Early start this morning as we had to get up, get to the airport, return the hire car, wait for the shuttle to take us to the terminal for our 8.10am flight.  I’ll have you all know that we were there in plenty of time, which is not surprising really, because Chris is a seasoned early riser and likes to get up and get going.

The flight was about 5 minutes long (we’d only just got up when we started our landing!) so we were on Oahu before 9am.  Another hire car and just let me tell you all about Theresa, the lady who served me at the hire car counter.  She enjoys netball.  So much so that her mother told her that it was becoming an obsession and that she should quit and move to Hawaii from Jamaica where she was set to become the youngest international netball player, until her mum stepped in.  Theresa resented her mother for about a year because the people here in Hawaii haven’t even heard of netball.  She also let me know about the care packages that you can have sent to you from Jamaica and if you spend more than $45, the shipping is free…. I’m not sure what you get in the care package.  And just in case you were as interested as I plainly was, let me tell you about the haunted house in Jamaica….. oh, you’re not interested?  When I hadn’t said anything, Theresa told me that I must have thought she was crazy, but when I assured her that I didn’t think that, I was just interested in picking up my car, so said, “Yeah, right – you think I’m crazy.”  If I’m honest, Theresa was a little crazy, but then again she might not get a lot of personal communication time at the car hire office at the Honolulu airport, so I let her talk it out.

Our first stop was Sand Island.  This probably isn’t on a lot of tourist brochures because it’s at the back of the industrial and shipping area, but Chris had read that there was sea glass to be found there…. and she was right – we hit the sea glass jackpot!

From this beach we watched a number of planes come in for landing and take off…. we heard this one plane before we saw it.  It took off in an upward direction – straight up, like a rocket and then made a sharp right turn and was off on its journey.

Here’s a close up…. something tells me that it wasn’t a passenger plane otherwise all the luggage would have ended up in the overhead compartment of row 43!

With our ziplock bags full to the brim with jellyban shaped sea glass, we headed up the highway to the North Shore.

Last time Chris and I were here in Hawaii with ML, Chris introduced us to the Kono pulled pork wrap – it’s pulled pork, rice, pineapple bbq sauce, avocado & sour cream all wrapped up in a flour tortilla – delicious!…. so this was our lunch destination.  If you get the pig logo tattooed on your body, you eat at Kono’s for free for life!  We thought about it.

Next we said “Aloha” to all the new little shops in Haleiwa.  Things certainly have changed since we were last here!

All of the shops look a little bit like this – like they’ve been there forever, even the new ones.

It’s ok, nobody was prosecuted.

Here are some of the lovely things on sale…. they do love a wooden sign here in Hawaii.

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But… this was the funniest thing I saw today.

There is a phenomenon here in Hawaii – shaved ice with a flavoured topping.  That is what these people are lining up for – and they weren’t the only ones – this line did not shorten the whole time we were in town.

We were smart cookies though – we walked to the next block and bought one from there. They were quite delicious and very refreshing on a hot day.

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About 3 o’clock and were due to meet up with Mary-Beth our Airbnb host…. We had the address and popped it in the GPS – Mary-Beth also sent me a pic of the GPS’d location.  However, when we arrived, and pulled onto the dirt road, there were no numbers on the few houses and we didn’t have wifi to check what the house looked like or access Mary-Beth’s phone number – also the houses that did have numbers, all had the SAME number!!!!  We drove up and down through what could only be described as “Deliverance Street” – seriously you could hear the sound of duelling banjos coming from the junk filled front yards.

There was a general consensus that we wouldn’t be staying in any of these houses and then discussion ensued as to what would be our next move.  We faffed around with trying to get our wifi to work until we gave up and drove to the new McDonalds carpark to use theirs…. we poo poo’ed the development of a McDonalds in the North Shore on the drive in, but were very grateful for the free wifi…

We got in touch with Mary-Beth who agreed to meet us up on the main road so we could follow her to the house, which turned out to the be very sweet house nowhere near Deliverance Street and was only 2 houses in from the main road.

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Once we unpacked the car we drove up the coast a bit to find a beach and have a swim… we found this lovely street with very flash beach front houses that had a public beach access laneway…

which lead down to a lovely beach, but the shallows were all rock/reef.

So we drove back to the town beach where we saw a huge turtle frolicking in the shallows… You’ll just have to take my word for it.

Beach swim done – it was lovely to be in the ocean again… then it was time for a quiet beverage on the verandah.  We couldn’t find any wine glasses in the kitchen, so Chris had to drink her wine straight from the bottle – we’re stayin’ classy up here on the North Shore!

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