Wedding Adventure - Day 6 - Hawaii

One advantage of the time change (four hours from DFW) was that we were up early on Wednesday morning for breakfast. The vacation package we booked with the hotel included air from Vegas, the rental Jeep, the room and the breakfast buffet each morning. Breakfast was always scrumptious with an array of strange fruits available. Who knew that starfruits actually grew like that? The had a selections of juices, cereal, eggs to order, toast, rolls, bagels, and an option of pancakes, waffles and french toast that rotated each day. They also had a section of strange breakfast seafood that seemed to cater to the many Japanese and other Asian guests.

Our first stop today was to drive down to Haleiwa (or Haleiwa-town as the locals say) to go to the North Shore Surf Museum. The North Shore is famous in surfing circles to being home to some of the biggest, most consistent waves. Each winter, storms in the bearing sea create huge ocean swells that race across the ocean until the hit the warm water and air of Hawaii where they rise up into monster waves that challenge the best surfers in the world at spots such as Pipeline, as made famous by the Chantay’s instrumental rocker. It is also mentioned in the songs “Ride The Wild Surf” by the Rip Chords (and the movie of the same name) and ‘Hawaii” by the Beach Boys as well as being the setting for the movie “Big Wednesday”, is featured in the classic “The Endless Summer” and the documentary “Riding Giants”. In fact, my desire to travel here stems from the terrible 80s movie “The North Shore” that I saw a few times on HBO or Showtime in hotels while on vacation with my parents one year in the late 80s. The surf museum included memorabilia and surfboards from a who’s-who of the surfing world. The museum is run by Hurricane Bob, who was stationed in Hawaii with the Air Force starting in the 1950’s. His job was to fly old surplus second world war bombers into the eyes of Pacific hurricanes to study them and help track them before satellite weather technology became widespread. He had a wealth of studies, including some about friends who flew spy missions over the Soviet Union during the cold war and never returned. Well into his 70’s, though he doesn’t even look 50, he’s an avid surfer and is the national champion for his age bracket. We purchased a few souvenirs and cards and also picked up a coffee table book on Haleiwa (since I’m a sucker for coffee table books). Right as we were purchasing it, one of the co-authors happened to walk in to visit with Bob, so he signed our copy.

Next to the surf museum was a glass shop and a cool blown glass octopus in the window caught our eye. Since Amy has a bit of thing for squid and octopi, we went in to check them out. Since they guaranteed we could get it home without it breaking if we carried it on the plane, we decided to purchase one. The one we selected is light blue with dark blue/purple spots. Apparently it is patterned after a species native to Australia that has a very deadly sting/venom that is lethal to humans as there is no known antidote.

After doing some shopping we grabbed lunch. Amy had a turkey sandwich from a bakery in town while I had a couple slices of pizza from the restaurant next door. Then it was time to go to Matsumoto’s general store for their world famous shave ice. I first learned of the place while watching a PBS documentary called “An Ice Cream Show” back in high school. I’ve been to a few of the places featured on the show, and since this was just a few miles from our hotel, it was a must while we were in Hawaii. The shave ice comes in dozens of flavors and with several different options. You can get plain shave ice, which is basically a snow cone or you can get shave ice on top of ice cream, which is the option we selected. Then you can get it “with beans”. The beans are Japanese Aoki beans that have been boiled in sugar. Amy had her orange shave ice with ice cream and the beans while I had my root beer shave ice with only the ice cream. She said that the beans were very weird, both in terms of taste and texture. The final option is to have your shave ice topped with condensed milk. We left that to the more adventurous but it seemed like there was a large contingent who preferred theirs with the condensed milk and the beans.

We headed out of Haleiwa with the aim of stopping at a beach that looked nice. Well, they all look nice. We chose to stop at Laniakea Beach and discovered that two sea turtles were up on the beach sunning themselves. Although cute and oblivious to all the tourists crowded around, the turtles were guarded by a marine biologist who placed a rope around them to give them some space. We looked at the turtles and dipped our feet in the Pacific while watching the surfers on the growing waves at Laniakea and Hultin’s.

Leaving the turtles behind and again on our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Waimea Bay Foodland store for some groceries. The prices of everything are a bit of a shock but if you just remind yourself that you are on vacation in Hawaii they are not too bad. Since it was the day before Thanksgiving it was rather busy with last minute shoppers. We also stopped at a roadside stand to buy a fresh pineapple from a lady wielding a rather scary looking knife.

After watching the sun set from our balcony, we had dinner in the Palm Terrace restaurant in the hotel. I had a nice big steak dinner while Amy had one of the local fish species. Both were very good.