Day 5

Another beautiful sunrise!  Seriously, I can never get sick of this!

Today was a day for a road trip around the island.  We rented two cars and decided that we were going to take a drive to see other parts of the island.  First stop, Dole Plantation.

Not everbody is into this type of stuff.  But I had a great time!  Seeing “live” pineapples was cool.   Look how tiny this one is!!

Here's a larger one.   Just as cool.  

I love all the touristy stuff that was at the plantation.   This is just one of the many pictures with kids sticking their heads through some type of scene.  

And of course, seeing a whole bunch of other fruit trees was cool too!  Rambutan, mango, kakui nut, papaya.   

Of course, there was the floral side of things where I got to see all the different flowers, trees and lagoon that was there that waters the plantation.  Very cool stuff.  

And just as an FYI, an experienced pineapple planter can plant 10,000 plants…in a day.  How insane of a stat is that?  And watching these people plant these pineapples, I can see how that is possible!  


Though this looks like nothing special, I just loved this tree!  The colour is the actual bark colour of this tree.  It really was like a painter's palette!

Of course, no trip to the plantation is complete until you have the Pineapple ice cream.  Yep.  I had the ice cream with the extra pineapple on it.  Why not?!

Next up was a drive to the North Shore for a family picnic.   It was just neat to drive up here…totally different pace from Waikiki.  Sort of a Tofino, laid back attitude with some great eats and cool shopping.   

And the beaches are great.  I really wish we had some extra time because my dream has always been to surf in the North Shore.  But due to timing, this wasn’t going to be the time.   

I must say that I was a little disappointed that we didn’t stop off further into the North Shore. The Vans Surfing Competition was happening and I wasn’t there!!!  OMG.  Totally another dream that I’d like to fulfill…watching world class athletes compete in surfing.  I want to live out a Blue Crush dream!

Next, off to check out the scenery.  It was quite cool how different parts of this island lived compared to Waikiki.  Definitely more laid back and much more suburban.  The scenery was really stunning too.  Mountains are actually the backyard for some of these folks.  

No road trip is complete without some road side food.  YES!  We stopped off at Fumi’s.  The wait was long for the food but boy, was it worth it!  Succulent garlic shrimp.  Very tender shrimp, not overcooked, nice size and just absolutely tasty as could be.  

I love noticing the small things on trips…those are the moments that really make it for me on a trip.  At this little road stand, there was an open space with a bunch of tables.  But in the middle of this open space was a tree.  Not sure what kind but the leaves looked a little sick.  But upon closer inspection, the leaves looked a little sick because people had engraved their initials onto the leaves.  The tree was healthy as could be…but with the sun shining onto the leaves, the words engraved onto the leaves were burnt right into the leaves.  And need you ask?  Or course we got our names and date of our visit engraved onto one of the leaves!

Definitely a great drive around the island.  Wish we could have done more.  But we did what we could and ended the night with a beautiful sunset.