Our first car appointment was in the Honolulu/Waikiki area. After test-driving the first car, we headed down to check out the world famous beach. The beach and surrounding environment reminded us a little bit of a smaller, cleaner, and less crowded (at least for now) version of South Beach in Miami, with it's high rise buildings and hotels, the breathtaking and crystal teal-blue waters and the beautiful grassy parks that met right up with the sand. The scene was completed, although not always appealingly-so, with old men sitting on park benches and walking around proudly in thong-speedos, as well as both local beach bums and tourists alike sharing and enjoying the sun, sand and water, and lastly and perfectly, even a young kid playing the ukele, quite well I might add, sitting in the sand with his very tan, shirtless back, resting up against the base of a palm tree as he played. It will be the perfect place to explore more one day with our beach cruiser bikes when they finally arrive with the rest of our household goods shipment in 4-8 weeks.
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| Sights around Waikiki beach area |
After only briefly taking in the area, Jordan's tummy began to rumble, and we decided that we both would prefer to find some good, local Hawaiian food, as opposed to the tourist-ridden, Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory-type, chain places we came across in Honolulu. After hearing about delicious locals' food trucks up in the North Shore, we decided to make a drive up the coast to head that direction. Well as the saying goes, it not about the destination, but the journey, and our journey was absolutely gorgeous. I think I took nearly 100 pictures yesterday, trying to capture all the amazing sights!
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Going wikiwiki (quick) on the Likelike (pronounced leaky leaky) highway up to North Shore from Honolulu. Although the speed limit was only 45 in most places, we just liked saying the phrase.
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| Lush views from the Likelike highway |
On our way up from Honolulu to North Shore, basically the southern most end of the island to the very northern, and 1.5 hour distance, we decided to pull over to the side of the road at what looked to be an authentic, local-type, food place. I need to find a better word than food place but it's not exactly what you would call a restaurant; however, it was exactly what we were hoping to find and experience along our drive. The Waiahole Poi Factory was a weather-worn, barn looking structure right on the side of the highway. There were a few picnic tables out front, with a few burly looking men chowing down (it must be good then, right?) , and quite a few chickens running freely. They boasted their specialities of Kalua Pig and Poi, so naturally that's what we had to try. We shared a plate of smoked Kalua pig, poi, and what appeared to be some form of a salsa fresca, which since we are no longer in California, I guess would just be considered freshly and finely diced tomatoes. The combination was definitely unique and a new experience for both of us, especially the poi, which neither one of us had ever had heard of before. When given the option of rice or poi, we inquired as to what exactly poi was. The lady at the barn window searched for the equivalent word in English to describe this Hawaiian staple, and described it as their starch they used for many meals. After further research on our own, we found that Poi is made from an underground stem of a taro plant, or the Kalo in Hawaiian.
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| The Waiahole Poi Factory on the side of the highway |
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| The beautiful backdrop. That's our rental car in the background, we literally pulled over on the highway and ran across the street. We park for Poi! |
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| Chicken! |
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| The brown stuff in the circular container in the back is the Poi. It was definitely interesting tasting on it's own, but when you combined the Kalua Pig, the Poi and the tomatoes, it was actually quite tasty. The white cube is a Hawaiian dessert known as Haupia. It's basically a coconut tasting gelatin, made from coconut milk and arrowroot and in modern recipes, sugar and salt is added as well. |
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| Had to pull over to take a picture of Chinaman's Hat Island. Apparently you can reach the Island by foot at low tide! Another adventure we will have to try! |
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| More shots of the beautiful scenery we saw just driving around the island. |
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| Upon seeing this awesome road-side stand, we decided we had to stop here as well and made a quick u-turn across the highway to pull in. |
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| Our big purchase: one coconut! They took a small machete, shaved down a small section near the top, stabbed a hole in the coconut, and said grab two straws! It was that easy, and soooooooo delicious! Much better than the coconut water you can buy in stores! |
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| I love this picture because it's not posed at all. Jordan is SERIOUSLY so concerned by how much coconut water I was drinking during the taking of this picture! hahahahhaha, it was THAT good! |
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| There's a coconut in our cup-holder! We must be in Hawaii! |
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| An hour and half after leaving Honolulu, we discovered the infamous North Shore food trucks, that began to litter the side of the highway. There were a ton, and each smelled absolutely delish as we drove by. We had a hard time deciding which one to stop at. Finally we chose Kahuiki Shrimp, because it had rave reviews on yelp, and shared a plate of butter-garlic shrimp. We were not dissapointed. |
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| This place too had chickens and roosters roaming free |
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| Butter garlic, finger-lickin' good, shrimp! |
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| North Shore Beach. Although it was nearly 80 degrees, the beach was almost completely empty! Apparently this is off-season! |
As you can see, we had an absolute blast just driving around the island yesterday in search of our new Island mobile, which we may or may not have already found and be in the process of buying, but I will save that for another day. One of the most entertaining parts of the day was listening to Barb (aka Barbara, or in regular people's terminology, the GPS voice) try and pronounce all the Hawaiian street and highway names as she dictated the directions to us for our next destination. We often missed a turn because her pronunciation was so off that we didn't identify the street as the one she had just spoken even when we actually came up to it. For example, apparently Kailua (Kah-ee-l-oo-ah, this is my own personal phonetical breakdown) is pronounced Kyle in Barb's book. Although I shouldn't give Barb too hard of a time, as Jordan and I too had difficulty trying to pronounce all the words we came across throughout the day. I quickly decided that since we were going to be living here for the next 3-4 for years, we should start familiarizing ourselves with the pronunciation of the Hawaiian language so as to not look completely ridiculous and befuddled all the time. Upon doing a quick google search, here is what I learned:
1. There are 5 vowels in the Hawaiian language (a,e, i, o, and u) and only 7 consonants (h, k, l , m, n, p, and w). That's it. That's the entire alphabet. Consonants are pronounced as you would do so pretty much anyway in the English language, while vowels are said to be closer to how they are pronounced in Spanish:
a – ah, as in father: aloha
e – a, as in may: nene
i – ee, as in bee: honi
o – oh, as in so: mahalo
u – oo, as in spoon: kapu
2. It's easiest to pronounce the word when you break it down into single syllable chunks, as Jordan's sponsor explained to us on the first day.
4. Sometimes the W is pronounced like a V, which is why traditionally, Hawai'i is pronounced huh-vi-ee instead of huh-why-ee.
5. A symbol directly over a vowel called a kahakÅ indicates that the vowel sound is to be elongated. A apostrophe like symbol called an `okina indicates a quick break in the word, like in English when we say “oh-oh”. So, for the Hawaiian word ka‘a, which is the word for “car” it would be pronounced: “Kah-ah”
This cliff-notes version of the Hawaiian language that I found on Hawaiian-words.com (literally! Could it be any easier to google?), definitely helped us to not sound like complete ignorant haoles (slang for someone of caucasian descent or a non-local to the island), or at least slightly less so! The locals are pretty interesting when giving directions as well. Upon driving to a couple of the car destinations, to locations that Barb was unable to locate, we got verbal directions from the sellers. One guy asked Jordan if he knew where North Shore Tacos was, granted we told him we had just arrived last night, and lived a full 45 minutes from his area. So no, we don't know where North Shore Tacos is! Another guy, mentioned his car was parked at the Safeway parking lot...uhhhh, is there only one Safeway on the Island? Apparently so. And our absolute favorite went something like this, from where you are in Waialua, you're going to head south on the Kamehameha Hwy and merge right once you pass The Dole Pineapple Plantation on your right. Did you try and say that out-loud? And have you ever heard that one before...turn right after the pineapple plantation? We absolutely couldn't get enough of it, and are cherishing and giggling at these new "firsts" of our time here in Hawaii.
Well I don't think I can end this post without mentioning the 4th member of our new Hawaiian family. No, I am not pregnant. Did I get ya there for a second though? I am referring to the fish we have eaten every night for dinner for our first three dinners here: Poke! Poke, poke, poke. We can't get enough of the Hawaiian Ahi Poke! Although another day eating our way around the island, and I may fool a few more people on the pregnant joke! Yikes! Luckily, 90% of our diet here has thus far consisted soley of fish! But anyway, back to the Poke. The first night, without a car, we took a risk and grabbed some from the seafood department at the commissary, paired it with a little Ocean Salad, and we were totally impressed. So much so, we were craving it again the next night. Night two, off a Poke recommendation from the lady at the commissary, we went to Foodland in the nearby town of Kailua...did you pronounce that right? They had quite the selection, literally a whole poke case of different flavors and combinations. We went with a California Poke (which tasted similar to the flavoring of a Sushi California Roll) and a Spicy Thai Poke. We mixed it over a bed of spinach lettuce, threw in some fresh sliced avocado and drizzled with a balsamic vinagrette, and wa-lah, poke heaven once again. Still not quite poke-ed out, tonight we had Poke Fish Tacos, from North Shore Tacos (since we now know where that is) which boasts the Island's #1 fish tacos. They were definitely good as well, but I think tomorrow, we may give something else a try. Although, you do have to get creative when temporarily living in a hotel on base when it comes to meals, especially with only a microwave and mini-fridge at your disposale. So, for that reason, raw fish has been our go-to for the time being.
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Blurry pic of our first night's dinner, commissary ocean salad and ahi poke! Delish!
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Alrightly, well I am going to wrap this up so I can head back out to livin' Island life. Hopefully, I can update you all soon with details of our Island car, fingers crossed everything works out.
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