Hawaii: Day Trip to Brain Hemorrhage Beach

'Hey girls, welcome to Sandy Beach. Just wanted you guys to know, we're advising against swimming today. Current's pretty strong. Not sure we'd be able to pull you out if you got in trouble. And this beach is known to cause the most spinal injuries in the world'.

Bloody hell. We - Martina, Karin (my roomies) Filippa, Heini (additional Swedes) and I - had woken up extra early to get the rental car and head out to one of the many beaches that line Oahu's shores. After a scenic diversion twice round Diamond Head, Karin had managed to point the car east and we'd parked up at Sandy Beach, east of the mountain where some terrifying waves were round-housing into the sand.

I hadn't been in the ocean yet and was looking forward to splashing about and maybe digging a hole or making some kind of fort. I'm not one of those lie-on-a-beach-all-dayers. I don't need a tan, I need activities. Now the lifeguard was telling me that was out of the question.
What. A. Jobsworth.
Luckily, I had some TIP TOP companions to chat to and a boiled egg (bought from the petrol station for thirty cents. Excellent seaside snack) to eat. However, Sandy Beach also turned out to be Bloody Windy Beach and after a while, the decision was made to try another spot and look for lunch.

It just wasn't the day for beaching. We sat on another slice of sand further up the coast, with our hoodies up and knees to our chattering lips. 'I'M HAVING SUCH A RELAXING TIME!!' Martina screamed over the wind.

You wouldn't think Hawaii to be cold, but it gets pretty darn gusty from time to time. It rains a lot too, but only drizzle and there's always a rainbow to make up for it, so its allowed. This breeze just wasn't easing up though. We threw in the towels and trooped back to the car, heading to a Mexican shack on the roadside for tea.

the Hawaiian hello demonstrated by Baz

Perhaps driving in Sweden is easier than driving in the States, but Karin was having a tough time on the Hawaiian roads.
We overshot the diner and ended up in a driveway leading to a Marine army base. Waiting at the stop sign to rejoin the main road, another car (presumably driven by a real-life Marine) pulled in and signed the friendly Hawaiian wave to Karin, who lost all control of her hand and the limb it was attached to trying to figure out how to do it back, all the while yelping hysterically in Swedish. The other car had passed by now, wondering who this cabal of screeching women emerging from the base actually were, but Karin had pushed the pedal to the metal and propelled us approximately fifty metres to the tiny car park of the Mexican cafe up the road. 

I hoped it wasn't local local food, which consists of rice and mincemeat and is completely devoid of any greens or vegetables whatsoever. Loco Moco looks WELL rank. This place had 'organic' and 'fresh' plastered all over its exterior so it couldn't be that bad. Unless tofu was involved. I scanned the blackboard menu above the till, picking out the fish tacos and went to sit outside on the benches and let the girls try and teach me more Swedish. A lady behind the grill yelled out my name when my order was up. I came back with a plate of this:

Yes, it was necessary to make the picture that large. Because anything less would be an injustice. And because I'm showing off. Because this meal of fish tacos was BOMB.COM, snazzmatazzmic and Offish Delish off the hook.

The fish - pleasantly meaty - had been marinated for a long time and then grilled for optimum flavour. Each portion came squashed inside two soft corn tortillas and topped with chunky chilli and pineapple salsa. It's companion was homemade coleslaw, dressed in some lemony peppery goodness that is making me salivate just by looking at this picture. Garlic also featured, but I can't pinpoint where - it was definitely flitting about.
The others had ordered pretty tasty looking dishes too (there was a portobello mushroom burger in attendance) but I reckon mine was the best. Definitely worth searching out, definitely worth driving to the east shore for.

karin, martina, filippa, heini

Satisfied, we ambled back to the car and began the trek home, stopping briefly at cliff overlooking Sandy Beach and upon which a lighthouse perched for a quick photo-op and look at the view. There are some places that are never boring to look at, some vistas that you never tire of, and this was certainly one of them.

OooOoOooo I Can See Your Honolulu

Other than Graceland, Hawaii was the place I was most looking forward to visiting when planning this trip. Aside from New Orleans. And Memphis, of course. But Honolulu was capitalised, italicised, underscored and highlighted in BOLD in both my homemade travel schedule and my whirrly little mind.

It's the sort of place you daydream about while writing completely useless summaries about Anthony Worrall Thompson shoplifting cheese from a Tesco in Henley-on-Thames at 3.18 a.m on a Thursday morning. WHO CARES? It was probably only a cry for attention. He's not so hot these days, is old Ant. Anyway, back to my holiday hard-on.

HAWAII and all her pleasures; palm trees and sunshine-happy ukele music, warm sand and skilled surfers, grass skirts and ham and pineapple pizza. Bloody paradise. I remember doing a 30-second jig after clicking on the confirm button to book my flight and gurning like I was at my first festival for about four hours afterwards. Excited doesn't even cover it. I was champing at the bit to get out there.

It takes six hours to fly to Honolulu on the island of Oahu from LAX and the islands, the most remote chain in the world, is two hours behind Pacific Standard Time - basically making it the end of the world. I would be ten whole hours behind almost everyone I know. After waving goodbye to Leah and whiling away two days in grungy Venice Beach eating 7-Eleven pizza and catching up on the latest series of Dexter, I travelled to LAX at about 11pm the day before my flight to sit out the eight hours before I could board the plane and dream all the way to paradise.


For entertainment, I pretended to be Tom Hanks in Terminal and shuffled around the departures lounge mumbling emotionally in a made up language from a fictional country, before finding the softest piece of marble I could to try and snooze for a few hours before the check-in kiosks opened.
For anyone thinking about ever sleeping at the airport: if you can avoid it, do. If not, purchase an inflatable mattress. It is NOT easy nesting.

I got on the plane and tucked myself into my seat, finally falling asleep before the engines got going. My neighbour very sweetly shoved his soft, fat elbow into my face just as the islands came into view underneath us hours later, allowing me to lean all the way over from the aisle to the window to catch my first glimpse.

It was a photoshopped world I was staring down into, everything popping out in bright technicolour and looking sparkly and fun and happy and Aloha. Absolutely beautiful. 

Hawaii may be a stunner but its also one of the most expensive places I've been to. The starting price for most items seemed to be $10, and that was considered a good deal. With my bank account dwindling, budget was the order of the day. Google pointed me in the direction of Waikiki Backpackers Hostel, which had good reviews, and more importantly, offered travellers two UNLIMITED beer nights a week, for free. I was staying for ten days over Christmas, so this had to be taken strongly into consideration. They also offered a complimentary shuttle service from Honolulu airport if you were staying for four days or more.
Yes please.

bezzie mates

Two blocks from Waikiki Beach, the hostel is a former motel and each room has been converted into dorms that sleep four. You get your own kitchenette and bathroom in the room, which is pretty handy for storing supermarket-bought beer. At its helm is the owner, Charles, a well-built Nigerian man who used to be in the British Army and who reminisced with me extensively about England and J.D Wetherspoons' curry nights. You can't get a decent curry in Hawaii, it seems. Charles seemed pleased to have another British accent knocking about the place and as he left, promised to bring me a can of cider the next night.

I had managed to turn up on Tuesday, one of the free beer nights, so got stuck in chatting with my fellow hostellers and worked on becoming increasingly shit faced before we all piled into the minivan at 10 p,m and were driven to Moose McGillycuddy's, a ridiculously-named rowdy bar in the city where drinks remarkably, only cost $1 that night. NO BLOODY TAX ADDED ON, EITHER.


I waved my $5 bill like I was in Her Maj's inner circle, graciously buying drinks for my new chums and throwing out unique dance moves to the pop music under the strobe lighting. It was just like a school disco, except with lei's, mai tais and lots and lots of military personnel. I chatted with a Marine (there are a ton based on the island) and egged on a German girl looking at a bit of beef that had caught her eye across the crowded bar. A superb night out.

I'd promised myself I'd go surfing the next morning. Obviously I would have been a complete natural. However I failed spectacularly to wake up in time for the Early Bird Special ($30 for an hour's lesson on Waikiki - but only before 8 a.m) so ended up heading to the Dole Pineapple Factory on the local bus system, which took an hour and a half and very nearly robbed me of my will to live.

It took FOREVER going all round the houses and back again to visit the driver's grandma. I sassed quietly in the back, but not too loudly because I'm a scaredy cat and didn't want to get chucked off the bloody thing in the middle of nowhere. Also, I was in Hawaii and had no right to be moody about the slow-pace of everything.

The Dole Factory was horrendous, hugely overpriced ($8 for a packet of dried pineapple. What in holy hell?) and inexplicably, sold pearls in oysters at every corner. What do unshucked oysters have to do with the seeding, harvesting and distribution of pineapples? I may die before I find out.
Seeing as it took so long to get there, the least I could do was treat myself to a ride on the Pineapple Express, a fire-red train that takes visitors around the pineapple fields and explains the history of the factory in a neat twenty minute ride. The pictures would have been nicer if the sun had gotten its act together that day, but it didn't, so here's what I got:

no idea pineapple grew like that

this cockrel was trying to shake off the advances of a LUSTY peacock

I wandered back to the bus stop and waited for my ride home, stopping in a shopping centre to hear Hawaiian Christmas carols before meandering along Waikiki beach to the hostel. The cheapest drinks the local ABC stores (sort of like a Sainsbury's Local) sold was the same brand of Californian champagne I had toasted my 26th birthday to with Leah in Monterey. Seven bucks and it didn't taste like a urinal in a strip club. THAT'LL DO. 

I took my loot back to the hostel's teeny common area and shared it with my new room-mate, Martina from Sweden. Martina was on holiday with her mate Karin, who was fast asleep in our room, exhausted from the trek halfway across the world. She mentioned they'd hired a car for the next three days and would I like to join her and two other Swedes on a road trip to the east coast the next day?

Four Swedes and Abha packed into one rental car?

There is only one appropriate way to end this post, and it is with this video >>>