Road Trip to North Shore

This weekend has been great! I’ve got so much to tell, and I don’t know where to begin… I guess I’ll try to at least get the highlights.

On Friday we decided to go on a road trip. When I say “we” that would include me of course, My Norwegian roommate Hege, my Danish girlfriend Christina, my Danish friend Per, My two Norwegian friends Susanne and Hallvard, and a German guy called Jan. We rented an old mini van and left urban Honolulu on 9 Saturday morning, and headed toward the North Shore. I’ve been there many times before, but I can’t get enough of that place. Cruising on Kamehameha highway while listening to Jack Johnson is magic! (Jack Johnson is from Hawaii and he’s got a house up there. I’m always looking for a mail box with “Johnson” on it, but I still haven’t succeeded in locating him…)

There’s really something about North Shore. It’s pretty rural, and there’s only one single resort hotel (Turtle Bay) and one lone hostel, so it’s not crowded with Japanese tourists like Waikiki is. Also, the shore isn’t packed with huge American houses and filthy rich people. Of course you’ll find a few nice neighborhoods with big homes, but mostly there are old, shabby houses, and you can tell that the people living there are more concerned with the surf forecast than with maintaining the house. Maybe you’ve been watching the show Lost? It’s filmed on the North Shore. I’ll come back to that.

The atmosphere is totally different from that in Waikiki and Honolulu. It’s very casual up there. On the North Shore you’ll find wild chickens running around everywhere. (I call them Jungle Chickens.) Another thing you’ll find are the locals. Local surfers on their bikes with their surf boards on a rack on their way to Banzai Pipeline or one of the other world famous surfing spots. During winter time the famous Triple Crown surfing competition is taking place on the North Shore. I consider paddling into those waves on a tiny board nothing less than suicide! Luckily most of the surfers actually do survive. Well… When I was here in 2005 one professional surfer got killed.

However, during the summer months North Shore is more or less flat. There’s practically no waves, which makes the numerous beaches perfect for swimming and snorkeling. And that’s more or less what I’ve been doing all through the weekend! After checking in at the hostel yesterday morning, we went to Laniakea Beach where we were told we would have a good chance of finding sea turtles. We were taken aback when we got there. I think we saw around 50 huge sea turtles in the water and on the beach. I’ve seen turtles here before, but never so many and so big. Check out the pictures!

After a few hours of snorkeling and tanning with the turtles we went to Sunset Beach to watch the sunset. Later we went into Haleiwa and had dinner and margaritas at a Mexican restaurant.

This morning I woke up to a really weird sound… Half a sleep I figured it was the sound of a crowing rooster; however, I was positive that it was one of my friends’ cell phone that was making the disturbing noise. The rooster kept crowing, and I wanted to yell to my friends to turn off that damn cell phone. It wasn’t until after morning coffee at Starbucks I realized that the really annoying alarm that went off this morning actually was a real and alive rooster… Half a sleep I just don’t expect to be woken up by a real rooster crowing right outside my window. An annoying cell phone is usually a lot more likely to crow than rooster outside your window. When something like that happens, you know you’re at North Shore!

After breakfast at Starbucks we went snorkeling in Sharks Cove before setting off in search of Police Beach where the first episode of Lost was filmed. I’m not a huge Lost fan myself, but a few of my friends are fans, and with the help of an iPhone GPS we located the spot and went off in search of the exact location. We found it pretty easily because there is security guarding the area, but all Hawaiian beaches are open to the public, so we could walk along the beach and see the jungle where the plane crashed in the first episode. The security guards told us that they would be filming again this Wednesday and Thursday at the same location, and we were welcome to come back and watch it from the beach if we wanted to. They even pointed out some of the settings, and as the tourists we are we took pictures, and did our best to look Lost… Haha…

On our way back home to Waikiki we passed by Chinamans hat and beautiful Kailua Beach. I was the only one who had done that trip before, so I finally had the chance to be a tour guide.

It’s Sunday night and another week is about to begin. I haven’t opened a book since Thursday, so I’m guessing it’s about time to get serious about school. When I think about it, I guess that’s kind of why I’m here… Well… Tomorrow morning I’ll meet up with Jonas at 8 am. We’re going diving! I’m exited but also a little nervous cause I’ve never been down so deep before. I think it’s a 40 meter dive site. It’s an old plane wreck from the Second World War, and I was told it should be a really beautiful dive.

What a great weekend!