Oahu: Day 2

We packed a lot of stuff into Day 2. We were getting more accustomed to the time difference and had an entire island to explore!

All of our mornings usually started with the beach:

Terry and I would invent games that kept us in the ocean for a long time. It's difficult to get out when the water is warm and you're watching each other try to knee balance on top of a board, get the loudest flop off the top of a wave, or attempt to barrel roll yourself with a floating object. I forced Terry to try "Big Baby" daily.

That wave took him out and he lost his board completely.

Next, we decided that we wanted to "tour" the island by driving around most of it's perimeter. Did you know you can't actually drive the whole thing? There would be a lot of backtracking involved, so we went south from Kailua Beach, north through the middle of the island to the north shore, and back south along the eastern portion of Oahu. We stopped at everything that looked cool.

Our first stop was at Waimanalo Beach because we couldn't believe the water color from the road and had to see it up close. The water here was even more turquoise than the water at Kailua Beach and the ocean was calmer.

This was our view from the beach looking toward the inland part of the island:

Next, we stopped just past Makapuu Beach Park at a lookout where I met...a parrot.  There was a guy there hanging out with his pet parrot talking to people who stopped in. The bird's name is Jackie and I guess she's been in a few movies. She was much softer and lighter than I imagined a parrot would be.

Kaleo had warned us not to travel through Honolulu during rush hour because the traffic would be horrible - and while we paid attention to her advice, we did not pay attention to the time and hit Honolulu around 3:30. Oops. Terry was curious about Waikiki: what it looked like and why it was so popular and we headed in that direction. After a few U-turns due to construction we found ourselves stuck in traffic and watching very very rich people walk around in the outdoor mall area. We were outpriced by far. Gucci, Tiffany's, Prada, Louis Vuitton, etc. When Terry spotted the Rolex outlet (an outlet!) he decided we could just move along. We would not fit in with our ghetto Impala down there.

In the northern part of the island, we made our next pit stop at Matsumoto Shave Ice. I'd heard good things about it and wanted to check it out. Surprisingly, neither of us loved it. And we even had ice cream in the bottom! We agreed that it was super sweet and tasted a lot like food coloring, but we were clearly in the minority. That place was packed.

And finally, we rounded out our trip by cruising along the north shore (beautiful drive) and inched past Kualoa Ranch, where some of Jurassic Park was filmed.