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!

Chocolate and fire

This past weekend we had very few plans, but ended up doing some interesting stuff anyway! On Friday we went to a street food truck rally, with a chocolate theme! 

This is apparently an event that happens a few times a month, where a company called Street Grindz gathers a bunch of the food trucks in the area in a large parking lot for the night, usually with a theme. Food trucks are vans or trailers outfitted with kitchen, where vendors sell freshly made food from, while being able to easily move locations.

We decided to head there after school, and spent a couple of hours admiring the different foods and selection. It took us some time just wandering around the area to decide what we wanted to eat, my choice was pulled pork grilled cheese, while the others went for BBQ ribs.

Pulled pork grilled cheese, ooey gooey mess basically. It was delicious, though a bit too soggy to actually eat properly, I ended up fishing out all the meat and cheese with a fork and dipping it in a BBQ sauce.

After eating we decided that we obviously needed desserts, so we did the rounds again and came out with S'mores BBQ bananas and mini donuts!

 Grilled bananas with chocolate chips, mini marshmallows and chocolate syrup. Tasted like a little piece of heaven quite honestly. Looked a bit like something not so nice.

 Art stuff, they had some strange things, including a teddy bear in a jar specimen.

Then the sky did that thing again, and the time had come for us to move over to UH Manoa's campus and a free showing of Catching Fire from the Hunger Games trilogy! All in all a pretty good Friday if you ask me.

Lanikai beach

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Okay so a bit late, but Ive been busy getting sick and doing too much homework. 

Last weekend! On Friday we met up with a friend of Gina who was here for a few days before heading to South Korea where she was studying, and her boyfriend who was studying in Japan. We decided to go to The Cheesecake Factory, which we had heard a lot about both before getting here and after coming here. We were warned that the wait to get in was long, and they were not exaggerating! We waited for 1.5 hours to get a table, and hunger kicked in for full! We were 8 people, so I suspect that didnt help us in getting in early either. I ordered a Pizza Margarita, and it was pretty good, much better than some of the other pizzas Ive had here so far. In addition, I ordered one of the best Mojitos Ive ever had. At $11 it wasnt cheap, but it was well worth it!

After a nice dinner we all went out, and ended up having a great time. We didnt get home until almost 2AM, and tumbled straight to bed, because the next day we had big plans of doing very little!

 We went to a beach on the Windward side (like north-east of the island, about 40 minutes by bus maybe) called Lanikai. The weekend before the others went to the beach next to it, Kailua beach, pictured above, to watch a kiting competition, but this time we went solely for the relaxation. We spent the entire day just tanning, reading and swimming, on one of the most amaaazing beaches Ive ever experienced. Someone on Facebook compared the beach to walking on marshmallows and we thought it simply was an analogy for a really soft beach, but it turns out it actually literally feels like walking on marshmallows. The beach has such fine sand that it feels fluffy and it gets everywhere. The water was completely clear, with large formations of coral (I think it was at least), although it is, sadly, only the boring grey kind, not the colorful kind, Ive yet to see that! I brought my new snorkeling gear to practice a bit, because for Sunday we had scheduled a boat trip through school which would take us out to a place called Turtle Canyon. Being a total noob with snorkeling, I felt I needed the option to place my feet on the bottom the first time doing it, before going out in 6-7 meter deep water. I also finished up the Hunger Games series, and started the Mortal Instruments series (a young adult fiction series about demon hunters, just up my alley!), so its fair to say I got nice and relaxed! 

Some pictures, obviously. These are all taken with my phone, my camera doesnt get to join in such sandy affairs, which is good because everything I brought was covered in teeny tiny sand grains when we got home.

This is Kailua beach, we're definitely going back to both of these beaches later! As you can see, they do get pretty full, this was just after noon on a Saturday though, obviously not the ideal time to arrive.

Clear skies and blue as far as we could see.

Another shot of Kailua, as you can see this beach is pretty long, and the waters are shallow and clear.

After arriving in the small town near the beaches, we decided to walk to the beach because the next bus was a while away. We ended up walking past Kailua, and saw a myriad of houses plucked straight out of movies and TV shows. The beaches are very animal friendly, in fact it seems like most of Hawaii is, there are dogs joining their owners pretty much anywhere. We saw one owner trying to teach her pooch to swim, but she ended up just sitting in the water with the poor puppy clinging to her instead haha!

We passed Kailua and went further down the coast to Lanikai. We went down towards the water a bit too early and ended up on this rocky bit, below, with fishes and crabs everywhere!

The islands in the background are apparently called the Twin Islands, or Nã Mokulua, and are a protected sanctuary for birds, supposedly off limits for humans but it seems people sometimes do go on there.

Finally we found ourselves a spot and relaxing commenced!

 Another view of the Twin Islands. Quite idyllic! And you can see how fine the sand is here.

You kind of ended up looking like you were wearing dust slippers because it was so fine.

This little fellow kept investigating our stuff, the entire day it kept coming back whenever one of us went to swim, to scour our towels for crumbs. 

So the entire day, the clouds were in this sharp line just behind the mountains behind the beach, keeping the beach in clear skies with sun, but at the end of the day, sadly, they crept in over the beach as well. It created the most amazing light, but also meant that our stay was coming to an end.

A sign its time to head home. 

Red-nosed and happy, a perfect day off in paradise! 

On the way home, we stopped to get pizza, realizing that none of us felt like making dinner after so many hours in the sun. The pizza was perfectly greasy, the best one Ive had here so far! To be honest, I dont find the pizza here very good, so this was a pleasant surprise!

And that was our Saturday! And part of our Friday :3

North Shore and kitties

Today we went to North Shore! We got on a bus and what seemed like aaages later, but in reality was less than 2 hours, we were on the opposite side of the island! We got off at a monument for fallen soldiers, and walked along the beach.

Our first mission was getting some food! We walked along the main road in Haleiwa, and ended up at Pizza Bobs!

Cecilie and I both got the Cajun Fish Sandwich, it was really good! Of course I couldnt finish the entire meal, which seems to be a recurring thing here, these portions are too damn huge! 

After the food we went exploring! 

Sleepy shop puppy

 We went looking for a toilet, and found kitties! Most of them were too scared to get close to, but one came up and played with us, and others let us snap some pictures. 

 Cecilie named this one Frank, he was completely cross eyed but played with us like nothing was wrong!

After a while we went back to get the bus back home. It was a nice day, even if the weather wasnt the greatest, but we'll definitely go back to check out the beach at a later time!