Gouda's Cheesewheel

Sunday--ride around O'ahu

Sunday morning we had arranged to pick up scooters when the rental place opened at 9, so we could make the most of the 24-hour rental period. Although the place was a block from our hotel, we were somehow beat by a large group of Germans, and so it took half an hour or more before we could get going.

Once on the scooters, we made our way to the East, along the South coast of O'ahu in search of breakfast. Not finding anything for a time, we settled on the first restaurant we could find, which was KFC. Not the worst brunch meal, but we later found a shopping center 10 minutes away that would have offered better options, like sushi.



Over the hill from the shopping center were some lovely overlooks of the coastline, including Halona Blowhole, a hole in the volcanic rock creating amazing spurts of water when large waves hit beneath it.

Further along we came upon a sandy beach (actually called "Sandy Beach") with very large waves. Once I saw that people were playing in the waves, I couldn't resist pulling into the parking lot to at least watch for a bit. Brent followed, and we finally decided to make use of the swimsuits we'd packed along.
We played in the surf for about 15 minutes, which consisted of standing on the shore and bracing ourselves for a huge wave to come crashing over us. Sometimes we could withstand the force of the smaller swells, but the larger ones were quite overpowering, dragging us up the beach and nearly removing my swimsuit on several occasions. The pull back into the water was almost equally strong, so it was important to stand up promptly to avoid being towed under another wave. The only experience in my life that remotely resembled it would be the large wave pool at Water World, but in this case the motion was being repeated with consistent force. Quite exhilarating, but after being covered in sand and getting water up my nose, I had to take a break. Brent continued to play, so I took some photos of him.

Once we had rinsed off a bit of the sand, we continued on our way. When we reached the Kailua Beach area we got a little lost. I stopped at a garage sale to shop and Brent got directions from the person running it.Finally back on track, we eventually stopped for sushi (cheap, if not the fanciest) and mocchi ball ice cream. Although we had eventually planned to circumnavigate the entire island, we had to stop at Hauula, just before the Polynesian Culture Center according to my guidebook. We feared if we went too long the ride back would continue after dark, making the unfamiliar roads more dangerous on small vehicles. On the way back we stopped at a souvenir stand on the side of the road to let the bikes cool down, but otherwise we continued nonstop into Honolulu. This time we skipped the coast and took a quicker, more direct route through the mountains. Unfortunately the steep incline took our weak motors down to 30 mph at best, which made it a little scary riding next to cars going 45 or higher, but people were pretty nice about passing us.

Back in town we rode past the sea ports and stopped at a seaside park to watch the sunset.We decided on dinner at the Aloha Tower near Downtown since we weren't in Waikiki for once. Parking was a challenge, but we finally discovered we could go into the valet lot for free, since motorbikes can be parked in non-car areas. Options for dinner were limited, as our first choice was closed for a concert and limited to ticketholders only. We could either have Chai's gourmet Hawaiian Regional Cuisine, or a strangely expensive Japanese buffet. Chai's turned out to be a kind of Asian-fusion, not as tasty as we expected but at least creative. Brent made the mistake of ordering a fried whole snapper, which was beautifully presented but very difficult to eat!

Finally back in Waikiki, we dropped off our scooters. Thorough showers followed, as there was still a great deal of sand in our hair and other less pleasant locations...

Many more scooter ride pics at flickr, if you're interested!

posted by Greta @ 1:53 PM