Our last full day in Oahu was relatively unscripted as we were really just trying to kill time before our red-eye flight home. So we got up when we got up, we packed our things, and we returned to the Kalapawai Cafe for brunch. This time we sat in the cafe and ate a breakfast burrito and a lox and cream cheese bagel. To be repetitive: the food was great!
We decided to see if we could find Robin Master’s Estate (from the original Magnum P.I), which was southbound from Kailuia on the Kalaniana’ole Highway. We found it, but didn’t realize it until we’d blown right past it. It’s not like we could see through the hedges anyway, so we just kept on going South to see what we could see. It turned out to be a great drive along the coast where we stopped at a couple of scenic outlooks before reaching Maunalua Bay. We stopped briefly at the beach park, noting that the bay itself is really quite sheltered and shallow. The waves could be seen breaking way out at the mouth of the bay.
We decided from this point to see if Shaka Guide had any audio road tours for Oahu, and lo and behold they did. Several, in fact. We decided to try and follow the East Oahu guide backwards back to Waikiki, but we were already too close to Waikiki to actually get anything other than the Hawaiian music from the tour. But then we took the “Honolulu’s Backyard Rainforest Tour”, which took us through Manoa, to the Lyon Arboretum, back down past the Manoa Chinese Cemetery, up to the Tantalus Mountain (Pu’ukakea) lookout, and down the other side of the mountain on a lovely, windy, zigzaggy drive through the rainforest to the Punchbowl Memorial (National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific). The tour proper ended shortly after this, but offered an extended tour into downtown Honolulu “to discover a few hidden gems”. We took part of the extended tour and did stop at what was a visually lovely little inner-city waterfall, but the water was contaminated and almost all the areas we drove by were really sketchy. The main tour was really cool though, so I would definitely recommend taking that part.
It was fairly late in the afternoon by this point, but we figured we’d go to Pearl Harbor to see if we could at least walk the grounds. After navigating the ridiculously convoluted highways and roadways (the engineers must have been on drugs to create that mess), we made it to the Pearl Harbor Visitors Centre just before 4:00 p.m. We only had about an hour to look around, so we took our time and got a good browse through half of the museum before checking out the gift shop. We had already decided at this point that we’d be coming back to Maui in five years, so we’ll take the first two days of that trip in Oahu to do a proper tour of Pearl Harbor, and go back to Kualoa Ranch, and maybe do one of the other Shaka tours.
We hit gold again for supper. We did a Google search of “restaurants near me” and at first we tried to find Boston’s Pizza out of curiosity, because, you know, Boston Pizza… Boston’s Pizza… but again because of the ridiculous highways and roadways we ended up blowing right past that place. So we got off the friggin’ highway and looked again at Google and this time found a place called Da Seafood Cartel which had great reviews and looked interesting. We followed non-highway streets to get to the restaurant… which was located on the side of Kamehameha Highway <insert face-palm emoji here>. At any rate, the restaurant is a smallish sized cafe kind of place that calls itself “Mariscos Sonora Style”, which is basically Mexican seafood dishes from the Sonora region. It was fantastic! We shared a bowl of house made tortilla chips that were delish and not salty (yay!), with salsa and a blue crab tobiko spread. I had the fish and shrimp tacos. There was so much fish and shrimp and toppings that there was no way I was going to be able to actually make a handheld taco with the two small tortillas, so I dug into it with my fork instead. So yummy! Dan had one of the quesadillas (I can’t remember which one: smoked marlin, steak, or shrimp). We will definitely come back here next time.
It was still early but we didn’t have anywhere else with time to go to, so we went to the airport to see if we could check in. Given that we were five hours early, the check in counters weren’t open yet. There weren’t any kiosks either. I had been trying since last night to check in through the Westjet app and online, but it would not work for me. At any rate, we were the second couple who had tried to arrive early. The counter didn’t open until three hours before our flight departure time, so the four of us sat on the benches and waited. Dan and I took a stab at the Globe and Mail’s Christmas 2024 crossword puzzle (which I had started and saved a few weeks ago). We made a good dent on getting that done, but it’s not finished.
We finally got checked in and proceeded through the TSA gate where they take your picture to compare to your passport. The camera thought Dan was wearing a mask (he wasn’t, it was just his beard) so it wouldn’t take his picture, but they let him through anyway. The rest of the process went smoothly and we made our way home. Other than a ridiculously long lay over of about 6 hours in Calgary (because I wanted a direct flight home, not the one that stopped in Edmonton on the way — I may rethink that the next time) the trip was uneventful. The power went out as soon as we walked into the terminal in Yellowknife, but it wasn’t out for long. The Boy picked us up and drove us home, and we chatted with him for bit before going to bed.
All in all, Dan and I had a great time on this trip.
Take care, everyone, and stay safe! We’ll see you next time.
Adelle and Dan
Guigon Travels 