This morning we got up early and picked up our beast of a rental car; a Chevrolet Tahoe. We then picked up Laurence, Corey and Kristy (friends we met on the cruise) and took a drive to Hanauma Bay on the south east of the island. The bay is a Nature Preserve and a Marine Life Conservation District and the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. The cove is covered in tropical reef that you can snorkel over, we saw loads of colourful fish and a couple of turtles swimming around. The reef is really shallow so the fish are very close to you, at one point a parrot fish half a metre long was heading straight for me and I got scared and swam off. Watching a turtle eating and swimming as though we weren’t there was amazing to watch, it was quite a surreal morning!
We grabbed some lunch and then drove round to Lanikai Beach further north east of Oahu, we had heard there were some islands you can swim out to and decided we would try this. When we arrived we realised the Mokulua Islands are actually 2 miles away so we rented some kayaks and paddled over! Unfortunately the wind was blowing against us and the sea was quite rough so it took us about an hour to get there, Me and Paul were together and the other 3 were in another, it was tough.
Both islands are bird sanctuaries and you are only allowed to set foot on the larger island, we took a stroll round and saw lots of birds nesting in holes in the rocks. We attempted to hike round to Shark’s Cove on the other side of the island but the sea was too rough so we couldn’t go all the way. The hike was across black volcanic rocks that you had to climb up and down, I stupidly wore flip flops as I did not realise we would be on such an adventure!
We got back in the kayaks and although it was hard work it took us half the time because of the wind direction and we managed to ride a few waves! We arrived in Waikiki about 7pm and dropped everyone off. We later met them at Duke’s restaurant for some dinner and drinks.
