Pililaau Army Recreation Center Waianae

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... cars, vans trucks or in the open all the way along the beaches. These people can’t afford a place to stay and drug dependence is the greatest problem here. While taking the local bus I met a 19 year old woman who has been living on the beach for a year!
Mākaha Beach Park, Hawaii, United States maaske

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Steve wanted to go for a very unlike him early breakfast, Off course once we got to the restaurant/bar at 8am I woke up and realised it was game day. With America spread across so many time zones the NFL games start in the east which is very early in the west. Having sat through the game we spent the day finding our feet.

Time for our surf lesson ...

... looked very much like it was stuck!! We ended up walking up to investigate further and yes it was extremely stuck! A loan Dutch tourist chap was trying to get it out. Jeff tried to help, trying lots of different tactics but to no avail. It was really sad to see just how many local youngsters drove past just to have a look and a laugh but were not willing to help :-( A local couple even stopped and said they would go for help.............never to be seen again ...

... like we were sleeping in a lorry park and you could hear everyone else in the block! Nevermind, we were up at six to catch the shuttle to the airport to catch our 8.55am flight to Oahu.

That all went pretty smoothly and apart from me having to have yet another detailed search we were soon through security. Not just my bracelet and bra this time but the buttons on my skirt were metal too!

The flight as always was pretty straight forward and we ...

... went to the local grocery store "Shop N Save" and bought our first groceries in Hawaii. We had all been warned that everything would be more expensive but we were all still a little shell shocked when we saw the prices of some of the items. When all was said and done I spent about $135, luckly the food I bought will last for more than one week. When we got back to the hotel, Emily and I had bought pinapples so we decided to cut them up. She also bought a mango so ...

Meg and I drove up to the North Shore today. B-E-A-UTIFUL! Saw the  Banzai Pipeline, drove past the Turtle Bay Resort and ended up at the Polynesian Cultural Center...not quite where we wanted to be yet. Eventually we made it to the Waimea Valley Audubon Center where we hiked around and explored for nearly the entire day.  We ate at the concession stand there...while we were sitting at the picnic tables a male peacock hopped up next to me and ...

... before we all ran back to the minibus and dried off. Some fared worse than others, and one guy looked like he'd gone for a fully clothed snorkel. The rain settled down as we went on, little did I know that there was a bit of foreshadowing going on here. We visited more surfing beaches, such as Sandy beach, and drove past Koko's Head volcano, and crater. I think Koko's head blew it's top off quite a while ago and the lava rock is still built up at its ...

... classic tube-shaped waves rolling ashore since it is summer time. We know about this. We just want to check out the place. The lifeguard there was friendly and informative. We saw Ted's Bakery and stopped to try their chocolate haupia pie. DD1 likes it. I'm not really crazy for it. It's like a chocolate pudding on a pie crust with coconut cream on top. We stopped at Giovanni's Shrimp Truck for lunch. We love their shrimp scampi. It was easy to peel off. Luckily, we had wet wipes ...

... was a driver, our guide, and then Chuck the photographer, who was there to capture our experiences on his digital camera to sell to us later on. We pulled out of the marina, and were only on our way out for about a minute, still well in the harbour, when we started to see dolphins in the water right away! Fantastic - they were everywhere, just swimming around us! The dolphins were Spinner Dolphins, named so because they like to "spin" around in the ...