffee shop and my beverage was top notch.

(diamond head crater)

so here's the saddest part of our trip.  we saved the hike up oahu's diamond head crater for our last day.  this is the most iconic feature of the island of oahu, probably second only to waikiki beach itself.  the view from diamond head crater is breathtaking!  or so i hear.  yep, we drove up diamond head road on our way to the trail head, totally siked about finally doing one of the coolest hikes in the world, and it was closed.

uuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

so sad.  we still drove all the way up to the parking lot to ask the attendant if all 3 of the giant yellow "hike closed" signs really meant it.  we were totally bummed, mostly because this hike is so famous, and just a little because, at this point, we had 8 hours to kill until our flight at 11 p.m.  what else could we do?  we went to a convenience store and bought ice creams and sat out on the beach.  this actually worked out very nicely in the end because we got to say farewell to waikiki beach under the best sunset i've ever seen.

we grabbed some dinner at california pizza kitchen then got outta dodge.  all good things come to an end, which is quite alright because you wouldn't appreciate the good things if they weren't fleeting.  this was officially the best week of my life!

wait until a wave comes, then you jump

(logan climbing in waimea bay.)

another super enjoyable day!  i think logan and i have done a great job of making this honeymoon fun and exciting without being redundant.  each day seems very different. 

we started today in search of some good old rock climbing.  it's been more than a week since logan's climbed so, you know, his head is about to fall off or something.  we cruised over to waimea bay on the north shore and i watched some sweet waves and surfers while logan bouldered along a giant rock.  we noticed some crazies jumping off one of the cliffs into the ocean.  the drop didn't seem too bad at about 20 feet above the water so, duh. logan had to do it, too.  he jumped in, no prob, and so did lots of other dudes. 

(fearless!  jumping off a cliff.)

i must have had my big girl panties on today because i thought "well darnit, i did the haiku stairs yesterday.  i can jump off a rock into some water!" 

what is wrong with me.  yall, i am afraid of the garbage can when it starts to smell a little.  i get nervous walking up stairs with too many groceries in my hand because i think i'm going to fall.  i have got to be about one heart palpitation away from being a clinical over-worrier.  so why do i keep doing these irrational things that are outrageously out of character??

i'm at a loss.  i must have some craving to prove to myself that i'm still years away from having to check myself in to a mental health clinic.  case in point:  i just spent a paragraph worrying about how much i worry.

(look closely, you can see me screaming)

anway, so i climb up the rock to take a little looksee and shock and dismay are two for two this week.  i held my breath, looked straight out (not 'down,' this is key), and left the rock.  i screamed all the way down, hit the water, and bobbed to the top.  didn't like it.

after the impromptu cliff jumping, we went in search of giant sea turtles over at turtle beach.  this was pretty funny/embarassing because we walked out onto the rocky shore and kept looking, straining our eyes, and saying "i don't see any .. they're supposed to be everywhere?"  guess what turtle shells look like?  giant rocks!  there were two huge turtles napping about 3 feet in front of us on the sand!  they were a boy and a girl so i decided that they are married and i named them manny and estelle.  manny sleeps a lot and estelle likes to body surf when the water comes up high.  i caught them kissing!  cutest ever.  logan said manny was actually trying to eat estelle's face, but that's not nearly as romantic as them kissing.

(manny and estelle <3 )

we stopped and got a couple more shave ices - these things are better than ice cream!  kinda like sno cones, only way better.  i got blueberry coconut cream, mmmmmmmmmmm.  we walked around a shopped a bit and i found the neatest hawaii dress to wear to dinner!  so cute. 

we spent the afternoon out on waikiki beach.  the water here is like a bathtub!  calm and comfortably warm.  logan signed up for some surf lessons and i opted to try the stand up paddle boarding.  this is where you get what basically looks like a thick surfboard and you stand up on it and cruise around with a paddle.  i had no luck standing up so i just sat on it kayak-style and puttered around thusly.  well this was just super.  i absolutely loved floating around the bay of waikiki watching all the surfers up close and riding a few waves myself.  logan got reallllyyyy tired, as one does when paddling against waves for an hour.  so here logan was, out of breath and exhausted, soaking wet, and floating up to me: "why aren't you surfing?"  i am dry from the waist up and perched happily atop my surfboard, cruising all over the place: "umm, i AM surfing."  hello!  i was on a surfboard bobbing up and down.  that's "surfing" from what i can tell about the athletes on waikiki beach.  plus my hair stayed cute while doing it.



(view from our table at dinner)



we paid our respects to happy hour, as usual, then went to dinner at the house without a key at the halekulani hotel.  logan gave this place five stars!  he said the food was fantastic, the music was fabulous, and the service and atmosphere were wonderful and inviting.  this place wins for best meal of the trip - logan had the seared ahi with creamy pesto pasta.  readers - this is worth a trip to the middle of the pacific.  the band played lots of hawaiian music and also some hawaiian versions of christmas songs!  very fun, indeed.

(such a romantic evening!  look at my pretty dress!  and when i went to get my hair flower for the evening, flower lady gave us two leis because i come every night :)

honeymoon fear factor

grab some coffee, this is a long 'un.

let's take a journey.  i am going to tell you a little story about THE SCARIEST THING I'VE EVER DONE.  first of all, read through this post about oahu's haiku stairs, aka the stairway to heaven



(mr. unrealhawaii's picture of the stairs)

doesn't that sound adventurous and exciting?  not even scary ... just mildly unsettling, right?  incorrect, readers.  this hike is beyond terrifying.  i am not exaggerating - i was honest to god afraid for the safety of my life for most of the climb.  i quote mr. unrealhawaii: "it's not treacherous or anything."  are you on crack?  also:  "Haiku Stairs isn’t the most difficult hike on the island..."  oh really?  what is?  free soloing up a butter-drenched licorice rope hanging from a cloud?  is there another set of death stairs that's upside down and you must defy gravity while chimpanzees throw whole pineapples at your face?  please tell me, sir awesome, what's harder than this wicked stairmaster from dante's inferno??!



(here's me. this still doesn't convey how steep it was.)



so today started at 4 a.m.  we woke up early because according to our sources, the guard (this hike is illegal) mans his post (scott, i know you've got at least 3 jokes for this line) around 6 a.m.  just for fun, we find out later from a local guy that the guard actually gets there around 9 a.m.  we parked in the nearby neighborhood and set off on a mini-adventure to actually find the stairs in the first place.  we slipped, slid, and slithered through mud, bamboo forests, and under fences to finally reach stair #1 at 5:33 a.m.  i would give anything to travel through time to my 5:32 a.m. self this morning and say "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! stop!!"

so we started climbing.  i think my fight or flight instinct kicked in on or around stair #22 (there are 4,000 stairs).  it was dark for the entire climb.  this actually helped a bit because i couldn't see off to the sides of the stairs where the mountain ridge dropped off like a thousand feet.  i can't even describe all the most horrifying parts of this experience.  the stairway is so narrow that two people cannot pass.  whenever someone wanted to get by us, we had to find a place where there actually was a little ground to the side of the stairs, then duck under the railing and hang off the side to let others by.  so that's how narrow it was.



(this is how i felt.  times a grillion.)



according to the blog i linked above, the "stairs" are veerrryy stair-like and just a little steep in some places.  LIAR!!!!  logan and i completed the first half of the stairs and we both agree that about 85% of the first half is so steep that it's like a ladder.  in fact, about 20% of the first half is exactly like a ladder.  you can't even grab the railing because the "stairs" are completely vertical.  on these vertical portions, guess what's below you?  nothing.  for about 100 feet.  have you ever climbed up a 100 foot ladder with no ropes or anchor devices?  have you done it in the rain?!

so this is the chillingly paralyzing best part: it starts raining while we are ascending one of the completely vertical sections!  i wouldn't call it a sprinkle or a mist, i would call it a smite shower from god.  yes, i was arrogant enough to think that i could accomplish a feat like the haiku stairs and god smited me. all the way to the top.  seriously though, there was a point where i was clinging to these old, world war 2 battle ship stairs, standing straight up on a vertical ladder with nothing below me and only deepening terror above me.  and at this point, the rain poured down.  i laid my head against the step i was clutching and just stood there. 



(this angle makes the stairs seem like they are just really small; actually it's so steep that the bottom inch of this photo probably represents about a 15-foot drop.)



yall, i couldn't do anything. 

i couldn't go down because it was dark and rainy and  misty and we couldn't see anything.  i couldn't go up because i was too petrified to move a muscle and every motion was nauseatingly slippery.  i am not joking or exaggerating or in any way trying to be funny.  i truly believed there was a chance i would die.  but what do you do?  i had to keep climbing upward :(



(logan at the first summit.)



around 6:30 a.m. logan and i reached the first summit and sole resting spot for the entire first half of the stairs.  i think logan was just as afraid as i was - the rain really did us in.  the death frosting on this cake of terror was when we reached the summit, we didn't even get a view!  GAAHHH!!!!!!!!!  after all that stress and anxiety and physical torture, we didn't even get a view.  the rain clouds were hanging all around us so we could hardly see.

we only rested for 5 or 10 minutes and immediately began the descent.  we were both sick with fear and wanted nothing more than to get the down climb over with.  thankfully the rain stopped but the stairs and railing was still incredibly slimy, muddy, and perilous.  we vowed to one another that we would take 3 hours to get down if we had to because we would descend as slowly as possible.  we went down backwards because the stairs were so sheer and slippery that going face-forwarded yielded too great a danger of losing balance and falling forward.  the really bad part is that, at this point, the sun had popped up and shed light on what we were really doing. 

o. m. g.



(see where the stairs "disappear?" that's one of the vertical drop-offs.)

this was so bad.  in order to see where to place my foot, i had to look down.  readers, stand up for a second.  now look down at your feet.  imagine that your foot from your toe almost to your heel is on an old rickety stair; and riiiiiight behind your heel you see a significant drop into open space.  looking straight down, you can't even see the next stair.  you have to slowly lower one foot into the open air and feel for the next step down.  then you do this about a hundred more times until you reach a slightly more level section where you can lean into the stairs while your legs quiver violently.

after an hour and a half of absolute horror, we finally saw the gate that marked the beginning of this colossal, miscalculated mistake.  i was so happy to get back safely that i almost cried.  i had tears in my eyes.  logan admitted that he was pretty terrified as well, but that he was mostly very upset at how afraid i was.  this is why i love him so much.  when we got to the bottom, it was written all over his face (and hugs) how distressed he was over being unable to calm my fear.  there really was nothing anyone could do, our only choice was to climb back down the way we came, but i could tell how deeply it tore at logan that he couldn't keep me from all this fear.  a very emotional day!

i spouted jubilant hallelujas all the way back to the car and we actually made it back to our hotel by 9:30 a.m. - just in time to snag some free breakfast.  it was a little funny to walk in to breakfast quasi-early in the morning and be covered in mud.  we got stares.




we enjoyed a really nice rest of the day by napping, watching some tv, listening to the ocean from our balcony, walking along waikiki beach, observing happy hour, eating sushi, and lying in the grass watching a free hawaiian music/hula dance show near our hotel.



one last quote from mr. unrealhawaii:  "overall, the hike is very doable." no, davidchat, your mother is doable.  the stairs are impossible!

skoobing

monday was scuba diving day!  i like to call it skoobing.  this was an all-day event.  being miss patty punctual, i had us in front of our hotel at 8:05 a.m. to await our scubavan (supposed to arrive at 8:15).

.....

at 8:50 a.m. the instructor rolled up to our hotel.  it's ok, i think he was late because he got held up at a russell brand lookalike contest.  he obviously won.  so we hopped in the van with mr. bedhead and he started driving us over to the local military base where we would get our first instructions on how to skoob safely.  the military base here in honolulu is just like the one in huntsville - super secure and you must have your ID to enter.  guess who didn't have his ID.  nope, not logan.  the instructor!  the guy was the biggest stoner.  so we get to the base, and a hop, skip, and a hide-a-guy-in-the-backseat-under-some-towels later, we were in the pool with our equipment learning to not hold our breath.

has anyone been skoobing before?  ok it's kinda intense because the instructor is like holdthisbreatheheredontholdyourbreathoryoulldieblowoutyourearsokgo.  um.  what.  can you repeat that?  how about 9 more times?  why is this tank so heavy?  is everything supposed to hurt?  ok good, just checking.

i was having a ton of trouble with "equalizing" which is where you hold your nose and gently blow out in order to "pop" your ears.  our instructor, no surprise here, said "well let's just get to the ocean, i'm sure you'll figure it out there."  his reassurance skills are lacking.  not great for a skoob teacher, but at least he's not a surgeon.

so we make our way over to another part of the island where we hop on a boat and head out on the radiant teal water!

we suited up and dove right in!  there was a guide rope that descended from the surface down about 40 feet to the ocean floor.  logan was a natural, of course, and i took my time.  my ears did fine!  the sea life down there was just marvelous.  we saw some giant turtles - one of them was almost as big as me!  it's incredible how graceful they are for being so large with a heavy shell.  we saw tons of colorful fish and they would swim up all around us.  it was kinda exactly like a scene from the little mermaid.  we also saw some eel (eels?) but they ran away from me :(  yes, ran.

we did two different dives and each one lasted about 45 minutes.  this experience was well worth the money (thanks, NASA!) for all the skoob time we got.  our instructor, whose name is "geo," took us back to the hotel and we showered and fancied up for dinner.  we made our way over to duke's because we've been hearing about this excellent waikiki-front restaurant all week.  once again, we dined by torchlight mere feet from the sand and surf.  my sweet husband didn't even complain when i asked him to stop talking about weird/gross stuff like cannibalism since we were in such a romantic place.  dinner ended up being rather quiet, though...  then it was early to bed so we could get up at 4 a.m. to embark on our thuper thecret hawaii adventure!

paddle, paddle, sip

on a side note, there is a lady just outside our hotel who sells beautifully crafted hair flowers!  i'm obsessed.  i plan to get one every night!  single ladies sport a bloom on the right, married gals on the left.

for sunday, logan and i decided to go ocean kayaking!  part workout, part sea-bonding, all made better with beer.  we got a pretty late start in the morning compared to our usual up and at 'em at 7 a.m.  we mosey'ed on over to gobananas around 10 a.m. and rented a tandem kayak.  the stoner kayak rental specialist highly recommended that we purchase and tote along some beer to "help weigh down the craft and prevent capsizing."  always one to follow instructions, logan stopped us at a convenient little store along the way and we snagged some tall boy BLLs.  life vest - check.  hair flower - check.  beer - double check.

as suggested by our thuper thecret hawaii guidebook, we decided to paddle out to a little-known site called sunken island.  this little gem is the result of ice caps melting thousands of years ago causing a rise in sea level.  what was once a thousand acre beach is, well, still a thousand acre beach - it just has about a foot and a half of crystal clear water on top!  we kayaked about a mile off shore to reach sunken island then got out and walked around for a bit.  this has got to be one of the most photogenic spots in all of oahu.

so this was super enjoyable for the view and also because logan kennedy cracks me up every damn day of my life.  if only his jokes were family friendly, i would repeat them here.

being the ambitious vacationers, we reached land again and immediately went in search of other great kayak locations.  we visited a few more beaches but eventually decided that i was we were just too tuckered out to venture out again.  we thought about doing surf lessons, but again, the tiredness won out.  ultimately we spent the afternoon driving up one of the mountains along the famous tantalus drive, which is an amazingly twisty road that snakes through the jungle/rain forest (not sure what it's called here.  for that matter, what's the dif between rain forest and jungle?  i remain confused.)  at the top we got a mesmerizing view of honolulu.

for dinner we decided to go fancy and hit up one of the resort restaurants.  sigh.  there are few things on earth that make logan kennedy angry and a foodfail is one of them.  i thought the place was pretty neat - it's directly on waikiki beach with an open, patio-style atmosphere.  the weird thing was that they had a below average salad bar, and for the entree you picked a meat from the menu and the server brought it to you raw.  once the server finished explaining, logan looked at me and said "i do not go to restaurants to cook my own food.  this place is dead to me."  so we took logan's raw, terriyaki-drenched chicken up to the grill and commenced to cooking our own dinner.  my hat is off to the owner of this resort who very skillfully saves undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of dollars on chefs each year by making guests cook their own food and calling it an "experience."  but you don't fool logan kennedy, sir.

make caroline mad, get a slushi on your head

saturday morning we left earlyish to go spy on our secret hawaii project called the haiku stairs.  we wanted to scope out parking and access and coincidentally ran into some hikers who had just finished the trek!  we're pretty pumped about this one for later in the week.  i know you're on the edge of your seat.

next we went to "see" the chinaman's hat island.  really does look like a hat!



now, i thought we were just going to gaze at this lovely island from the beach.  take some pics, walk along the beach, and move on to our next activity.  however.  i'm on my honeymoon with logan so many of you can probably guess where our morning actually went.  yep, we swam/waded the 600 yards out to the island and climbed to the top.



please look closely and note how steep that stupid hat is.  worst ever.  i was SO afraid.



there was a really nice view at the top, i will admit this.  however, one cannot miss what one doesn't know, so i would have been just as fine not going.  also, when my husband makes me do things i really don't want to do, punishment is exacted.


(view from the top of chinaman's hat.)

we drove along the island to la'ie point which is a giant rock that has a hole in middle of it thanks to a powerful tsunami.  water - 1, rock - 0.

we lunched at romy's shrimp shack on the side of the road.  the north shore is famous for it's little shrimp operations not unlike huntsville's famous taco trucks.  tasty!  we had spicy shrimp and brown rice with some pineapple.  i highly recommend it.  logan does not.

we spent the rest of the afternoon driving to famous north shore beaches like sunset and pipeline.  these beaches are famous for the amazing surfing and the vans triple crown surfing competition is actually going on this week!  we tried to catch a round of that, but the competitors wait for the best conditions to get scored so there is no set time for competing.  we still saw some cool surfers, though!  at the end of the activity portion of our day we stopped for shave ice's.



i got a "hawaiian" and logan got a "north shore."  i got about halfway through mine then dumped it on logan's head when he wasn't looking.  that's what you get for making me climb tall things that i hate.  sleep with one eye open, kennedy.

not a how-does-my-hair-look vacation

friday was ... wow.  spoiler alert:  logan said the words "this is the best thing i've ever done in my life."

so friday we solved the rental car problem by, yep, you guessed it, paying ridiculously tooooo much for one because i don't turn 25 for two more weeks.  gods of irony, please stop making a mockery of my life and move on to someone else.  on the brightside, we get to drive a 2010 prius all week!  push button start and it turns off the engine in traffic.  between me and logan, i'm sure you can guess which one almost peed his pants with excitement at the chance to wield this new technology and you can guess which one of us was asked the read the owner's manual out loud.  from cover to cover.

and we're off!  hanauma bay snorkeling is the activity on deck for the morning.  the bay is breathtaking from above.  we geared up and dove in (p.s. the water is freezing).  the fish are like pets here!  they get so close to you - i know i touched a bunch of them without trying!  i kept bumping into them. 

we saw a massive sea turtle just nomming his way through the reef.  the waves were shuffling him around all over the place but he just contentedly nommed wherever the water landed him peacefully for a few seconds.  what an inspiration you are, mr. overlarge sea turtle.  i must learn this magic where one simply floats along in life, eating whatever's closest, and has no worries. TEACH ME, I SAY!  RIGHT NOW!  see, i can be laid back, too.

     

(pic of hanauma bay from the internet - way better than any i can do!)

after snorkeling, we drove around the edge of the island and found the halona blowhole.  for anyone who even remotely knows logan and me, you know what horribly dense and crude jokes i had to endure.  scott, i know your heart is melting right now, just thinking of all the fun you missed with the word "blowhole."  it was very neat - the violent ocean crashes into the rocky shore and the white surf shoots up through this little hole in the rock.

next we drove on along the island edge in pursuit of the oahu's dragon's nostrils.  this is a famous yet little known double-blowhole (scott, keep it together) at the very bottom of a very tall hike called makapu'u. 

thanks to our sneaky  insider's travel book, we hiked up the well-known makapu'u trail and at the educational sign about blue whales, we veered off course and began climbing about 450 down the steep rocky mountain.  though we found subtle hints of a trail, most of the cliff face was rocks that we climbed down.

(if you look in the center of the picture, then move your eyes up and left just a little, those are people. just to give you a little scale.  also, those tide pools at the bottom are probably 30-40 feet across.)

 

at the bottom of the cliff, the raging sea crashed against the rocks and created these cool little wading pools behind some bigger rocks.  logan and i got in the water there and climbing onto some of the rocks near the water so we could see the waves crash.  the spray went about 30 feet into the air when waves crashed!  so cool to see this up close.  we were mesmerized by how awesome the waves were until one crashed almost on top of us and i became terrified.  we climbed back down the rocks, waded through the churning pool, and started climbing back up the cliff face.  so fun!

then we came back to the hotel, showered and rested, and went to our hotel happy hour.  going down the list, we had hawaiian punch and "clear" margaritas. 


(we stopped and got some little chocolate treats - i got this cappucino truffle shaped like a coffee cup!)

we got some sushi at a little place then moved on to the sheraton resort where we at dinner at rumfire and sat outside next to torches right over the pacific ocean.  glorious!  the food was fabulous and the live music was just as wonderful.  logan and i danced to a hawaiian rendition of an eric clapton song in a little corner of the restaurant, in a little corner of the earth.