Day 4

On Monday, we started the day with a hike through the Ko'olau Mountains.  This is one of the things that I saw pictures of when I was planning our trip and I made this one of my top priorities.  These mountains were amazingly beautiful.  They are very steep and covered in green along with the misty tops.  The Maunawili Trail is 6 miles round-trip (the part we did) and for a good chunk it followed along the ridge line.  Each time we came out of the trees, there was another breathtaking view.   

 After 2 miles we went down a fairly steep trail to a river.  Because of all the rain we had gotten, this trail was extremely muddy.  On the steep part, this made it very slippery and there wasn't much to hold on to.  There was also another problem that we did not foresee.  The trail we went on was not a very popular trail, and the trail got narrower and narrower.  Also, these pretty bright green ferns in the picture below had sharp thorns and were very scratchy.  So you can imagine us slipping along through the thorns, and then you can imagine what our legs looked like afterwards.  It was fun though, and much easier on the way back up.

Here is a panorama of the Ko'olau Mountains.

Here is the river with a huge fern (each branch was at least 8 feet long).

In the rain, these slots in the mountains become waterfalls.  We only saw a few still dripping.

After our hike, we washed all the mud off at one of the beach showers nearby.  There were flowering trees everywhere!  These just happened to be at the Polynesian Cultural Center.  Here's a little information about the PCC.  It is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and it is a very popular thing to do in Hawaii for all visitors.  It provides jobs for a lot of BYU Hawaii students as well as subsidizes their education.  There are a lot of Pacific Islanders and Asians at BYU Hawaii that wouldn't be able to afford college if it weren't for the PCC.  It also means that most of the exhibits have native islanders to show off their cultures which makes it authentic.

Jeremy had tried to call some mission buddies that were at BYU Hawaii to get us a discount at the Polynesian Cultural Center and found Kimball Juan.  He is the twin brother of one of Jeremy's short term missionary companions, Spencer. He got us a great discount and told us all the best things to see and do there.  It was really cool to see him. 

So we started with this show with lots of island dancers floating by and we were sitting down and Jeremy saw another friend. He yelled out "Stogey!"  I wish I could have gotten his face on camera.  Stogey was a name nobody else knew, so he was pretty shocked and looked around till he saw Jeremy.  Stogey was a tour guide at the moment, so he got us some shell necklaces and we joined his tour.  He was doing part of the tour and said, "My name is Peja.  Do you know what that means?  It means very good looking."  This was when Jeremy ruined his joke and said it was a basketball player (Peja Stojakavic is on the Dallas Mavericks).

These are the Maori dancers from New Zealand doing the Haka.

Here is a Samoan climbing a coconut tree.

This is Peja or Stogey (our wonderful tour guide).  He was a convert of one of Jeremy's companions and they got to be good friends in Taiwan.

 After we had been there a while, the rumors had been flying around and two more friends showed up to see Jeremy.  Roger Huang on the right was a kid from one of Jeremy's wards in Taiwan, and Kyle Liu served in Jeremy's districts a couple times.  The PCC was really fun and we loved all the shows and exhibits and food, but it was even better because of all these friends who found Jeremy.  They made sure we did all the best stuff and took care of us the whole time.

The big show at night at the PCC was really cool, but I don't have pictures.  They had really cool fire throwing and dancing and girls who could move their hips so fast I didn't know it was possible. 

Third Day in Hawaii

Sunday was a relaxing day and we went to see Pearl Harbor.  It was a very sobering place where 1,177 people died.  The USS Arizona Battleship sunk in 9 minutes and only 337 people escaped.  The USS Arizona Memorial is built right over the sunken battleship.  The water was too muddy for us to see anything below, but parts of the ship are still poking above the water.  Oil is still leaking.  I went to take a picture and I dropped my camera lens-cover into the water and felt like an idiot in the somber atmosphere.  Oh well.

Next we toured the USS Bowfin.  I can't imagine living and working on a submarine.  Everything is way to small and claustrophobic.  It was cool to see all the machinery and life support systems right there though.

One of the guns on top of the submarine USS Bowfin.

This is the USS Missouri Battleship or the Mighty Mo.  These guns can shoot a 2,700 lb projectile 23 miles.  Crazy!

Once leaving Pearl Harbor, we went to Diamond Head to hike to the top of the crater.  Here's a panorama from the top of Waikiki.  It was beautiful up here.

This was a pretty popular hike with lots of out-of-shape people who were almost dying on the long staircase up to it.  There was a cool tunnel leading to the top.  It used to be a lookout spot for the Military.

Here's a panorama of the crater with Waikiki on the very left of it.

After hiking, we just went exploring on a few beaches.  We watched the surfers and tiny little crabs hiding in the sand. 

Here's my lighthouse-beach picture for the trip.

The evening time was very pleasant end to the day.  Just watching the waves.

Day 2

On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling!  Neither of us had ever been but we loved it.  It took me a while to get used to breathing out of a tube because I would laugh at the fish and then take in a bunch of salt water and end up choking almost every time I laughed.  I got the hang of it by the end though.  There were so many fish and they weren't scared at all about swimming next to us.  In fact, I was looking around and thought I hit my hand on some coral so I looked over and a Reef Triggerfish (this picture is from wikipedia) had just bit me and was watching me with a face that said, "I just bit you and you better run 'cause I'll do it again."  The funny thing is that its a little fish and so cute so I was laughing pretty hard (then choking).  About 5 minutes later, Jeremy was watching another Triggerfish and it came right up to him and bit him on the finger.  Then it bit his leg just to let him know it was in charge.  Crazy!  It even drew blood with its 5 little teeth marks.  We later saw this kind of fish chasing other fish away and concluded that it is the bully of Hawaiian reefs.  I also found out it is the state fish of Hawaii.  Pretty funny.

I actually took this picture, but its one of the better underwater photos we got.  We saw 2 sea turtles in Hanauma Bay and they were awesome!

After snorkeling for a few hours and getting more tired than it felt like we should, we headed over to see the Halona Blowhole.  It was right off the road so there were lots of people watching it with us.  It was a windy rainy day, so the blowhole was giving quite the performance.  Its amazing how much water and noise comes shooting upward.

After the Halona Blowhole, we drove a little ways and hiked for a while to get to this secret blowhole that was even better.  We were the only ones there and there were several blowholes all around us.  The two biggest are called the Dragon's Nostrils.  This picture is a wave crashing almost on top of Jeremy.  He got soaked.

 

Since these blowholes were not as well known, we could stand right between them.  I'm not going to lie, it scared me to get that close because they were so loud and there wasn't much warning before they went off.  Also, some were way bigger than others and some were just really loud air, so you never knew what was going to happen. 

Here's a video of the Dragon's Nostrils with the huge waves crashing in the background.  I loved this place and could have stayed watching for hours.

After that, we wanted to drive on the H-3 to see the Ko'olau Mountains.  This highway cost $100 million per mile to build and it tunnels through the mountain to get to the other side.  This is a picture I took later in the trip of the H-3 and the Ko'olau Mountains.  You can see the raised freeway if you zoom in.

We decided we wanted to see more sea turtles, so we went to Turtle Beach.  We were not disappointed because 3 turtles had beached themselves.  Apparently this is very normal here.  It was too stormy to snorkel here, so we went to find Waimea Bay. 

There was no coral at Waimea Bay, so we kept going to Shark's Cove.  This was Awesome!  Sadly, we didn't take pictures at Shark's Cove, but it was one of our favorite places.  The cove was protected, so the water wasn't too crazy to snorkel.  Also, it was a little deeper, so we didn't get stuck in too shallow of coral and scrape over it.  The fish were everywhere and so were the turtles.  We watched one turtle playing in the waves and swirling around and it reminded me of their personalities in "Finding Nemo."  They are just like that.  They are so graceful in the water (not on land) and wave their flippers and dance in the water.  They are not afraid of people and as we were watching a little one playing around, a huge one swam right next to me to join him.  We watched a different turtle trying to eat off a rock, but the waves kept pushing him away.  It was so funny because it looked frustrating to me to keep doing that over and over, but the turtle didn't seem to care.  

If you can't tell, we loved the turtles.  Finally, we wore ourselves out completely, so we drove back to Waikiki for dinner and walking on the beach.  Sadly, we never saw a sunset because it was too stormy the whole time we were there.

First Day in Hawaii

We woke up Friday morning and ate some Burger King for breakfast, then headed up from Waikiki to a road called Tantalus Drive.  This is a place I would love to live.  It was beautiful!  This tree was right next to the road and looked like an Ent out of "Lord of the Rings," beard and all.

While driving on this road, we stopped at a turn out and hiked up a trail called the Pu'u 'Ohi'A Trail.  It was a bit of an adventure because I knew about where we were on a map that had a trail that looked like it intersected with another trail to a waterfall.  This is always iffy, but this time it turned out great!  We hiked through a bamboo grove that was awesome.  Jeremy could climb it and it looked just like the flying on "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."  I tried, but I couldn't grip the bamboo like he could, but it looked like a blast.  Bamboo is flexible, but extremely strong and very beautiful.  It was also great because we had the entire trail to ourselves.

Here are some panorama shots I love that my camera takes that show the height of the bamboo.

After hiking for quite a while, we realized we were not going to connect to the waterfall trail.  The trail got more and more narrow and these ferns were very scratchy when there was nowhere else to walk.  So we went just a little further and came to this view.  The pictures don't quite do it justice.

In this picture, if you zoom in on the center right, you can see the waterfall we were aiming for.  This was the end of this hike (the trail got even worse) so we turned around and hiked back to the car.

One of my favorite plants: Birds of Paradise Flowers

One of my favorite trees: "Go Dogs, Go!" Trees

 After we got done with our hike, we drove around to the other side to actually hike to the waterfall.  Its called the Manoa Falls Trail and they filmed part of "Lost" here.  It was so beautiful and so green even though it rained a good chunk of the time.

Here's a side view of a bunch of "Go Dogs, Go!" Trees.

Here were some cool vines growing up a huge tree. Pretty much every plant, tree, and flower was my favorite at one point in the trip.

After finishing this hike, we were getting pretty hungry, so we headed to Costco.  We got some lunch and stocked up on food and Gatorade for the week.  We also rented our snorkel gear for the week so we just kept everything in the car.

That evening, we walked across the street from our hotel to Waikiki Beach.  Then we walked down the beach and watched a free fireworks show that was really good.  It was an amazing day in Hawaii.

Hawaii Vacation!

So I missed a few weeks, but I had good reason.  We went to Hawaii!  This was a combination of celebrating our anniversary twice (we never celebrate it very well because its 2 days after Christmas), my birthday, and the fact that we will not have any time for vacations for the next 3 years.

I think I'm going to have to steal my sister-in-law Malorie's way of doing it... day by day.  I'm not very creative.  Here goes, Day Zero (the traveling day before we got there).

We got a sweet package deal from San Francisco to Hawaii, but we still had to fly standby to San Francisco.  We made sure to make it there by going on an early flight.  We got to spend a lot of hours in the San Francisco Airport, but had fun watching the huge 747s.  Then we finally got on our flight to LA and then to Hawaii.  We made it there, rented our car, checked into our hotel, walked around on Waikiki beach, and went to bed. Pretty exciting.