This is the first real day of Baecae before a few days of work, then more Baecae.
I woke up this morning at like 0530 because I went to bed so early. That was good because it gave me some time to explore our options for the day.
The initial plan was to go to Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan enough for this, and we kind of knew it. First off, Uber is basically prohibitively expensive to use here. It was $90 one way to go to Pearl Harbor in the morning. You want to get there super early, so I’m told, to make sure to get tickets to see all of the leftover wreckage. ESPECIALLY the wreckage of the Arizona. That sounds extremely spiritual, especially since my Grandpa Ned was in the Navy during World War II. Pacific Theater. I wonder if he got to hang out a lot in Hawaii?
Anyway, we decided against Pearl Harbor and instead took The Bus to the Diamond Head and then on to the east side of the island. Now, if you are looking for a way to get around Oahu, the answer is The Bus. For $5.50, you can get a day pass and ride as many busses as you want. They go to a lot of places, even Pearl Harbor. They are also fairly reliable, and no crashes so far.
Before heading out, we had to eat breakfast and purchase shorts for Bae. See, in SLC, you don’t need shorts…unless they are snow-proof and have long legs to them. We went to this Cafe that was decent. So far we’ve been having trouble finding places to eat that aren’t part of giant resort complexes, so we end up paying the “Disney” fee. We are finding places on Yelp, or whatever, that look tasty and great, but then we go up in a Hilton or something to get there. This particular cafe had a pool attached to it, which was pretty neat, I guess. One of the waiters knew greetings/farewells in English, French, German, some other language, and Japanese, which was pretty cool. Oh yeah, a lot of Japanese are here. A lot. Speaking of, Bae really likes Asian babies. She thinks they are really cute. Leave your comments below. Anyway…
After breakfast and a trip to H&M (how is that place organized????), we got on the bus to Diamond Head! The bus ride was only about 15 minutes or so. We walked into the crater, and man was it busy! We were expecting about exactly the crowd we saw, so that was fine. Here are some pictures:
There was a long line of people going up, and plenty of people were going very slow. I just want to point out that in general, I’m not in a rush, I just don’t like when things take longer than they should. Anyway, we made a fun game out of it, overtaking people when we could and pretended we were NASCAR drivers without the….special-ness.
So, we ended up shredding that hike in less than an hour, then straight bailed from the crater. Despite the crowd, it was definitely worth it. I’m used to hiking in Volcanic craters that are extremely perilous. This was a nice breeze, and the sights were gorgeous. Also, you just can’t beat seeing all the tourists (which I guess we are, too, shut up). So many hilarious selfie sticks, and stories that involve, “…so then she asks me, should I get the airpods, or the airpods pro???”. Man, you love to see it.
Here’s the Garmin of the hike we did, for you geography lovers.
After Diamond Head, we wanted to grab some food. We went to this place near a marina called “Fatboys” towards the eastern side of the island, again by The Bus. It started to rain on our trek, but we were at a bus stop in an EXTREMELY rich neighborhood, with a nice tree hanging over a bench, so we stayed quite dry. The place we ate at was about 50-50 locals/tourists, so that was a good sign. We had tasty Poke sampler bowls for 10 bucks each. It was yummy yummy doe (YYD).
We then went for a stroll towards this wildlife refuge. Along the stroll we saw some interesting things:
We also saw like 50 feral cats, and a weasel/stoat? Do those live in Hawaii? Sure looked like a ferret. We also came across a shooting range where one dude was shooting some big ass gun. I don’t know what a .50 cal sniper sounds like, but this baby was louder than any gun I’ve heard on a range.
We then came to this wildlife refuge (I forgot the name and don’t feel like looking it up). It was CLEARLY the spot to snorkel, given all the snorkeling people we saw. That was pretty important clue. Here is what this area looked like from above:
I didn’t take a picture and we didn’t walk down ($7.50), but it looked like most of the action was happening down on the shore in the wildlife refuge. Perhaps Bae will go back and snorkel there. I’ll be working, like a loser.
Here’s the Garmin of that particular hike from Poke to this spot.
The bus back was pretty hilarious. The bus was a bit late showing up to the stop, and was COMPLETELY packed. It was so packed that the bus turned into an express bus back to Waikiki, as we couldn’t pick anyone else up. So that worked out in our favor! We then ate wayyyy too much Indian food.
It’s work for the next few days, but we will be back! Perhaps Bae will write about what she does these next few days.