Kualoa Ranch

Yesterday (Thursday) Martin and I went to a place called the Kualoa Ranch, which is a large ranch that does experience tours. We purchased a whole day deluxe adventure, which included four 1-hour tours and a lunch buffet. It costs around 180$ for the whole day tour, and two of the tours are an ATV ride and a horseback ride, which is why we chose it! This ranch is used for filming movies and TV shows all the time, including Lost, Jurassic Park (they're actually starting the filming of the latest sequel there NEXT WEEK, we *think* we even got a glimpse of the set being built!), 50 First Dates and a ton of other large and not so large movies. 

So the day off, we got picked up from a hotel across the street (10$ extra gets you a bus ride to and from) at 7.30AM. The Ranch is located on the North-East side of Oahu, and the ride took around an hour.

Well there we signed up for the tours we wanted, the package we bought was the ATV and horseback ride, plus two of their other 1-hour tours, or one 2-hour boat and beach experience. We chose the Movie Sites tour and Jungle Experience.

Beautiful surroundings.

First up was the Movie Sites tour!

We got the entire bus to ourselves, which meant we could move around and take pictures on either side when the bus was moving, pretty great!

 A plateau with a bunker from the war with movie and war memorabilia inside, amazing views!

The famous Jurassic Park sign and the dead tree they hide behind in the movie, conveniently blocked by both of us of course.

Hurley's golf field from Lost. 

The mountains looming over us all around. 

Godzilla footprint! Apparently these were originally 8 feet deep (almost 3 meters!) but they had to fill them in because the cattle the ranch keeps kept falling in and injuring themselves.

On the way back to the ranch.

Next up was the Jungle Experience tour, a tour inside a open truck up the hills of the mountain, through the thick jungle vegetation!

Quite a bumpy ride!

Not the easiest to tell, but this was ponds with Taro growing in them, Taro is Hawaii's main protein, like Norway's potato. Its a tough root that grows in water like rice does, so this was a cascading system of ponds with natural spring water running through it.

The view from the top!

After the two first rides, it was time for the included buffet style lunch, which consisted of rice, ribs and pork. Very very tasty! And filling. After lunch it was time for the ATV ride, which made me nervous because Ive never ridden one, much less driven one on my own! But it was simple enough and I was grinning like silly before we even got out of the test course! The tour route was pretty similar to the route from the movie sites tour, but without the guiding since we couldn't hear anything, and more terrain. No pictures allowed while driving, so this one is all I have from that one!

 After the ATV ride, time for horseback riding! This was a slow and leisurely ride, but it was very nice and the hour went surprisingly fast! Talking to the guides about the nature and riding was fun, and we saw a tree that was over 800 years old!  

 Apparently this one was 800 years old!  

My horse was named Hollywood and used to be a guide horse, he was really nice and offered no trouble!

After we finished all our tours, we had about 40 minutes before our bus back to Waikiki was leaving, so we decided to eat at the Ranch. They had burgers made from their own beef, more local and homegrown you couldn't get! And it was very big, 8oz burgers are huge!

All in all, a great adventure!