Little Black Guidebook

Panels of Hawaiian History – Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii

Pearl Harbor Memorial – Honolulu, Hawaii

We walked downstairs to the lobby and got in a van driven by a local surfer-boy. He rolled-down the windows and turned on the radio for the short 1 hour drive East from Waikiki beach. We drove-up through the mountains and the radio died as we popped into a tunnel and sat in silence for a few moments before popping out on the other-side to a view of the ocean meeting the mountains.

The small town of Kailua on Oahu’s East Coast is full of surfers like our van driver. In the summer the windy coastline allows them to kite-surf and in the winter the increased waves on the North-shore drive the scuba divers to the East side of the island in search of wrecks and whales. That morning our surfer-boy was taking us on a sea kayaking tour to look for Honu (Green Sea Turtles) and other marine animals in beautiful Kailua Bay while visiting the Mokulua islands.

Because of the time of year, the economy or maybe just sheer luck our group tour included just the two of us and our guide. There was another group with another company on the water that morning with 20 something kayaks to one guide. They had to go at the pace of the slowest kayakers and we quickly outpaced them, tacking on a trip to Popoia Island, a dedicated sea bird sanctuary on the way out to the Mokulaa Islands.

Once we reached the Mokulaa Islands and finished our lunch our guide turned to us and said, “Ok, now its time to jump off a cliff.” Now if you knew me personally you would know the fear that struck into the bottom of my heart. Falling and heights are some of my worst fears. But I’m trying to make life an adventure so I let him guide us on a hike around the island, climbing hand over hand along volcanic rock and barely clinging on at times. We reached a little cove with a rocky-ledge and sat down to take a break. The ledge was too high up for me to imagine jumping from so I sat there watching the waves and resting up for the hike to my inevitable jump. I’m sure you can imagine what happened next. We stood up to keep hiking and our guide asked: “Are you ready to jump?” “Say what?, huh?” I turned to my husband and said: “You first.” Without blinking he went for it, taking away my excuses, so I jumped.

Back on the beach we threw on our snorkels and found some sea turtles to watch. Even if you don’t feel like jumping off of a cliff you should stop baking on Waikiki and see more of this amazing island. If you want to hang with the same amazing surfer dudes that we did you should look up Hawaiian Water Sports.

All prices include life-vests, paddles, snorkel, seats, backrests, dry-bags, lunch, and transportation to and from your Waikiki hotel. $99 4 Hour Group Tour if you book online, about $30 more each if you book in person. If you’ve had experience kayaking before you can rent out a double kayak without a guide for just $39 a day + $10/day for a snorkel set. For us, that was a little too much adventure for our first time sea-kayaking, but we would definitely try a rental if we did it again.

Uploaded by mrtwism

If you look at the tagline for this blog you’ll see that it is about making life an adventure. To me making life an adventure means that I do things that are sometimes outside my comfort zone. In Hawaii this meant trying scuba.

I swam in high school and snorkeled before, but had never tried scuba. I didn’t want a big group class, but I didn’t want to spend too much either. I ended up finding a structural engineer on sabbatical who is a professional scuba diver and under-water photographer in his new-found free-time. He teaches through Deep Ecology on the North Shore of Hawaii.

Deep Ecology is a full-service, five-star PADI Dive Center and a National Geographic recognized dive center, located on Oahu’s famous North Shore in historic Haleiwa. In addition to the classes they give they participate in environmental activism activities such as turtle rescues, ghost net recoveries and the creation of the North Shore’s first marine sanctuary.

Our intro to scuba class was held at Shark’s Cove on the North Shore. (so named because of the shape of the rock formations in the caves not because of the number of sharks) There were a bunch of other classes out there that day, but most of them were groups of 6-8 whereas ours cost no more and was just the two of us and the instructor. Also, they were all out of the water before us and didn’t go as far away from the shore. Since we weren’t held back by whoever was the least comfortable in our class we got to progress a lot further in our class, learning a few extra skills including confined diving in a lava cave with sea turtles.

After our class we chatted with our instructor about life on the North Shore, being an engineer in Hawaii and got a lunch recommendation. If you’re ever on the North Shore of Oahu with a hankering for Mexican look up Chollos Authentic Mexican. They have the best nachos and margaritas. I would drive the hour from Waikiki just for their nachos. Hubby loved their mojito as well.

I will admit I freaked out a little bit before getting used to it. But looking back it was one of the most amazing things I’ve done in a long time. We saw so much wildlife and a totally different view of our world. If we get another chance to go back to Hawaii we’ll definitely try and do our Open Water dive certification in 3 days.

Cost $109.00 for 1/2 day of scuba. $20 for lunch.

Hawaii Packing List by lisetiffner

I can’t post our itinerary here ahead of the trip because hubby reads the blog. The first three days will be just us, then we have an Army Family Programs event and then he has his Army commander’s conference. He’s so stressed about the Army part that he doesn’t have time to think about the vacation part so I am surprising him and planning everything. We leave tomorrow night and I am super excited. Right now in Alaska the leaves are yellow and the temp is in the 60s so it will be nice to warm up.