I’ve never been to Hawaii, and Blake has only been to Kauai for work. We’ve been wanting to go for so long especially since Southwest Airlines started flying there and between islands. Our friend Sean reached out to see if we wanted to do a trip in March because he needed a break from work, and his own Hawaii trip was canceled last year when the pandemic started. I really wanted to go to Kauai, but they had the strictest Covid restrictions, still requiring a 72 hour quarantine even with negative test results. The rest of Hawaii waived the quarantine with a negative test. So instead we planned 6 days on Maui. Blake and I extended the trip for 4 days on Oahu because Oahu wasn’t requiring a second covid test when coming from another island.
So the first thing we had to figure out was how to get a Covid test in Las Vegas, and the easiest and cheapest way is through the Walgreens drive through. But our camper is 13 feet tall! They won’t let you walk up to the testing window, even though it’s literally the exact same thing as driving up, rolling your window down, and reaching for the test. So our only option was to ride the motorcycles through. We called ahead of time just to make sure this was okay and they said they “wouldn’t turn us away.” SO ridiculous. We did two up on Blake’s bike just to make it more ridiculous. We better not have been covid positive after having been camped in the desert all week anyway!
We made our 6 days in Maui and 4 days in Oahu action packed and we ate some of the best food of our lives! This blog will tell you everything we did, ate, and where we stayed!
Where to Stay and What to Eat
In Maui, we would highly recommend staying in Kihei or Wailea. We stayed in Kihei because it is the drier side of the island, and we were there at the end of rainy season. This decision paid off because we arrived in Maui the day after record amounts of rain (48 inches in 24 hours) and severe flooding in several towns leading to evacuations. Kihei had a few storms roll through during the week and some overcast weather, but the storms always passed and we were still able to get outside and enjoy the patio at the place we booked. Kihei is also pretty central on the island. We were only 25 minutes from the airport and this is important because flights often get in late to Hawaii after such long travel times. We felt perfectly situated in order to explore the west side of the island one day, and the east side of the island other days without extensively long travel times. We decided to stay in one location the entire time so that we didn’t have to pack up and move half way through the trip, and I think this was a good idea except for if you plan to drive the road to Hana, then you potentially want to book a one night stay in Hana. From Kihei, it took us about an hour to get to the west side of the island to explore the west beaches, half hour to get to the Maalaea harbor for a boat tour, or two hours to get to the top of Haleakala for sunrise, all very reasonable travel times for full day activities. It also seemed like Kihei had more restaurant options than other more beachy areas on the west side of Maui where you might be stuck with tourist trap kind of restaurants. Maui is all about the food trucks, and there was a food truck plaza ten minutes from our condo that gave us all different options each night from amazing food to choose from. The best places we ate at all week in Maui were:
Oahu seemed like a small enough island that you could also stay in one place during your visit. Because our decision to extend the trip to Oahu was somewhat last minute, and it was spring break, we booked the cheapest hotel we could find in Waikiki, which was maybe a poor decision. When looking at hotels, they all seemed reasonable until you realize they don’t include the resort fees and parking fees, which can double the price! Luckily we found something in our budget, but it ended up being a tiny one bedroom “suite” with a view into a parking garage, and tile floors in the hallways that echoed everything. Being spring break and a weekend, the place ended up being so loud that we almost regretted not spending the money on a better place. But we did save $30 a day in parking costs by finding the one street nearby with free 24/7 free parking and only had to walk a couple blocks back and forth (Monsarrat Ave). This just made it a pain for loading and unloading on the first and last days, and as long as we didn’t leave anything valuable visible in the car we felt safe leaving it there overnight.
Oahu is totally a different vibe than Maui. Maui is just chill laidback beach vacation honeymoon vibes. I didn’t realize that Honolulu is actually a big city with huge skyscrapers, 10 lane highways, a pretty big homeless population, huge airport, a big downtown, etc. And the traffic in Honolulu is said to be terrible! You have to time your travel right so you don’t end up in traffic, otherwise I can imagine it being terrible. BUT, despite all this, Oahu has some AMAZING hikes and crazy unique adventure opportunities. And the benefit of the big city is having so many different cultures blending in one spot. From what we could see, Oahu is a rainbow of cultural influences from the Philippines, Vietnam, China, Japan, Korea, Portugal and Puerto Rico. Even after we thought we ate well in Maui, the food we had in Oahu was some of the best meals of our lives that we’ll be raving about for years. We didn’t have a bad meal in Oahu. Here are all our recommendations from places to eat in Oahu:
How to Get Around:
You will want your own car in Hawaii to explore different areas of the island. Both islands we visited are small enough to drive around each day, but too big to want to Uber everywhere. Rental car companies in Maui will try to up-sell you on a jeep so you can have higher clearance for going to the Road to Hana. Guess what, the Road to Hana is paved, and doesn’t required 4WD or higher clearance. From my research (but we didn’t get to actually do it), even the dirt road around West Maui is accessible in any 2WD car. Most of the “must-see” locations in Maui don’t require a jeep. Unless you are planning to drive the backside of Haleakala, or certain sandy beach access roads, you probably don’t need to pay extra for a Jeep, and the rental companies may not even allow you to take a rental Jeep in those areas anyway. We saved at least $200 by renting a full size sedan instead of an SUV or Jeep. It was a Kia Optima, and the trunk was huge. It fit all our luggage for 4 people no problem, and we had two guys over 6 ft tall that had plenty of leg room and head space. It would totally fit a bike in the trunk if you wanted to rent bikes and put 3 bikes on a rack and one in the trunk.
The other thing about Maui is that so many tourists rent a convertible Mustang, but based on our experience, you wouldn’t have been able to have the top down the entire trip. If you are staying on the North side of the island, the convertible would be pointless. It seems like a fun idea, but it seemed less unique to us when you see hundreds of other Mustangs driving around. All of the locals drive Tacoma trucks, so a Mustang also indicates to everyone that you are a tourist, and we saw a lot of locals get pretty pissed off at the tourists around the Road to Hana area. To each their own if the fancy car would be worth it to you, this was just my observation, and I’d rather rent the cheap car and spend the extra money on better food and activities.
In Oahu we were completely fine with a sedan as well, and I figured out how to get a rental car for half as much as the on-site airport rental companies. We rented from this Hertz location.
This location is considered off-site and doesn’t offer a shuttle to the terminal, so the cars were half the price. It is a .6 mile walk from the terminal at HLL. There is a sidewalk the entire way and crosswalks under an overpass. I left Blake with all the luggage and walked the ten minutes to rent the car, then drove back the 4 minutes to go pick up him and our luggage. SO easy, and saved us $200. Did the same thing on the way back by dropping off him and the luggage, driving to the rental company and walking back. All we had to do was leave an extra ten minutes before getting to our flight.
Maui Activities and Excursions:
I felt like our week in Maui was split pretty evenly between the west side and east side of the island, as well as between free and paid activities. Here’s everything we did in order of our favorite activity.
Haleakala Sunrise: Sunrise on top of a 10,000 ft volcano. Within two hours (from Kihei) you can drive up a bunch of switchbacks (paved the entire way) to the top of the volcano. This is a National Park, so you can use your national parks pass if you have one, otherwise it’s $30 per car. Sunrise also requires a $1 permit available 7 days in advance online, and only 50 are available for each day, so it is really difficult to be able to go for sunrise. It took us 6 days of trying at 7 am online to get the permit, and we got really lucky that we got it for our last day on the island. Anyone can drive up past 7 am though. This also ended up being our clearest day of the trip, so we were able to see all the way to the volcanoes on the Big Island, and down the coast of west Maui. The park rangers sang us a Hawaiian chant as the sun rose, and told us all about the geography and biology in the park and what the volcano meant to ancient Hawaiian culture. Once you’re at the top, there are several trails to hike, including the Sliding Sands Trail, which takes you down into the erosional valley to see the cinder cones close up. You can hike the first mile of this trail to get a great view into the cinder cones. The only problem with starting a hike from the top of a volcano is that you have to hike back up on the way out! There are several different lookouts at the top and on the way back down the mountain, and I recommend stopping for all of them because they all gave a pretty different view down into the crater. The clouds took over the summit between 9-10 am blocking most of the view, so this park definitely requires an early morning. We got up at 3:30 am to leave our condo and arrive at the summit around 5:45 am for a 6:30 sunrise. Forty-five minutes early was barely enough time because the viewpoint at the summit is rounded, and if you are some of the later ones to arrive then you have to watch from the edges of the circle. Even if you don’t get a sunrise permit, I would recommend getting there at 7 am anyway to see the views before the clouds take over. There are trails that you can hike all the way down from the summit to the lower switchbacks or park headquarters which would require a significant amount of decline. We made a quick stop at the Hosmer Grove nature trail for another quick walk around a forest of foreign and native plants.
What we don’t recommend: We looked into doing one of the biking tours from the summit of Haleakala, and after calling up some of the tour guides we decided against it, and after seeing the bike tours on our way down the volcano we were really glad we didn’t do one. First of all, since it’s a national park, the tour companies are not allowed to give you the bike inside the park. They take you up for sunrise for some time, then take you back down to 6,500 feet elevation before giving you the bike. Then you bike down the windy curvy road back to town. So you don’t actually get to bike through the park, and most of the volcanic views are gone by the time you get on the bike. Second, when we saw bike groups starting at 11 am on our way out of the park, it didn’t look fun. It’s a two lane road, but it’s very narrow, and I would’ve felt like I was getting run over by all the cars coming out of the park at that time. We had to pass tons of bikers on the way down and it just didn’t feel safe. By that time in the morning, the clouds have taken over, so your views are not that great. Also if you do the bike tour, then I don’t think you get to stop at all the viewpoints in the park because they only take you to the summit and then back down to start biking (I could be wrong about this, maybe some of the tours give you more time at more stops). But we really enjoyed getting to walk around all the different trails at the top for a couple hours. The sunrise bike tour was around $180 per person. From what we saw, it wouldn’t be worth it.
What we maybe recommend: An alternative to the $180 sunrise bike tour is renting your own bikes and a bike rack from Krank Cycles and mountain biking the Skyline Trail, which starts right after the summit and goes all the way back down to town. It’s a volcanic dirt road with great views and you eventually get back on the same road that takes you back into town to return your bikes. This however, requires significant logistics of getting back up to the summit to get your car, OR ideally, if one person in your group doesn’t want to bike the trail, they take the car down and meet you at the bike rental. After pricing out the mountain bikes and bike rack, it wasn’t a whole lot cheaper than the sunrise tour, probably $120 – $150 a person. We did NOT ending up doing this because we didn’t want to take the time to get back up to the car at the summit (by either renting a second car, hitchhiking, or we even looked into Ubers for $65+) since it was our last day and we’d already spent lots of money on other excursions. So instead of biking, we got to enjoy sunrise for the price of our $1 permit and get our exercise by hiking instead. But if you are into downhill mountain biking and have the shuttling logistics figured out, I think the Skyline Trail would be totally worth it!
Molokini Snorkel Tour: There are places to snorkel all over the island in protected bays with chances of seeing a sea turtle pretty high, but everyone recommends doing a Molokini Snorkel Tour. Molokini is a half exposed volcanic crater about 3 miles offshore that is a wildlife sanctuary and great for snorkeling above the reefs. There’s a bunch of companies to choose from to take you there, and it gets kind of overwhelming to choose the right tour, but we highly recommend the Four Winds II for several reasons:
What we recommend: If you are looking for a family friendly excursion involving a boat ride, whale watching and snorkeling, then the Molokini Crater tour with Four Winds II is totally worth it. It is even more worth it if the weather hasn’t been windy or rainy. We were told that the clarity of the water on our tour wasn’t as good as usual, but we still saw plenty of fish, reefs, eels, etc. If you own your own snorkel gear and don’t want to spend the money, drive to Turtle Town and snorkel along the black volcanic rocks and you are likely to see turtles. Another spot that looked excellent for snorkeling but was too windy when we were there was Honokahua Bay. The waves were thrashing, but we saw turtles from the shore, so I bet on a very calm day it would be fantastic!
Hoapili Trail: This was a fun hike only twenty minutes south of our condo, at the southernmost point of the island. You drive through lava fields on the way there, and then hike mostly through lava rocks along the shore out to an old light beacon. It was less than four miles and mostly flat, and you get to see the waves crashing against lava rock cliffs. We did this on a windy overcast day, so the waves were fantastic to watch.
Road to Hana: Since we arrived on the island right arrived those crazy rainstorms, parts of Road to Hana were still flooded, we’d heard that some bridges had gone out, tourists had got stranded some of the previous days due to the road not being passable, and one local even told us of some tourists that died recently hiking one of the rivers when the flooding happened. On the day that we had planned on doing Road to Hana, it was raining again and the roads in town were already flooding, so we had to change plans. Instead we made our own tour of West Maui. We did decide to drive the first ten miles of Road to Hana the next day when the sun was back out, but the road was absolutely packed with tourists so we decided against going any farther. The problem was that it was spring break, and the first sunny day after a week of rain, so it seemed like everyone flocked to do Road to Hana that day. We wanted to do the first waterfall hike to Twin Falls, but it was closed, so instead we did a short nature trail with bamboo trees, saw the rainbow eucalyptus trees, and stopped at one of the waterfalls right on the road. It was already a nightmare with other tourists parking illegally, blocking traffic, and we were glad that we didn’t do the entire 60 mile road in the end. I’m sure there’s a right way to do the Road to Hana, and staying overnight in Hana probably helps, but it didn’t work out for us this time.
West Maui: You can make this loop around West Maui that I’ve read is even crazier than Road to Hana (curvy dirt one way roads), but we only drove as far as the Nakalele Blowhole. Driving the main highway around the west part of the island, we first stopped in Lahaina. This is where Blake and our friend rented a surfboard from Maui Surf and Cultural Adventures for $30 for a few hours, and tried their surf skills at the beach at Kamehameha Iki Park (on a different day). We walked the main street by the harbor, and got a gelato. Other than that it felt kind of like a touristy harbor. Then we stopped for lunch by Kaanapali, and continued north to the walk the Kapalua Coastal Trail. This trail goes along the shore of several beaches in Kapalua, many of which are lava rock cliffs. On this overcast day, the waves were huge and so fun to watch crashing against the cliffs. We literally watched the waves for hours, and several spots you had to dodge getting sprayed. We could spy turtles in the waves too. With all the wave watching, this trail took us a couple hours. Then we continued north to the Nakalele Blowhole.
It is a steep short hike down the hillside to the blowhole on the rocky ledges, and the water sprays 20 feet in the air every time a big wave comes in. This was great entertainment for a while too, and we spotted whales from the shore as well. The road up until this point is still in good shape, even though there were a few rock slides on the road from all the rain recently. On our way back we stopped at Honokohau Bay, which requires a short walk through a rad jungle forest. The trail was super muddy, and it goes along a river, but feels like a rainforest with vines hanging down. The bay would’ve been really neat for snorkeling if it wasn’t so windy. The waves were completely brown and crashing into the rocks, but we could still spot a bunch of turtle heads in the waves.
Helicopter Tour: Blake and our friend Sean booked two seats on a doors off tour that takes you across West Maui over to the island of Moloka’i above the waterfall that is in Jurassic Park. I didn’t join because I am more likely to get motion sickness, which obviously isn’t worth spending money on. The 45 minute tour cost $300 each, and you aren’t guaranteed a window seat, especially when you are Blake’s size and weight. With doors off, the window seat doesn’t matter as much since everyone gets a good view anyway. The tour took off from near the airport, which was a 25 minute drive from our condo, and they did a 5 pm tour, which was still a bit before sunset, and they got lucky with clear weather they could see the West Maui mountains, the blowhole we visited the day before, that crazy road along the north shore of West Maui, and over to Moloka’i. Blake would obviously say that the money was totally worth it because he is game to spend any kind of money on aviation, especially in places like Hawaii or Alaska. I get a little freaked out by it, so I’m saving my willingness to get in the chopper for when I think it will be really worth it.
Deep Sea Fishing Tour: Our two friends that we were with booked a deep sea fishing tour. This isn’t really our thing, especially after spending the budget on the helicopter tour, but we did get to benefit from the Mahi Mahi they caught and brought home to grill. Their tour cost $300 each and left from Lahaina at 5 am, so they were up at 3:30 am to get to the tour. Neither of these guys get motion sickness normally, and they said they were both almost barfing off the sides of the boat! In that case I definitely wouldn’t have been able to go. You aren’t guaranteed a catch, but if at least one person on the boat makes a catch then you are most likely able to take home some of the meat, since most people on the boat are tourists that can’t eat a whole fish while on vacation anyway. The boat only had one catch that day, but got to take home a significant portion of Mahi Mahi, which we turned into fish tacos with a homemade mango salsa and it was pretty delicious. If this is your kind of thing, I think these guys had a pretty fun experience.
Kayaking in Turtle Town: We brought our own Kokopelli packrafts to Hawaii and it was the best decision ever! These are inflatable individual kayaks that weigh 5 pounds each and roll up to size of a double jumbo paper towel roll. We have paddles that break down into 4 pieces, a dry bag that fits on the front of the kayak, and a small USB rechargeable pump. We fit all of this, plus two life vests, 2 snorkels, hiking boots, ski coats for Haleakala, and Blake’s clothes into a huge duffel bag that was borderline over 50 pounds, and brought all of this for free because you get two free checked bags on Southwest Airlines. We parked at Makalua Beach and put the kayaks in the water directly south of the parking lot, and then paddled north to the Makena Landing Park, and then walked back to the car. We were literally kayaking with sea turtles! There were also 8 big sea turtles sun bathing at the Makena Landing Park. This was a perfect place for kayaking because it was protected from the wind, and the current helped push us towards our destination. It goes along some lava rock with lots of fish to see too.
We spent any other free time in Maui enjoying the beach by our condo, Keawakapu beach, which wasn’t too overcrowded, and was pretty protected from the wind.
Oahu Activities:
We did mostly all free activities in Oahu since we did several paid excursions on Maui and eating out sure adds up in Hawaii. We mostly hiked and kayaked, but we did decide to go to the Pearl Harbor Memorial and the USS Missouri Battleship Memorial, which cost $30 a person and was totally worth it! We highly recommend every single activity we did in Oahu.
South Shore:
Koko’s Head Crater: 1000 feet elevation gain in a mile. Hiking up a historic tramway to the top of a crater with views out to Honolulu and along the southern shore of the island. This one is a tough incline, and sections of the tramway are actually elevated slats ten feet above the ground. This part gets sketchy when your legs are shaking from all the elevation gain. This is a popular sunset destination so the trail was busy, but I can’t imagine coming down the steps in the dark, so we came down a half hour before sunset. At the top is an old military bunker (which was supplied by the tramway). The trail continues a bit along the crater as well on a skinny ridge. There are local efforts to help restore the tramway and we saw a guy carrying a sand bag up, and I couldn’t even imagine how hard that must be. I love stairs workouts and short hikes that go straight up for an epic view, so this one was right up our alley.
Stop at the Makapuu Lighthouse viewpoint with several options for hikes of various lengths along the shoreline here.
Also stop at the Halona Blowhole lookout. Not as spectacular as the Nakalele Blowhole on Maui, but much easier access!
Stop at China Wall to sit out on the rock ledges overlooking the water. Popular cliff jump and surf spot, and also a party spot for locals I think.
West Coast:
The least visited and least touristy coast on the island. We drove all the way up to Ka’ena Point State Park where you can walk along the coast and swim in Keawaula Beach’s crystal clear waters. We wanted to get our packrafts out here but several big gusty storms blew through which would’ve made kayaking very difficult.
We stopped at Pokai Bay to kayak instead, which is more protected by a break wall.
We also stopped at the Ko’olina man made lagoons because they looked really intriguing and beautiful on Google maps. It was pretty difficult to get parking here, having to wait in line for a spot til someone else left, but it was fun to see the lagoons. They would be spectacular on a sunny day. It was overcast for us but we jumped in anyway for a quick snorkel along the rocky break walls and did see several fish including the state fish of Hawaii.
Ma’ili Pillbox: Our second hike was 680 ft elevation gain in .8 mile, not quite as bad as Koko’s but still pretty steep, and especially the day after hiking Koko’s Crater. This one has some rocky steep ledges too, and goes past this amazing looking tree with exposed roots. At the top are 5 or so old military bunkers, which have all been painted/graffitied inside and out by locals. One is bright pink. One is striped red white and blue. I’m not sure whether it’s considered graffiti or more like local art murals, because some of them were really beautiful, and had local proverbs and sayings reflecting the Hawaiian culture. We were able to walk inside each one of them and see 180 degree view of the coast and the mountains behind us, and imagine what it was like to be posted there in WWII as a lookout.
Mermaid Caves: There are caves/holes built into the tidepools here that you can climb down into or even cliff jump into. The waves come to shore underneath the ground layer of volcanic rock and coral, and if you climb down into the cave, you can see back out to the open ocean. You can swim a hundred feet back out to the ocean and climb back onto the rock, which several locals were doing. We only stepped a couple feet into the water because it was nearing high tide and then climbed back out. This was super unique and definitely worth going to look at even if you don’t want to climb down in. Its a very short walk from the parking area.
Kaneana Cave: We stopped at this cave on the side of the highway and walked inside. Huge unassuming cave that you wouldn’t normally notice. Worth a stop if you are already nearby.
East Coast:
Chinaman’s Hat: This is the most unique thing we did on Oahu because it is a short hike up to the top of a tiny island that you have to get to by kayak! If you start along the beach at Kualoa Regional Park, it is less than a half mile paddle out to the island, and it so so shallow during low tide that you could walk several sections of it. We even saw people snorkel out to the island (with a flag above them for safety). We brought our own Kokopelli Packrafts and set them up on the beach. It took us about half hour to paddle out and that’s because we kept stopping for photos and lost some progress. It was our first experience pack rafting into ocean waves and it was important to take the waves directly perpendicular so not to get tipped over in our blow up kayaks. The waves kind of crash in multiple directions around the island where you have to beach your kayak, so it gets a little tricky to land in the right spot, but we did totally fine. It was windy, so we deflated our kayaks when we beached, and had to put a few rocks on them so they wouldn’t blow away during our hike. We have a USB rechargeable wireless pump to inflate them for the return trip. The hike is more of a rock scramble, but do-able in our Chacos, and there is a rope section near the top to take you up the last ten feet. It can be done without the rope though if you are careful. When we got to the top, I was surprised to see that the rope was not in the best shape, and way more frayed than I would’ve liked in order to trust the rope, so on the way down I tried not to rely on it.
The hike takes about ten minutes and puts you on top of the pyramid shaped island looking back towards the coast and mountains. There were a bunch of people out doing this paddle/hike, and after doing our research and checking wave conditions, we felt safe accomplishing this activity. However, the next day (on a much windier day), we drove past this same beach and heard that someone fell 80 feet off the top of the island and they were in critical condition. Oahu is full of skinny ridge-line hikes that several tourists have died on, and this was a reminder to me to be super careful on the rest of our hikes. You can get out to this island at low tide by swimming, snorkeling, kayak, SUP or even walking when the tide is lowest.
The hike takes about ten minutes and puts you on top of the pyramid shaped island looking back towards the coast and mountains. There were a bunch of people out doing this paddle/hike, and after doing our research and checking wave conditions, we felt safe accomplishing this activity. However, the next day (on a much windier day), we drove past this same beach and heard that someone fell 80 feet off the top of the island and they were in critical condition. Oahu is full of skinny ridge-line hikes that several tourists have died on, and this was a reminder to me to be super careful on the rest of our hikes. You can get out to this island at low tide by swimming, snorkeling, kayak, SUP or even walking when the tide is lowest.
Snorkel to Popoai “Flat” Island: You can swim a quarter mile out to a flat island off of Kailua Beach and walk around the bird sanctuary. The water is super shallow the entire way out, especially at low tide. This is a really popular beach, so there are tons of people kayaking, SUPing, and snorkeling out to this island. A lot of kayakers stop here on their way to kayaking to the Mokes Islands, which is a really popular activity in Oahu. You can rent kayaks from the beach here for that purpose. We thought about making the kayak journey to the Mokes Islands, but we came here the same day as already kayaking to Chinaman’s Hat, and the wind picked up in the afternoon, so we were happy just snorkeling out to Flat Island and getting a view of the Mokes form there. The Mokes requires a 3/4 mile paddle, and this would be significantly harder in our packrafts in the wind. It would be really fun to do on a clam day. Once you get out to Flat Island, you can sit out in the white sand or walk around the island, but the ground is really sharp rock, so if you didn’t bring shoes like us, then its better just to lounge and take a break before the swim back.
Lanikai Pillbox: Another steep incline up to several old military bunkers. This one was 650 ft elevation gain over .9 mile, but the pillboxes are actually only a half mile up. You can keep walking along the Kaiwa Ridge another mile to get some amazing views back towards the Mokes Islands and the ridgeline you just hiked. There is a second trailhead to the Kaiwa Ridge farther up the same street as the first trailhead, (both are in a residential area), and we decided to keep walking to the other trailhead and walk back along the road, because sometimes it’s fun to see the different neighborhoods when we travel. This was a mistake because we didn’t realize that the street was gated in between the trailheads! We’d already made our entire decent off the ridge, and didn’t want to have to hike back up, so we ended up having to walk about 2.5 miles around the neighborhood to make it back to our car parked at Kailua Beach. Whoops.
North Shore:
The north shore of Oahu is famous for surfing, actually this is where surfing was invented! One of Blake’s goals in Oahu was to go watch the surfers on the north shore. We went to go check out the surfers along the north shore and stopped at various spots including Waimea Bay and Sharks Cove and the Bonzai Pipeline. Unfortunately it wasn’t a very big surf that day, so we didn’t get to see anything too crazy, but we did get to see a few surfers catch some good waves. The north shore has lots of food trucks, coffee and acai bowl stands and fruit markets, so it’s still a fun place to check out even if you aren’t a surfer. N
Favorite Hike:
We hiked Ka’au Crater and it was absolutely amazing. There’s so much to say about it that I had to write a second blog post, check it out here.
Overall we had an absolutely amazing time in Hawaii. We can’t wait to go back someday to check out the rest of the islands.
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Our major goal of going to Oahu was to complete one big ridge hike. Oahu is famous for hikes along the skinny ridges on the tops of the mountains. I wanted to find one that wasn’t too dangerous in all the rain Hawaii had got recently. I’d read a lot of blogs and reviews on AllTrails that made some of these hikes seem super sketchy, like reading one lady say they had to make a...