Well, well, well look who we have here… yup, it’s me, making an attempt at finishing out our time in Hawaii blog. And yes, life update, we are no longer in Hawaii… and we sorely miss it. But that’s not what this post is about!
Maybe we should start with why I stopped blogging. Well, I got pregnant, and, as they say, the rest is history. I wasn’t feeling super great so frankly I wasn’t doing much anyway. But there are some great memories here that I captured and I shall capture them in a blog, gosh darnit!
Charisse planned the trip perfectly as she arrived the day before Brian left for deployment. I went to my usual spot, waved my goodbye, and focused on the week ahead of hanging with a good friend from back home!
I said Bye to Brian and then met Charisse for dinner that night at Duke’s. We enjoyed a great meal on Waikiki.
We started the next day with a tour of the East Coast which included Halona blow hole, Haunama Bay, Koko Crater, Makapu’u lighthouse.
I feel like I have plenty of pictures of these spots already… so I will reserve some photo space for other adventures!
Will be chipping away at catching up gradually. Hopefully it won’t be too long because I lived a pretty “dull” life while pregnant. Thank you, nausea!
I want to start off by saying normally I’m scrambling to blog on Sundays but I am super proud of myself for blogging on Saturday!
This bay probably looks familiar, it’s Haunama Bay (The one Erin and I snorkeled a while back). There’s actually a hike that goes up and around the rim of it and down toward the right of this picture. It’s unlisted on the AllTrails app, which I find very curious, but most of it is technically on an access road that’s supposed to be off limits. We encountered a lot of other people enjoying the route and no one there to stop us so… on we went! In the next picture, you can see us walking on the access road and behind us is a great view of Koko crater and the neighborhood of Hawaii Kai. I will tell you we vastly underestimated this hike, this was the first of two steep ascents. Luckily it was cooler and we had some wind, but I did have to stop for more reasons than to take a picture or three.
Eventually we reached the “top”. You could keep going, but I think it ends up going to an out and back point, and we didn’t have a lot of time so we turned back to do a loop. Well, the next thing we know we’re walking down this near vertical pitch. Thankfully the rock was dry and super grippy aside from some loose gravel here and there. My knees were definitely feeling it by the time we finished descending! (this is looking back up from whence we came).
Then you walk along the coast and get to the right side of Haunama bay (looking outward)
What goes down must come up…It isn’t a very long time before you find yourself ascending another practically vertical pitch to get back up to the high ridge again. Here’s a girl descending what we just finished ascending. That brown patch is where we came from and where I took that above picture.
This was a sleeper hike… meaning I way underestimated the intensity. It ended up being 3.75 miles and 900ft elevation total! Idk what I was thinking, my friend sent me her route and stats and I must’ve glossed over them… I think because I thought we were just doing the rim and the loop was on the same elevation, but definitely not the case!
We did see a couple whale spouts while standing out there! I think if I did it again I’d take binoculars and dinner and sit and enjoy for a bit.
I told Brian he might need to find someone else to go with to do this hike, that’s how much I disliked it. But, I can be convinced of a lot… so who knows.
This is a really great shot of Koko Head. You can see a brown path going to the top… those are the Koko head stairs. I’m really nervous to do them because they are intense and really, really hot. My friend said that she’d go with me and we could take our time and just go as far as I’m comfortable. I will definitely try it sometime.
Haunama Bay is a state park and Nature Reserve. It is THE most popular Hawaiian tourist attraction (based on no polls but my rather my personal opinion). It’s been on my bucket list, but it’s logistically difficult to achieve, even for a local. You have to reserve tickets, which become available two days in advance. They only allow 1000 guests per day and are only open Wed to Sun. The parking lot is small and fills up quickly and costs $1 for military/local or $3 for tourists. The actual park is free for Military/local or $25 for tourists.
My friend and I hopped online a little before 7am, her on her phone and me on the computer. I had heard the trick was to aim for an off time, like 11:10am or 12:10am, so we tried those. I ended up getting us two tickets at 12:10AM. If you are military/local, you can go in any day without a reservation between 7a-8a.
The parking lot is small, so Erin and I headed over early to make sure we had time to hover for parking. We didn’t have to, and instead enjoyed walking the park a bit and enjoying the beauty of it as a whole.
Anyway, on to the fun part. After watching a 20 minute video putting the fear of God in you that you might be swept out by riptides and that you need to know how to swim, you make your way down a long pretty steep driveway to the bay. The fish were HUGE and there was a wide variety, so I saw a few I hadn’t seen in Lanikai. I could not believe how big they were, and then how close they’d get to us! The bottom left I didn’t capture fully because he was actually too close!
Erin realized she had heard the name of the Hawaiian State fish somewhere before (pictured top right, the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a fish) and it turns out it’s a song in High School Musical 2. As a going away present, she bought me a small fish identifier card. I don’t have it with me, but when I get back maybe I’ll label the fish above.
We had an awesome time.
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It was definitely murky because we’re getting into rougher water season and it was high tide. So I guess in the future I’d like to pick a calmer day, but it’s hard to be choosy with the logistics as they are. Here are a few miscellaneous pics from the adventure.
I think this next one puts into scale just how much reef there was to explore.
Afterward, I was evaluating the pros and cons of Lanikai vs. Haunama snorkeling. I definitely would go back to Haunama, especially with Brian, but I have to say that for the logistics as easy as they are in Lanikai, we have a great advantage. However, it is highly photogenic, especially with two beautiful ladies.
