Our Week in Hawaii (part 3)
When you decide to inhabit an island, you should choose a flat, rectangular one. Oahu is far more up-and-down than I'd imagined, with tall rocky peaks and steep valleys that jag up from sea-level to around 4,000 feet at the highest point. Oahu is also a 7-sided irregular polygon, shaped something like the profile of a dog's skull (if you use your imagination).
Therefore, roads on Oahu are cut through the low passes between peaks and they twist around irregular shorelines. There does not seem to be any attempt at straight roads, much less parallel or perpendicular roads, or anything regular like that. We have gotten HOPELESSLY lost at least twice every day so far. Part of the problem is that almost every road name is about seven letters long and comprised of different combinations of "k", "a", "l", "n", "u", and "e". So you can be on Kalaune, which crosses Kaulane, and turns into Keulana for awhile before ending in a fork that branches into either Kanaula or Kaunala. I'm making this up, but this is how it seems. Did I mention, we seem to get lost a lot.
We visited a Dive Shop in Kailua, where we are staying, and they sold us a nice map marking many, many locations where surfing or scuba diving or snorkeling are possible: about 40 total. Another thing the map shows is that Oahu has a "perimeter" road that pretty much circles the island on its outer edge. A kind of "seashore drive" except theoretically we could leave here, circle the island, and wind up in the same spot. To give you an idea of how big this place is, there is a total of 112 miles of shoreline! Or, in other words, about the distance from Fargo to Grand Forks; or, Fargo to Fergus Falls; and then back again.
In other words, this place is puny and could probably fit inside the Minneapolis/St. Paul suburban area.
The guys at the Dive Shop pointed at a couple of places on the map as good snorkeling sites, the one most memorable being "Sharks Cove". Rita half-blanched at hearing that, until I read off the map "named for the shape of the rock formation" (and not, thankfully, the more obvious reason). So we decided Sunday would be a good time to try driving around the island, at least until we found some snorkeling.
Oahu has a "windward" side, towards the eastern end, where the wind and waves make for sandy beaches, and a "leeward" side, where the rocks are craggy, and the reefs form to make good snorkeling. For some reason, the leeward side is where the best surfing is found, but only in the winter. If you see a Hawaiian surfing show, it's probably about Oahu in January, when the waves get 20-30 feet high and they hold the famous competitions like "Pipeline" and others.
Once we got straightened out (I mean, not lost anymore), we started around the circumference of the island, going counter-clockwise.
This was a beautiful trip, with long stretches of road where there were steep rocky faces to our left and blue-green ocean to our right. Along the way, once you get past the crowded populous parts, there are little fruit and vegetable stands selling papaya and pineapple and bananas (and something they call an "apple banana" which looks like a short fat little banana and has a fruity banana taste).
Much of the trip is past little beach front properties, many of them looking much like shacks, and many of them with large prominent "Private Property -- Keep Out" signs.
The road is good, although very twisty, and the speed limit is often just 45 miles per hour. In addition there are many places where you must slow down, and many people driving along at a slow speed.
So, even though the distance is not great, it took us close to two hours to travel perhaps 50 miles from our cottage to Shark Cove.
What a lovely spot! The water was blue-green and relatively still when we arrived. There are white sand beaches, but mostly the shore is composed of large, dark, sharp rocks. The sand, by the way, is not like you expect. The grains are quite large, about half the size of the white rice you get in the store. Very coarse.
We looked around a bit, and saw there were several people snorkeling near shore. There were also several more in a large tide pool (an area of water, usually pretty shallow, surrounded by rocks, which gets filled at high tide and then keeps the water when the tide goes back out -- there are fish in a tide pool, many of which are born there and never get out to the ocean). We decided to start out by snorkeling in the tide pool: we had some new equipment to test (new fins for me, new mask for Rita, new snorkels for us both), and it has been, after all, two years since we last tried snorkeling. It seemed wise to start out in the "kiddy pool", as it were, and work our way up from there.
After a bit of difficulty clambering over the sharp rocks and getting the new gear to operate, we were able to paddle around for awhile.
The tide pool contained many small fish and mossy looking rocks, with a few spiny pink anemones and a couple of larger silver fish.
After a while we tried to clamber over the side of the tide pool into the ocean, but the swells were rising and there was no way to safely step off the rock wall into the sea without risking a flaying on the rocks. From there we walked slowly around the wall of the tide pool until we were back at the beach, stopping once to see a few green sea turtles cavorting in the surf. The were pointed out to us by the Asian-looking family that had set up on the edge of the tide pool with fishing rods. Nobody seemed to think this was strange: people fishing (with sharp fishhooks!), in the same area where other people were swimming and snorkeling. We stayed out of the water near the fisher family, but stopped when they showed us the big green turtles. There were probably four of them in a group, each about the size of a large Pizza Hut pizza. They seemed to enjoy swimming towards a low lying rock just as the waves were flowing over it, so they would be tossed back by the force. One doesn't think of turtles as playful, but that is what they seemed to be doing.
After a short rest we went back to snorkeling, this time outside the tide pool in a stretch of water along perhaps 50 yards of rocks that ended in another white sand beach. We paddled along looking at colorful fish, as the water got first deeper, and then murkier.
The depth was never more than 12-15 feet, and this isn't troubling as the salt water keeps you bouyed on the surface. However, the murkiness became a problem after a while, as it became hard to gauge direction, and this combined with the increasing waves made it difficult to navigate and actually led to some disorientation.
It got so bad that Rita started to feel motion sickness, and we decided to head back.
However, the nearest point of shore, while being only 15 yards from us, was very nasty looking rock, and with the waves increasing we were concerned about getting tossed against them and cut. We decided to aim for the nearest sandy part of the shore, but this was considerably farther, and by now the waves were getting stronger and it was difficult to make good progress. After considerable labor we finally panted to shore, getting buffeted somewhat and finding ourselves at the mercy of the waves. For example, as we approached what was mostly sand but some rock, we would have the waves pushing us forward faster than we wanted and in a direction (toward a boulder) that we didn't want; but as we succeeded in avoiding that, the surf would surge back OUT and drag us away from the beach we were trying to reach.
It wasn't frightening exactly: not that bad. But it was disconcerting and a little stressful, particularly since Rita wasn't feeling well and we were somewhat powerless to get out of the water in the manner and fashion we wished. There was no panic or thrashing, though, and except for a very minor scrape on my knee, we came out of it none the worse for wear.
Afterwards we were hungry and thirsty and tired. And when we made it back to the cottage (by taking the short cut across the middle of the island this time), we both found we had a little sunburn, even though we'd slathered up with SPF-30 to begin with.
Tomorrow, Monday, my conference starts, although I'm not expected to participate until Wednesday, and we are scheduled to attend a Luau in the evening.
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