Our Hawaii Trip-Day 1

Steve and I had a wonderful week in Hawaii. We stayed on Oahu, in Waikiki Beach at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.


Here is the Rainbow Tower in the Hawaiian Village. The mural on the side of this building is made of tile. Can you imagine laying all that tile? Amazing.


Here's the pool. Tropical paradise, is what it is!


There were even flamingo and penguin habitats to enjoy on the grounds of the resort. We were assured that these penguins are very comfortable living in a Hawaiian climate, as they are not from Antarctica, but perhaps Africa? I can't remember, for sure.






The city was a combination of dilapidated houses and high rise towers with a cool international feel. The smell of tropical flowers wafted on the breeze nearly everywhere you went. If you have enough money, the shopping's great: you can find every high-end store you can imagine. Mostly, we stuck to the ABC stores, which in spite of the name, were more like WINGS at Myrtle Beach: there was very little liquour, and very much of everything else, including tacky souveniers and t-shirts.

Going to Hawaii was a great opportunity for us! Steve was chosen to mentor a student from Oklahoma State University who was presenting a paper at The World Environmental and Water Resources Congress. We got to have a Hawaiian Vacation and expense some of the cost. Yippee!

We arrived on May 10 and had two days before Steve's conference started, so we had a lot of sight seeing to do before he had to go to work. Unable to sleep, I woke up at 4:00am on May 11, ready to roll. Steve woke up soon after, and began plotting our first day's sightseeing adventure, programming the locations into the rented GPS he was smart enough to get at Alamo Rent-a-Car!

We started off seeing Barber's Point Lighthouse. It's on the east side of Oahu and near slums and an industrial area. But I had to photograph all the lighthouses on the island, so off we went.


On the rocky beach near Barber's Point.


Next, we roared off in our rented convertible. (Great for tanning on the go!)


to the Dole Pineapple plantation


where we saw real live pineapples growing on pineapple plants! (Feel fortunate that I'm not making you look at the 25 other pineapple pictures I took...)


We ate some pineapple ice cream


and headed northwest until the road ended. Steve had to see the area of the island where LOST is filmed. Here is the "Others" compound (really a YMCA summer camp).


and a tarp-covered cylinder that Steve insists is the fusilage from the beach


then we walked around the remote beach,


I saw my first real tidal pool,


we watched some morons nearly flip this Jeep over,


and took a picture of this lone surfer, which spoke to me for some reason!


Then we headed east along the North Shore and came to Waimea Bay. it was gorgeous, and we decided we had to take a swim.


People were jumping off the 20ft high cliffs into the bay. I convinced Steve that he'd regret it forever if he didn't try it. So he did. I was on picture duty (there's no way on Earth I could have jumped, I know this, so I didn't bother trying). Here he is climbing.








and then he jumped and I totally missed the shot.


So he had to do it again! This time I got it!








Yay Steve! When we left, it was time to head to Waimea Falls. We were hoping they would let us swim in the pool. First, though, we had a 30 minute walk through a gorgeous rain forest to get to the falls.






Me in a Banyan tree.


Here's the waterfall


We were in luck! They were allowing swimming! We had a picture made before we entered the pool.


And we got to have our picture taken in the waterfall!


Thanks for sharing our vacation with us. I'll show you the rest of the trip, as time allows!