Le'ahi

Le'ahi is otherwise known as Diamond Head Crater to us heathens.  It means "brow of the tuna" (ahi tuna, anyone?) because Hawaiians thought it looked like, well, a tuna.  Of course, 19th century British sailors, being the road scholars that they are, thought they found diamonds in the crater's slopes.  Turns out it was just shiny calcite.

It was used as a strategic military lookout, for reasons that will soon become apparent.  The 0.8 mile hike is the most touristy one on the island, and the one Stephen and I decided to tackle on Monday morning.

I will say this much: wear sunscreen and take water are good bits of advice, but mostly because the Hawaiian sun is brutal and since living here only two weeks, I've found I needed to increase my liquid intake drastically regardless of activity.  At the risk of TMI, I can't even sleep overnight without waking up and finding myself dehydrated.  A gallon of water a day is not unreasonable in this much direct sun.

But I digress.  On with the pictures!!

This is the view from a parking lot before the tunnel into the monument.

Selfie!

View from the path up

I couldn't get a picture of Stephen making a good face...

Me with another view from the path

Lookout point on the way up

View from the lookout point

Stephen looking out

Selfie at the lookout point

The view of Honolulu from the top.  Pretty strategic, I'd say.

Need I say more?  Okay... holy cow.

As we descended, we found a bunker with this as the view.  Yeah.

Pinch me, because I live here.

We did the hike in the morning because we hoped to beat the rush.  Of course, it seems like 90% of people living in Honolulu are actually on vacation, so Monday morning be damned.  It was still crowded.

Still, it only took us an hour and a half to get to the top, take some time scoping out the view, and get back down to our car.  Not bad.

That left half a day for Waikiki and apartment hunting!

We did scope out two places in Honolulu, one of which was a no-go, and one of which was decent until they lumped on the $60 per pet per month (hey, at least this place took them) and the $125 per parking space per month.  At that point, we disagreed on living location (my vote for Honolulu, Stephen's vote for Kailua), but at least we agreed that if Kailua didn't work out, Honolulu could work.

With that, we hit one of the beaches in Waikiki.

Lots of rock coral means lots of waves

Another shot of the beach at Waikiki

Just proof I was actually there.

 So there you have it.  Rock coral under the feet is a little creepy.  There were a lot of people bodyboarding, and more than a fair share of people surfing.  While it was a little people-heavy, this felt like Hawai'i.

It turned out that, while we were third on the application list for the place in Kailua, things worked out and ours was the one that went through.  After a little bit of deliberation, we chose the place there.  It had an easier commute, close access to a picture-perfect beach, and more space than we could get in Waikiki.  Needless to say, I have to choose between my interpretations of paradise.  What a hard life!

Okay, but I am going to say that paradise is costing us $1600 a month for a 550 square foot apartment.  That's well under my basic allowance for housing (otherwise known as BAH), which just tells you how expensive the average cost of living is in paradise.  At least by living in a small space, we can afford to keep up the adventures!

This last week mostly involved work (cuz like I said, paradise is expensive!) and starting the process of moving to our new place.  We bought some fabulous Hawaiian clothes at Hilo Hattie's (I'm sure Mom and Dad remember that) and checked out some more of downtown Honolulu, which I'm pretty sure should just be renamed "Japanland."

I told Stephen that next week, after we've fully moved in to our new place, our task is to go to Snorkel Bob's (which still exists) and purchase our snorkel gear.  Aside from getting my picture taken with a silversword plant and a baby pineapple, my clearest memories from Hawai'i as a kid were snorkeling, as if I snorkeled every day.

There's just so much to do that I'm sure a fourth year extension on my tour is going to happen.  How can it not?

Hi All!

I thought it would be a good idea to start a little blog for the family to keep up on what Stephen and I are doing in our Great Hawaiian Adventure!  So I plan to update this weekly with what has been going on, plus any photos and videos we take that may or may not have already been shared on the Facebooks.

So now, on to the fun stuff.

Getting here was quite the non-adventure.  We woke up at 3:45am on Monday to corral the cats and get them down to the airport, since we needed to have the pets checked in at the airport three hours before the flight.  Hawaii is six hours behind Eastern time now, so that meant that, in our new time zone, it was... 9:45pm.  Epic lose.

The cats got on the flight without any real headaches, and the plane had touchscreens built into the back of the seats, so my flight consisted of Rio 2, nap, The Amazing Spider-man, Frozen, and The Little Mermaid.  Stephen's was similar.  Amazing how a movie marathon makes a 10-hour flight go by almost pleasantly!

We were picked up by some friends from the Navy Band, got our cats, got a litter box and litter, and picked up about two days of groceries before we finally checked in to the Navy Lodge.

Let me just say that Hawaii is beautiful, as if I had forgotten, and that commissaries on real bases actually have real food.  This is definitely a few steps up from our previous amenities in Newport.

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Stephen and I checked in with the band on Tuesday morning and then began the hunt for a house, first by checking in to Navy housing.  We were offered one military house, a kinda crummy place near the golf course (okay, that wasn't so crummy in Stephen's opinion), but we agreed that we still wanted to look out in town.

One of the guys in the band was assigned to chauffeuring us around, so he showed us a bit of the "neighborhood" (the whole Pearl Harbor area is kind of huge), and we got some delicious Thai food in a strip mall near the base.

We continued house hunting on Wednesday after Stephen secured us a rental car.

House hunting in Hawaii is a whole different beast.  The pet policies are very strict: as in, no pets.  It was hard enough getting them here, but it's turning out that while we might find 75 places in our price range in a given location, only 3 of them are pet-friendly.  We ended up taking a grand tour of the island.

Our first stop was Aiea, just north of the base, to a small apartment nestled in the mountains.  On paper, the distance is bike-able, but in reality, not at all.  It would take years of biking for me to handle those hills!  Plus with the traffic on the H1 being comparable to the traffic in LA, Stephen was concerned about any commute he might have in to Honolulu.  Everyone works in Honolulu.  Everyone.

Our second stop was Waikiki, which would be a neat location if you were willing to deal with all the tourists and the fact that Honolulu is a big city on a small island.  It definitely has all of its super-built-up shops, super-American restaurants, and super-crowded beaches.  It's not necessarily negative.  We would have liked the apartment better if it weren't so noisy.  Supposedly it's bike-able, but while people will say it's doable, word on the street is you can, but you might die.  Those highways and such...

Our third stop was Kailua, all the way up on the freaking windward side of the island.  That's the northeast side for those (like us) who aren't initiated to island-speak.  It's a "long commute" by Hawaii standards, which means it's about 20-30 minutes from Pearl Harbor, including a drive through the mountains in the middle of the island.  The town is gorgeous, like a touristy little beach town.  It kind of reminds me of Sanibel.  Still, it's a half-hour drive away.  So we decided we would keep looking.

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Thursday brought more checking-in to medical and dental, followed by lunch with a colleague at a sushi-go-round in the downtown Honolulu area.

This is a sushi-go-round.  The sushi goes around a conveyor belt.  You eat the fresh stuff and avoid the stuff that's gone around a few times, if you know what's good for you!

It was some pretty delicious sushi!



After that, more apartment hunting.  We just did some drive-bys for places we had appointments for, and it turns out a lot of them were in skazzy areas.  No, thank you.

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Friday involved a trip up to the North Shore of O'ahu, which is surfers' paradise.  The whole town looks stereotypically surfer, until it hit me that no, this is the place that every stereotypical surf town wishes it could be.  This place lives and breathes surfing.  The waves were actually really calm when we were there, but I've been told that in the winter, the waves will be 15-20' and the biggest surfing competitions will happen.  We'll have to make another trip.

The other reason we'll have to make another trip is for Opal Thai.  We met up with a small group from the Navy Band to try it because one member is about to leave (I'm actually her replacement), and it was on her bucket list.  It was pretty much some of the most amazing food I've ever eaten because it was so fresh!  I don't want to spoil the fun because I plan on taking some brave visitors there, but just know that it's worth it!

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On Saturday, after a lot of talking with people from the Navy Band, we decided to go ahead and express more interest in the place in Kailua.  It turned out that we were the third tenants to submit an application, so he didn't take our background check money.  We spent the day on the beach, and this is what we came away with:

A couple of random shots at the most beautiful beach ever!

My feets

Stephen's feets

This could be an 8-minute walk from our home.  Every.  Day.

The water is so clear, you can see your feet on the sandy bottom even when you're more than waist-deep.  It's pretty killer.  No shells, though.  Nothing but swimming and sunning in this area.  We saw a bunch of kayaks go by, and from what I hear, there are two little islands just off the coast that are good snorkeling spots.  It's also windy enough that it's great for kite-surfing.  I guess we have a few things to try.

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Today we stayed in, hit the gym, took naps (okay, I took a nap), and then we got a phone call that the property manager was going to run the background check anyway.  So now we wait with bated breath to see if we are going to be moving to Kailua, oh, in about three days.