Waikiki Staycation

I still have so much catching up to do on Maui, but life kind of comes and goes. It's definitely different living here than it is vacationing here, so since Stephen and I finally had two days off together, we decided to go on our own little Waikiki vacation!


We were holding out on a waitlist in the hopes that we could get ourselves a room at the Hale Koa, the military-only hotel in the heart of Waikiki. When I called on Thursday to see if there was any chance, I was told they had no openings for that night, but we could go on a waitlist for Friday-Saturday, or we could look into booking at the other two hotels with military rates.

Neither of the hotels looked like what I wanted -- we've done a lot of the AirBnB thing, and since it was only two nights, I wanted to stay in the happening part of Waikiki. Hotwire it was.

The funny thing about Hotwire is that you can't get mad at whatever you get. It's a gamble, or more accurately, it's like Christmas, only better. You choose the number of stars you want your hotel to have, so you already know what quality of hotel you're getting. The fun part is then getting to see where you're going to stay and finding out about that hotel.

Last time we did Hotwire, we ended up with a night in the Omni hotel in Boston.

This time, when our result loaded, we had the Waikiki Parc Hotel for Friday and Saturday, just next to the Sheraton, and right across the street from some of our favorite surf spots.

I had never heard of this hotel, so I checked out their website and saw that they have a Kama'aina Staycation special, which is cheaper than the deal I got with Hotwire. So at least now I know that when we need another staycation, we literally need to search for that!

We were a little later getting into Waikiki than we wanted because, unbeknownst to us, Honolulu has some interesting provisions for controlling the flow of traffic into Waikiki. There aren't many ways to get in to begin with, due to the Ala Wai Canal, but then we also ended up in "No Left Turn" purgatory. So a whole bunch of missed turns and right turns later, we got there, but it was 4pm by the time we checked in.

Pretty posh (and that's a professional stock photo, so it looks extra special). We ended up on the 18th floor with a mauka view (mountains), and while I would have preferred an ocean view, it was Hotwire. At least with the Kama'aina deal, you can choose your room and view. We brought our surfboards with us, and they offered to keep the boards in storage with the bellhop. We just kept them on our car in the garage because it was pretty secure.

We were definitely in Japanland. I should have known! The service was bilingual, with English being the second language. They had a Nobu restaurant attached, which I didn't realize is supposedly a big deal. It meant boku bucks, but it also meant good sushi, and that's what we decided to treat ourselves to.

Because I'm lucky like that, I had come down with some sort of gastrointestinal nasty that gave me some seriously achy joints and left me wanting to be within close proximity of a toilet, so we decided to forgo surfing for the evening lest my bowels act up in the deep blue sea. So instead, we headed across the street (the other street) to the Royal Hawaiian Center, walked around a bit, and sampled all the different flavors of Honolulu Cookie Company shortbread cookies. There was some sort of concert happening in the middle of the center, all in Japanese, with this thing doing some sort of dance and waving its arms all crazy-like every time a kid had his picture taken with it:

I just don't even know.

We just walked around for most of the evening, and then at some point decided it was time to head back, get changed into something a little nicer, and get dinner at Nobu. When we got back to the hotel, it turned out they were having a 5:30-6:30pm wine social, so there were crackers, cheeses, grapes, and some free wine. We were like, "Hey, yeah, sounds awesome, we're going to change real quick and will be back down," but when he said they were only open for 15 more minutes, we decided to stay for a glass.

Since moving to Hawaii, we haven't really unpacked any of our actually nice stuff, but thankfully that is pretty much in keeping with the feel. Stephen donned a blue linen shirt, and I wore Mociute's dress that I've had for as long as I can remember. I thought we looked pretty good, especially considering the lighting because it's a last minute photo!

So we went down for dinner and drinks and sure enough, got there a little before it started getting busy. Neither one of us was particularly up for a late night in Waikiki, anyway. So we ordered several small plates, starting with some amazingly tender beef skewers that I didn't take a picture of. I did take a picture of the bowl of clams steamed in dashi broth (that's the broth base for miso soup) with kurobuta pork. That's the deliciousness happening below. And of course, unlike your cheaper miso soup, this broth was dark and rich. The kid who brought it out told us to make sure we actually spoon it onto the clams because it's the best part, and he didn't steer us wrong!

After that, we ordered their house specialty roll, which came wrapped in daikon radish (if you've ever had a jicama, it's similar in texture, and if you haven't, I can't really describe what it's like except maybe like a radish but without the bite in the flavor) and had a whole bunch of different seafoods, and I also ordered two pieces of uni sashimi.

I read somewhere that uni is amazing, and as I found out, it's hard to come by. I had asked at several different places whether they had uni, and there were days where the answer was, "No, there was a big storm off the coast of Japan so we couldn't get our shipment." I finally tried it a week or so ago at a nicer restaurant in Aiea. I say "nicer," but it's not your mainland-nice sushi restaurant. Sushi here has a fast-food component, also, so when I say "nicer," I really mean "not fast-food sushi." It came as nigiri, with seaweed wrapped around it, and it smelled and even tasted like everything you could ever imagine -- good and bad -- the ocean smells like. It was, let's just say, intense. It also looks like a mustard yellow tongue.

In spite of my warnings, Stephen wanted to try a piece, so we got two in this simple glass. By itself, it tasted, well, like everything the ocean smells like, but without a certain edge that my first experience had. Then we both tried it with some soy sauce, and oh my! Anything fishy and briny about the uni disappeared, and it just tasted smooth and silky, not chewy. I think if velvety could be a taste and not a texture, that would describe this. Somehow, the saltiness cancelled each other out. Now I know what all the fuss is.

Oh, you want a picture of the fuss?

After that, we split a dessert of monkey bread with some dried cherries, macadamia nut ice cream, and an apricot caramel sauce.  All of it was amazing, but as you can tell, the uni was my favorite part of the night.

We just walked around Waikiki at night, and then it was time to get some sleep. We wanted to go surfing!

So the next morning, we got up slowly, had some coffee, and I called Gedi to wish him a happy birthday. Then we went down for their breakfast buffet in Nobu's restaurant area. Because we're in Japanland, the buffet was a combination of Eastern and Western breakfasts.

I ate mine backward. I had a tiny little yogurt, served in a tall square dish with a single raspberry on top (seriously, it was only three spoonfuls -- it was so tiny) and fruit that included fresh pineapple, and then I went to the omelette stand and had them make me a veggie omelette and a side of sausage, and then, just to see what all the fuss was about, I had a bowl of miso soup. You got to ladel your broth into the bowl and then add as much seaweed, tofu, and scallions as you wanted. My stomach wasn't doing so well, so I loaded up on the seaweed.

They also served salad, pastries, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and white rice.

I also loaded up on the coffee and lived to regret that decision. So did Stephen. Instead of going surfing, we went to the Royal Hawaiian ABC store for some Immodium. Yep. And found a store in the Sheraton that sold good reef-safe sunblock.

We spent some time just lounging around the hotel room, drinking lots of water and waiting for the Immodium so kick in, and finally around noon or so we were ready to go surfing.

We took the long paddle out to Pops -- it's a half-mile swim just to get out to that break, but it looked like our best bet.

Diamondhead from the board and through a drop of water

The waves were hitting for a little bit, but there was also a lot of waiting around, chatting, and enjoying the views. I caught one wave pretty well, but I needed a haircut badly, so my bangs flopped over my eyes, I couldn't see, and then when I tried to stand up, well, I couldn't see, so I just fell over. It was so graceful...

Stephen caught a wave just at the right time. It was a beautiful ride. It was the kind of rides the guys who have been doing this forever do all the time, but we're still noobs by those standards, so him getting one flawless ride like that was enough to seal the whole day. Still, we stayed out a bit longer, paddled even farther once the great break moved, and found ourselves trying to surf among a huge school in blue rashguards. Every wave was a party wave, every wave was a disaster, everybody paddled for everything. I had a great ride, a little late catching the wave, and so I ended up dropping in on four other people who were all dropping in on each other anyway, but as it was, I won the ride anyway.

The paddle back to shore

Then I had to paddle back.

Pops really has given me some of the best rides I've had, which isn't saying much, but the rides are so long that then you have to paddle back, and once you've done all that paddling to get there, to paddle back again is to consider just how many waves you're willing to catch. The third wave was going to be my last.

Catching a good ride in is great because it takes away a lot of the return paddle. Unfortunately, we had paddled so far over from our original start point to adjust for the changing break that I think we still had a half-mile to paddle back. It was terrible. I complained the whole way. Stephen didn't want to paddle in straight and then carry the surfboards, but all I could think was that my legs probably would work better than my arms. Nevertheless, we got back in one piece, got showered, and continued on with our afternoon.

We ended up not doing much more. We walked around the main streets of Waikiki, checking out all the schmantzy stores and sampling some more Honolulu Cookies. We ended up in some Duty Free mall where we couldn't read any of the signs and walked around super-confused and clearly the odd ones out, not just due to the sudden language barrier, but because we were a foot taller than everybody else. Oh well.

We were just killing time until sunset anyway.

 We went back to the pier by where we launch to surf and walked out onto the rocks. While we were waiting for the sun to set, we noticed that Diamondhead looked awesome in the background, and the light was flattering, so we took some pictures.

We tried to take some selfies, but then a couple of guys ended up standing right in our way, so Stephen decided to have some camera fun with them.

Whatcha gonna do?

And now a couple pictures of a beautiful, if a bit hazy, Waikiki sunset.

All just beautiful and amazing. I can't believe how lucky I am that we get to live here!

We had a nice leisurely dinner at Roy's, walked around the streets a little more, and then called it a night.

Our third day was just getting breakfast -- miso soup and fruit, since I was afraid my gut couldnt' handle much more -- and heading over to the west side of Waikiki to catch the Browns game with the Browns Backers. There is actually a significant faction in Honolulu, so the one pub opens extra early just for football watchers, and it's always just Browns fans, plus maybe one or two other poor saps who come in and end up with a befuddled "What's going on here?" look. And then it was time for Stephen to get back for marching band rehearsal, which rains on every Sunday afternoon we've had since August. Oh well. It just means I left wanting more and can't wait for another excuse to staycation right here in Hawaii!

Catching up... on Maui! Part 3: Kipahulu and Haleakala

Phew! Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. No, seriously. That's a topic for another post that might get written intermittently as I continue to catch up on Maui. There are still so many days to catch up on, and yet there is significant life going on here, too, which has pushed blogging on the back burner. But, Stephen is at drill tonight, and after a very successful work day, I thought I should continue the success with some more story.

Day 3: The Seven Sacred Pools and Haleakala summit


Normally if one were to travel the Road to Hana, one would continue past Hana and arrive at this, the sort of "end goal" of the whole Road to Hana. It's called O'heo Gulch, or the Seven Sacred Pools. There aren't seven of them (there's more like 24) and they aren't sacred. Back in the day -- I think around the 1970s, but I could be wrong -- the owner of what is now the Travaasa hotel in Hana named them the Seven Sacred Pools to make this remote location more enticing to tourists. That's all. He thought it sounded good, and unfortunately, the name stuck.


Considering that we wanted to see as much of the Road to Hana as possible, and considering that we didn't want to be driving back on windy dirt roads after sunset, we ended up leaving Kipahulu/O'heo Gulch/Seven Sacred Pools for another day. It turns out this was a wise idea because we could get an early start and arrive before the hordes of tourists doing the Road to Hana got there.

So we drove through the upcountry, which, holy cow, talk about middle of nowhere! They say there is ranch country in Maui, and there is. At least the Road to Hana is paved and maintained. This road through the upcountry ended up turning into unpaved, bumpy nastiness for almost 10 miles before we got to Kipahulu. I was not convinced our rent-a-wreck was going to make it!

Nevertheless, we made it, and it was absolutely everything we hoped it would be!

 

Well, almost. Nothing can be perfect, so sure enough, we went down to the pools to swim and jump in, and I realized I forgot my swim bottoms. So I ended up jumping in, swimming around, and then spending the rest of the day in a pair of soaked underwear and denim shorts. Not cool.

 

All of the pools are on top of a series of waterfalls that used to be prime jumping grounds. You could climb up to one of the upper pools, jump down, then jump down to the next, then jump down to the next, and so on -- a pool jumper's dream come true. Then somebody hurt themselves or died, and then sued, and so technically jumping is illegal. There were no rangers around and everybody was jumping into the lowest pool, so we did the same. I'm a chicken, so I jumped from a spot that was barely higher than I am tall, and it still took me forever to muster up the nerve to jump in.



  
 


Here is a view from behind the waterfall, where we had to crawl in order to get to a safe jumping ledge.

Stephen scaling the rock face for a higher jump

Wait, but didn't I jump from a 10ft platform into a pool at boot camp? Yes, I did, but it's totally different when you can see that the pool is deep and there are no rocks to bounce off of, and when the RDCs say they'll push you on the count of three, they mean "One--Two--PUSH!" so you have no choice but to go over.

 

Regardless, it was fun, I think. I tried it twice just to make sure that I actually thought it might be fun, but twice was enough. Maybe another time.

When we were done swimming in the cold, crisp freshwater of the Sacred Pools, we grabbed ourselves a snack and decided to check out the two mile Pipiwai hike up to Waimoku Falls. I had read in Maui Revealed that there was an infinity pool at the top of a massive waterfall that, with a little bit of searching, you could actually find a trail to get to, and I wanted to see it!

So we did the hike, and we go to an overlook for Makahiku Falls, but a few days made a big difference, and whereas the waterfalls on the Road to Hana were gushers, in this case, there was no Makahiku Falls. It just wasn't there. So we were confused, and to make matters worse, there were big red signs everywhere there even looked like a trail warning that death has occurred in the area and walking passed the sign would warrant a $100 fine. So we continued along our way.

Somewhere along the way, we also ran into a family that was doing a cruise of the islands, so Stephen and I ended up just talking with two older teenage boys who thought this whole thing was the most amazing experience ever and wanted to say "Aloha!" to everybody who ever walked by. It made the two miles go by quickly, and then we came to Waimoku Falls.

I did not realize it was a 400 foot bridal veil waterfall.

 

 


 


 

English is hard

 


All the other waterfalls could take a hike. In my mind, this was the be all and end all of waterfalls. We absolutely ignored the warning signs and went as close to the base of the waterfall as we felt safe doing. It was absolutely incredible! Sometimes, there are things you do because you might only get one chance in your life, and warning signs be damned. It was worth it.

  





 On the walk back, I tried to take some photos of the amazing bamboo forest.











And there was this huge, amazing banyan tree. I took a family photo for a very happy little foursome, and they were like, "Wow, this looks like it could be on National Geographic!" I guess banyan trees can make even amateur photos look amazing.

On the way back, we took one more attempt at Makahiku. I was pretty sure I knew which forbidden trail it was, so, when nobody was looking, we ducked on to one of the trails and under the chain link fence that had conveniently already been torn up on the bottom left corner from previous trespassers. We made our way carefully through the thick vegetation and came out on some rocks just above a pool. Sure enough, we had found the infamous "infinity pool" on top of a 200 foot waterfall (that wasn't falling). The water was stagnant, so we exercised caution and didn't go in, but we did crawl as close as we dared to the edge of the waterfall to look out over the gulch and into the Pacific Ocean in the far distance.

 

 

 

After a few choice photos, we headed back to the trail, and I heard a tourist comment, "That's how they got there." I guess maybe I shouldn't have been wearing my fluorescent pink "ALOHA STATE OF MIND" trucker hat. I was probably a beacon for rangers and tourists alike.

That whole adventure took the better part of the day, and with a 2 hour drive back to Kihei, we decided it was time to head out and maybe think about getting dinner. Then, suddenly, on a whim, I suggested that we go up to Haleakala summit and catch the sunset. We were planning on getting up early to see the sunrise, but oh, why not? I had read about something called the Brocken Spectre, a rainbow phenomenon, and I desperately wanted to see it. I needed to add it to my collection of rainbow pictures.

 

 













We stopped on the side of the road to take a picture of this, because the cloud was literally raining a rainbow. How much more awesome rainbowness could we get in one day?!

To get into the National Park, you need to pay on what I read was an "honor system." I have a military National Park pass, and there was nobody at the pay booth, so we just looked at the automated thing off to the side and then continued on our way. Then we got pulled over by National Park police. Note to self, don't just drive by the pay station next time.

We were in no way prepared for the weather on Haleakala. Don't forget, at this point, we're nearing the top of a 10,000 foot mountain, and I still have wet underwear and shorts from the morning's debacle. Somewhere in there I changed into the lovely teal sundress I had for the dinner date we were planning on having, and that was it.

First, we stopped at one of the outlooks that was supposedly the best to see the Brocken Spectre, but it was a cloudier than usual day, so the best we could do was see the fluffy whiteness drifting by us and around us. It was ethereal and beautiful... and cold. I didn't last very long before I wanted to continue higher to see if I could get a glimpse from a higher vantage point.

We continued up to the visitors center, where I actually did get a few glimpses of the Brocken Spectre. Some visitors didn't know what they were looking at, but they were pretty sure they were seeing something special, so I explained that yes, they were in fact seeing a rainbow in those clouds. One guy got really excited and kept calling people over every time he saw the rainbow. I was happy I saw it, and then we decided to continue up to the summit.

  

 

We saw so many silversword there that it was incredible! If I remember correctly, when I was a kid and we visited, there weren't very many. I was happy to see the one that I got photographed with. In this case, I got to take my pick of silverswords to be seen with, and I unknowingly chose wisely, choosing one that was a similar scale in relation to myself as the one I stood next to when I was 9 years old (I think I was 9).

The elevation is no joke

We walked around the summit, checking out the observatory and reading all the signs. Everybody was on one side of the summit, watching the sun prepare to set, but on the other side, with the sun behind me, on a cloud floating between me and a small hill, I saw a real, strong, bright Brocken Spectre. It was so clear and brilliant that in some of the photos, you can make out the shadow of my arms holding the camera up. For a few seconds, it was so bright that you could make out a double rainbow, but none of the pictures I took on my camera could do it justice.







In ancient Hawaiian lore, at least according to Maui Revealed, the sight of your shadow surrounded by a rainbow was a sign from the gods that your soul would be taken care of in the afterlife. Maybe I was just tired from a long day, and maybe the thought was really that comforting, but being alone, just me with my shadow surrounded by a rainbow in the clouds, brought tears to my eyes.













And then it was time to go watch the sunset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I cannot begin to describe how incredibly beautiful a sunset above the clouds is, even if I was wrapped up in beach towels because that was all we had! The clouds reflect all the colors of the sunset, and you feel almost alone in the world.

You can almost forget the white trash family that pulled out the chips and Tostitos queso for the occasion and spends the entire thing griping about how hungry they are and is it sunset yet? And yes, they leave as soon as they realize the sun went below the clouds. The sunset is so amazing that you can almost forget how obnoxious that was.

I hope any of these pictures do justice to what we saw and experienced, because words are definitely not doing it.

We were absolutely not equipped to stay out long and watch the stars rise. If I ever get to Maui again, that is something I will definitely make a point of. We were both freezing -- I had taken all the towels and Stephen was toughing it out like the manly man he is, and for all that he loves the brisk temperatures of fall, which these were reminiscent of, even he had acclimated to Hawaii's warm climate so much that he was frozen to the bone. So, a long drive down, a bite to eat at the only restaurant that was open, and barely at that, and then another long drive home, we crawled in bed, called it a day, and prepared to wake up in four hours to do it all again.