Hawaii!

I tried uploading photos about 6 times to this particular blog post...I've failed to get it all to load correctly, and I give up, so sorry for the various typos and lack of photos you'll see below:

It’s hard to believe that we even got the chance to go to Hawaii with all of the events of life going on right now. But we did, and we enjoyed it to the fullest! Not a day went by where we didn’t hike to a gorgeous view or waterfall, and snorkel with fantastic tropical fish.

It started from the moment we stepped off of the plane!
 
Our trip was incredible to say the least, but sadly, a lot of the memories will have to be in our heads and not in the form of photos like we are used to having for our vacations. Most of the photos were lost in the recent smash-and-grab theft that Tom suffered in Seattle over his last night there before moving to Providence. 

So, you can see the text I wrote about the photos on the plane here, but you will have to imagine the actual photos that go along with most of it :(

  

We went straight for the source of our food for the week: Costco. A few loaves of bread, some jelly, and guacamole packets later, we were off to Ko Olina!

We were greeted with Aloha’s and smiles.

We were so pleased to find out that we had a room with an ocean view!

With that, we couldn’t help but get immediately into the water.

Within 20 minutes we had already spotted a ton of tropical fish and a seahorse!

We joined my cousin Tim and his girlfriend at a great Japanese restaurant called Shokuda for a great first night dinner. I managed to not take a photo of us as a group, but of course, managed a photo of our dessert! Simply called honey toast, it was DELICIOUS!

 Then we started of our first full day right with some frosted flakes on the balcony followed by some hot and fresh malasadas down in the lobby!

We were fueled up for a day of hiking and exploring and we were off to the west end of the island where we hiked/walked to the western most tip of Oahu. It was HOT that first day, topping out at 90 degrees in Ko Olina!

We even saw a shark on our walk. It was a dead one, but it was a shark nonetheless.

We got home to a gorgeous sunset and BBQ meal

Tom was on his A-game this trip at the grill (considering that was our only way of eating any real significant meal at home since we didn’t have a full kitchen).

The sunset was even more special as we got to see the green flash, the point where the sun hits the horizon and a the water and causes a flash of green light to be visible, just for a moment.

We decided to head off to some of our favorite places on this trip as well, since “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” right? So, turtle beach and sharks cove both called our names.

Turtle beach, yet again, did not disappoint. We were able to swim RIGHT next to the turtles, and see many of all shapes and sizes.

Another hike we enjoyed on the west side of the island, the Kaelia trail, featured 19 switchbacks to the top to grant us stunning views of the shoreline as well as of the gliders taking off from that area.

We were hot and tired by the end, and got to cool off, you guessed it, in the water!

Tom also had something to check off of his bucket list—getting a treat at the Dole factory. Since we are both big fans of pineapple, we devoured our post-hike dessert without taking photo evidence, but we were there, we promise

It’s safe to say that sunset every night at the beach-side BBQ grills each night.

By mid-way through the trip we weren’t sure what all we wanted to check off of the list and while returning from Shark’s cove one day, we decided to stop by the Waimea valley to check out the falls as well as the botanical garden.

We were greeted at the gate with a peacock and lush green forests.

I loved wandering all of the lush, green wildlife in the valley.  The falls at the end of it all were very pretty, but quite full of people.

We were a little bummed that we had to wear a life jacket to swim in the pool under the falls (park rules) but the water felt great anyway!

We wandered back to the car with shave ice in hand!

Our dinner that night- yummy kebabs!

Once again we found a wonderful place to sit with a gorgeous view of the sunset that was once again complete with a green flash!

The next morning we took it easy before taking off for more adventures. This meant I had time to bask in the sun on the beach while Tom checked out the lagoons nearby for more fish.

The latter half of the trip we ventured to Goat Island. It is one of the coolest experiences we’ve ever had (and we decided to have it again because we ventured out to it on our honeymoon 7 years ago). Sadly, our underwater camera bit the dust (turns out when you don’t have the latch totally closed and water gets in, it’s not quite waterproof !). So here is the only photo of the day.

For future reference, if you’re ever on Oahu, you should go visit. Basically it’s a 230 meter walk to the island from the shore. It’s a little intimidating because there are two sets of waves crashing right around you as you are walking over to the island—can be a bit scary but it’s so cool!

After goal island we found ourselves on what turned out to be my favorite hike of the trip because of the gorgeous valley views.
 

It was a ridge trail that was a nice work out with great payoffs at the top!
 

The terrain changed every 10 minutes of walking or so. The sights, the sounds, the smells—I wish I could post them on the blog because you had to be there to experience how gorgeous it was to all of our senses.

Once again, we treated ourselves at the end of the hike (I’m just now beginning to recognize the theme of the trip—go for a work out and then treat yourselves :with some sort of high-fat, high-sugar deliciousness…ok mom and dad, this one is for you—we figured we hiked all day therefore we could “eat whatever we want!”).

Our next day was truly a day of adventures. We rented a kayak (and for anyone that’s interested, we rented from a company called Go Bananas that we would HIGHLY recommend). We were able to leave the store with the kayak strapped to our rental car, a dry bag and collapsible oars in tow.

We had two destinations in mind for the kayak trip. One was a set of islands that are nicknamed the Mokes. The leftward island pictured here is the one that you can actually land on.

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We kayaked across the open water (which I was scared of at first, but it turned out we were pretty well practiced after kayaking in Bonaire in January).

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After we arrived on the Mokes we found a small pool that reminded me of the queen’s bath on Kauai. We nicknamed it princesses bath instead

***bath

We also came across what most people visit the mokes for—a much larger pool that offers stunning views and the opportunity for cliff diving. Let’s just say that the current was FAR too strong for this.

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I called it “dead man’s cove” because of how it looked when we were there. I’m sure it has a more friendly name in reality, but it was intimidating to me and Tom was upset I wouldn’t let him get in

But look at the path we had to walk across just to get there! We were already risking it by traversing across a ledge where the waves crash up. Probably not our best decision, but at least we have health insurance right???

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Our next adventure was the Kahana river. A 2 mile cruise through the most calm and pleasant waters we had found so far on our trip.

Some of the views were incredibly stunning and aw inspiring, despite how un-inspiring they might look in a photo.

We successfully loaded and unladed the kayak twice by ourselves and although we wanted to venture to one other destination nicknamed the sunken island, we didn’t push it because he had a timeline to get the kayak back to the store in time. We stopped briefly for a pit stop and were overwhelmed by the number of cats and chickens there!

When we did get back, we were forced with a decision—deal with the crazy ridiculous Honolulu traffic at 5 PM on a weekday, or find some way to pass the time. Well, the owner of Go bananas tipped us off to a local restaurant across the street that had great home-cookin.

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Our last day was full of hiking as well. We ventured up an old access road that was put in place in WWII to help get radio equipment up to the highest point on the west part of the island so that we could communicate with military crews in Japan or in submarines off of the shoreline.

It was 4 miles of UP, but it was so incredibly worth it

Loot at this view!
 

At the end of it all, we decided to cap off our graduation trip (and we’ll combine it with an anniversary trip since I think residency will take the place of an actual vacation during our anniversary in August) with a little fine dining at Roy’s.

As I stated above, we feel incredibly blessed that we were even able to get to Hawaii in the first place, let alone be in a resort that was always sunny, and at least 2 degrees warmer than the rest of the island.

Thank you to grandma and grandpa Malikie who gave us a week of their time share, and for everyone who supported us along the way of these last, and CRAZY, four years!!!