Hawaii Vacation Day 6

The first thing on the schedule for this  morning  was to  hike to Manoa Falls.  It was really fun to find that after about a 20 minutes drive from downtown Waikiki we found ourselves totally in a rain forest environment and you would never guess that just a few minutes away is the "big city."  When we got  there, we couldn't figure out where to park the car...  the signs were quite confusing.  We drove  up  the  hill to a  place called the Lyon Arboretum.  (the sign there were pretty clear that there was NO PARKING for Manoa Falls - but we were just hoping someone there could tell us where we were supposed to park.

 

 

This is Kona, the dog that apparently lives at the Arboretum.  He was a little sweet heart.

It was 8am and they didn't open until 9, but the guy happened to drive up at the same time we got there.  We asked him where were supposed to park, and in the course of the conversation, he said he'd open up early for us and we could explore the arboretum.  IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!  We had planned to  visit the Foster Botanical Garden, in downtown Honolulu, tomorrow; but we will skip that now.  As you can see from the pictures, we were  hiking through beautiful rain forest country, and we were the ONLY ones there.  

overlooking the arboretum at the begin of our adventure

some people might think this is just some cute little mushrooms growing on a tree stump.  I believe it a fairy umbrella shop.  so there!

see all those cute little fairy umbrella's???

 

It took us a couple hours - and almost 100 pictures of plants and flowers - to get back to the visitor's center. (the guy had said it would take us about an hour... little did he know how much I love plants and flowers!)  We hiked all around the Arboretum and up to a small waterfall, the Aihualama Falls.

 

We literally didn't see another person until we got back to the visitors center.  I TOTALLY recommend this place. (even if you go when they are regularly open and there are other people there.  It is BEAUTIFUL!!!

We also saw a whole bunch of wild Cockatoos – they are loud little buggers! 

if you click to enlarge you'll see a pretty good shot of one of the Cockatoos.  (same with the next photo)

This stop was not one that we had planned, in fact, we hadn't even  heard or read anything about it – but I am SO glad we "got lost" and found this fabulous treasure!!!! 

This video clip below is of Tim swinging on the giant 'vines' of a Banyan tree. The seeds germinate and send down roots to the ground.  (that's actually what the vine looking things are - roots seeking the ground)  He had been eyeballing them for several days, but never found some that were sturdy enough to swing on.  These suckers were MASSIVE.  After Tim, I tried to swing, and found that I couldn't even get my hands around the vine and grip enough to hang on at all!

 

After the Arboretum, the man at the desk gave us permission to leave our car in their parking lot and we walked down to the trail  head of the Manoa Falls hike.  It  was really interesting that we were so close to the botanical garden,  yet the hike was such a different experience.  Still very rain forest-y, yet way fewer flowers, and way more people.  It's a very popular hike for people of all ages.  The falls here were much taller, and the hike iss super MUDDY, (which makes it slippery!) but it was still a great hike!  Note to any future hikers - pick up a walking stick at the trail head.  you will be glad you did - especially on the way back down!

at the trail head

hiking up to Manoa Falls

at the falls

back at the car... I was MUDDY!

After the morning hikes, we went back to Waikiki for lunch at the Ala Moana Center food court (I was told  it was the best on the island and I'm telling you... it was MASSIVE!!!

 

(There were so many places to chose from  it was really hard to decide where to eat, but I ended up having a yummy YUMMY BBQ chicken Panini with a side Caesar Salad.)

After lunch we walked back over to the bay for  our surf/paddle boarding lessons.  I have to admit that I was not super excited about this particular activity that Tim planned.  I was a little  nervous about it actually – but  it was GREAT!

 

We were on HUGE boards (easier for beginners) so I was able to balance pretty well, I only fell off 2 times.  I was really proud of myself because our instructor said I had really good paddling form.  It was really fun and I would definitely do it again.  As an added bonus,  we got to see several sea turtles!  They were just hanging out in the bay swimming around and they'd just pop up out of the water to get some air then dive back down.  It was fun! 
Tim of course, was a natural, so he and our instructor went out beyond the breakers to try to catch some waves.  It was a TERRIBLE  location to try to surf – the coral was only about  4 feet under them, and they both ended up getting come coral “slivers”  in their toes.

you have to enlarge to seethe little coral slivers in poor Tim's big toe :(

After stopping back at the hotel for a quick call home to the kids, a shower, and a trip to the ABC store  to buy tweezers and sewing  kit (for removal of the aforementioned slivers),  we for a walk down to the beach to hopefully catch some photos of a good sunset.  Not a super amazing sunset, but it was still the beach (which I LOVE), the sunset was OK, and we watched these cool black crabs climbing on the rocks.  They were SO fast! 

 

 these two picture below make me laugh.  they were taken one right after another, just using different settings (none of which I was even aware of on my camera.) The guy we snagged to take the picture knew more about my camera than I did.  I think it is funny that one looks like it was taken in the dark of night, and you can just barely make out Diamond head in the background, and the other looks like it is daytime.  Needless to say, after seeing these pictures I did a bit of playing with my camera trying to figure out how in the heck to work it!

As we were getting ready to walk back to the hotel, we happened to see this guy packing up his trained parrots. (used for tourist photo ops.)  We paid a small fee and used our own camera and got these fun pictures.  It was so GREAT!!!  I was totally loving it!!!