Hawaii Vacation - Day 5

On the Thursday of our vacation we drove up to the North Shore again.  On the way up, we stopped at a little roadside stand.  It was run by a little old native lady.  She was so cute.  She sold fresh fruit and some little trinkets, etc.  We bought some fresh coconut juice from her that we drank straight from the coconut with straws - so fun!  We also bought some lychee fruits.

Our next stop was Tropical Farms Macadamia Nut Farm.  We got to sample lots of different flavors of macadamia nuts.  It was fun to try them all.  Our favorite flavor was the Maui onion and garlic.  The Kona coffee one was good too.  We didn't end up going on their farm tour because it was pretty expensive.

As we continued our trip up the coast, we stopped at Kuiloa Beach and walked around a bit.  From this beach you could view a little island off the coast that they call Chinaman's Hat.

This beach was fun because it had lots of little seashells.  Mostly pieces of shells, but it was fun to walk along the beach and search through them.  I could spend hours doing that! :)

Next we went to BYU Hawaii.  We had planned to eat lunch there in their cafeteria because it was somewhere that Josh remembered eating when he lived there and he liked it.  However, it ended up being different then he remembered so we decided not to eat there.  It was kind of neat  to walk around the campus though.

We ended up eating lunch in Kahuku at Tita's Grill.  It had really good reviews on their garlic shrimp, so I tried that.  It was SO good.  Probably the best meal I had in Hawaii.  Josh had a loco moco - something he loved having when he was a kid.  A loco moco is a pile of rice topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and gravy.  Definitely not my favorite Hawaiian food. :)  Josh said it was pretty good though.  We also tried some coco rice which is pretty much hot chocolate with white rice in it that you eat with a spoon.

After lunch we drove up and stopped at Sunset Beach.  Josh was tired, so he laid down on the beach to take a little nap and I walked along the beach and looked for shells.  It's interesting to see the different beaches on the island because they are all a little different.  The sand here was very coarse and less white.  

Next we went to Waimea Falls intending to hike to see the waterfalls, but they were closing just as we got there.  We got a couple of pictures while we were there though.

These cardinals were my favorite birds on the island.  They were so pretty.  We saw them all over the place.

There were peacocks walking all over the park.  This one was funny.  He found a roost on the railing. :)

This was a weird looking duck we saw by the stream:

After that we drove to Haleiwa, which is a cute little surf town on the North Shore.  They are kind of famous for their shave ice there, so we decided to stop at Aoki's to get some.  It was shave ice on top of macadamia nut ice cream.  We chose tropical flavors for the ice.  It was pretty good, but honestly, not much different than a shave ice you would get at home other than the ice cream on the bottom.  A few days before in Waikiki we actually bought some shave ice that was REALLY good.  It was powdery ice and the flavors (also tropical) were much more natural tasting and they put condensed milk which sounds weird, but was really good.  Didn't get a picture of those though!

After our treat we decided to grab our dinner from a local shrimp truck called Macy's.  Josh ordered their hot and spicy shrimp and I got the lemon pepper (yes, we had a lot of shrimp on this vacation :) ).  We took the dinner and headed back to the beach to watch the sunset.

It was so much fun watching the sun set over the ocean.  It has always been one of those "life list" things that I wanted to do.  There were clouds on the horizon, so we didn't get to really see the sun "touch" the water, but it was still really pretty.

And then we had our dinner! :)

Hawaii Vacation - Day 4

On Wednesday we opened our giant avocado that we got at the Farmers' market.  Can you believe how big this thing was?  You can see Josh's hands holding it.  It tasted exactly like the Hass avocados that we get at home.  It was so good.

After breakfast, we headed up to hike Diamond Head, however when we got there the parking lot was full and they told us to come back later.  We never did make it back, but we stopped off at a lookout point and shot this picture overlooking part of Honolulu and the ocean.

On our way back from Diamond Head, we passed the famous Leonard's Bakery and decided to stop and try one of the Malasadas that they are famous for.  Malasadas are a popular treat in Hawaii.  Pretty much a Portuguese doughnut covered in cinnamon and sugar.  Some of them are filled.  We tried a plain cinnamon-sugar one and one filled with Haupia.  They were pretty good!

Next, we drove up to see Pali's Lookout.  It looks out over a valley and is famous for its crazy wind.  It was definitely windy!

After that we drove over to Lanikai Beach.  I think this was my favorite beach of them all.  It had the beautiful turquoise waters and white sand beaches like Kailua, but it was much less busy and the sand was amazing - so soft and powdery - almost like walking in flour or something.  It was so pretty there.  Pictures just don't do it justice.

We ate lunch at the L&L Drive in which serves Hawaiian food in a more fast food type setting.  Josh had laulau plate lunch again and I had a mahi mahi plate lunch.  After lunch we set out to find a waterfall that we had read about online called Kapena falls.

This is a view of one of the mountain ranges near Kailua.  

This is one of the wild chickens that you see all over the island.  We found out from a guidebook that they are called Jungle Fowl.

To get to the waterfall, we had to stop at a lookout point and walk from there.  The lookout point was a view of this weird graveyard and masoleum.  It was cool looking, but also kind of creepy with all of the black headstones.

From the lookout point we were supposed to walk along the highway for a bit and then turn off and walk down a little trail to find the waterfall.  We had a hard time finding it because there ended up being several little trails that lead down the hill through the forest and we couldn't find the right one at first.  On one of our little detours, we found these cool looking snails.  They were everywhere and they were HUGE!

Despite all the detours, it was a really pretty area and we enjoyed hiking around in it.

At first we thought this was the waterfall.  It was just a tiny one.

Finally we found Kapena falls.  It was such a pretty area, but the mosquitos were insane and we had nothing to repel them so we took off before we got eaten alive!

After the waterfall we headed back to our hotel to clean up and rest.  For part of Josh's birthday present I had bought him tickets to a Polynesian comedy show.  We had plans to go to a nice dinner and then to the show, however, on the way to dinner we got side-swiped by a big tour bus!  It cut us off and hit the front end of our rental car.  Apparently the bus driver didn't even notice that he hit us because he kept going.  We couldn't flag him down, so we pulled over and filed a police report.  They ended up tracking the driver down and he met up with us later to exchange information and finishing filing the report.  Needless to say, it ended up taking a few hours out of our "date night".  We ended up just grabbing a sandwich from a nearby place and rushing to get to our show in time.  The comedy show was really fun.  It was fun to do something different like that. :)