I’ve been skipping out on a lot of the nightlife while I’m here in Waikiki. I am, unashamedly, a morning person and while I am not really anti-social, I do enjoy good company, I’m not much of a drinker anymore and I don’t particularly enjoy group events in loud places. I’d much rather share a table with you at dinner; that’s more my style. I may indeed be missing out on a Good Time, but I’m okay with that because I can get up early and go to the beach.… continued…
Here is the thing a taking a tour: You are able to see a lot of places that you might not otherwise get to — especially if you do not have a car.
Here is another thing about taking a tour: You will be pelted with facts, maybe relentlessly, all of them somewhat filtered through the lens of the guide’s own interests. Some of the facts will stick to you — like the tragic idea that birds are too stupid to tell a plastic bag from a squid so they will stuff them into the bellies of their young thinking they are feeding them when really, oh, it is very sad.… continued…
I suppose there’s a reason I’ve not spent any time in West Oahu before. No one tells you to go there, no one says, oh, you’ve got to go check out the beaches around Nanakuli or Waianae, no one says anything, really about West Oahu to mainland visitors like me. And as the suburbs dwindle, it starts to become perfectly clear why no one has sent me this direction before.
There are some industrial sites. There’s the big dump, Waimanolo Gulch, where Oahu’s garbage piles up waiting to either be packaged and sent to the mainland or processed into electricity, depending on what the current plan is.… continued…
On my third visit to Oahu, I was finally able to visit Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a beautiful cove south of Waikiki. I was thwarted on previous visits by not getting an early enough start — the popular park fills up quickly and once it’s full, that’s that, you’re not getting in. I had all the odds in my favor this morning — an early start, the low season, and a tough year for tourism.At 830, I was in the water, chasing the wild humuhumunukunukuapua’a, the best named fish on the planet, though hey, you have to give props to the lauwiliwilinukunukuo’io’i, the long nosed butterfly fish.… continued…
Last weekend we were talking with a Hawaiian friend from Honolulu who revealed to use this shocking fact: He had never visited the shrimp trucks on the road to Oahu’s north shore. “How could this BE?!” we cried, while remembering the sound advice of “Peel, Suck, and Eat” as provided by that big yellow truck, you know the one, that also has the righteous coffee milkshakes.
It’s probably from that conversation that I got it into my head that it was time to make up a batch of shrimp something or other.… continued…
