Hawaiian Adventure

Before I moved to Guam, I had only been to Oahu once on my way to Maui. However, every flight to the mainland US from Guam seems to go through Oahu. So, I have gotten to know it over time. At first I went to the tourist spots that I had heard so much about, like Waikiki Beach.

I also got a chance to glimpse the serious feral cat population problem when I went to a scenic overlook. We have a feral dog problem on Guam so I completely understood how that happened.

I also did the food tour. I had pineapple chicken and other Hawaiian BBQ. However this trip, I drove around.

I already wrote about snorkeling at Electric Beach and The Three Tables. The underwater explorations were a lot of fun! I have never seen so many turtles in one place.

There were also lovely things on land, though.

I tried a Pineapple Shake at the Dole Pineapple Plantation. It had never occurred to me to put pineapple in a shake before, but it was good.

Tip for visiting the Dole Pineapple Plantation:

It was very crowded when I was there, which was a Thursday. I feel like it is always busy. If you want to do the tour, play in the maze, eat at the grill, and really enjoy it; you want to get there early and plan on spending the day there.

It is certainly the place to get all the pineapple you want.

I stayed at The Navy Lodge, which is on Ford Island. I found it amusing to stay on an island off the coast of an island.

Obviously The Navy Lodge isn’t something fancy like the resorts you see on Oahu. But it seems silly to pay for a fancy hotel room when you will only be there to sleep.

Besides, the flowers around the hotel were beautiful.

Passion flowers are actually my favorite, but they were not in season. None-the-less, there were plenty of flowers around to appreciate. The hotel had a lovely collection of bromeliads.

Of course, we have most of the same flowers on Guam. However, everything looks nicer when you are on vacation, doesn’t it?

I know there is a lot of really amazing hiking in Hawaii, and I hope to get the opportunity to do some hiking at some point. However, this trip was short, and we wanted to spend most of it in the water.

If you are interested in hiking, there are lots of really excellent websites that are devoted to hiking in Oahu.

The weather is cooler and less humid than the weather in Guam, so I imagine it is exactly as beautiful and not as sweaty.

Also, although I wrote about Electric Beach, Pupukea Maine Conservation District, and Turtle Beach; there are many other wonderful places to snorkel on Oahu.

There are some lovely websites devoted to places to snorkel, in case you are planning a trip there yourself and want to take a look.

The very best thing I finally found was Leonard’s Malasadas Truck. I had heard wonderful things about it from my Portuguese side of the family.

A malasada is a Portuguese donut which is a kind of sweet bread that is fried and rolled in sugar (or other things.) It is a tradition to eat them in Portugal of Shrove Tuesday, which is like Fat Tuesday in New Orleans.

In my family, we ate malsadas on New Year’s Day because we were already together for Christmas. There were my favorite part of the holidays.

Biting into a malasada was like biting into a little piece of my childhood, and I am really glad I finally came across Leonard’s. If you have never had a malasada, I highly recommend that you try one. They’re fantastic!

Overall, it was a really nice trip to Oahu. I saw a lot of things I hadn’t seen before, and ran into things I didn’t even know I wanted to see.

Hopefully we’ll go back soon, because we have a friend living there now. Time to take advantage of someone else’s spare room the way people take advantage of ours.