Dole Plantation, North Shore, and Snorkeling!

This weekend our plans got switched around a lot, but we still had an awesome time. We really wanted to go to Hanauma Bay because it's apparently the place to go snorkeling. We got up early and made it out there around 10am. It opens at 6am, but that's too early to go swimming, right? The sun's not even out yet. So anyway, we get to the light before Hanauma Bay and a cop had blocked off traffic and was stopping each car. Of course right before he gets to us he tells us to turn, and then we get back in the lane to turn right and wait again. And as soon as he gets to us again he gets in his car and leaves. It was just really weird and kinda mean because I was really curious. I think there may have been an accident on the 2 lane road and traffic was all backed up. So we decided to head on up to the North Shore since we were already out and it was early.

It took us about 45 minutes or so to get to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. I had been so excited to go since I heard about it. There's a giant maze (the World's Largest!) that's 2.46 miles of pathways. We were issued cards and we had to go through the maze and find the 8 hidden stations and then trace the stencil from that station on the card. They were things like a palm tree, sea urchin (which I found 4 times), fish, warrior, sun, etc. They also have the top 5 times on a board and if you beat those you get a prize. The fastest time was 5 minutes. What the!?! How could anyone possibly do it in 5 minutes? It took us an hour and a half! We couldn't find the stupid Pineapple station! We cheated a little because we found a map. It didn't have the stations labeled, just where they were, so we had to try to figure out which ones we'd already been to. It was exhausting, and I was beyond cranky at the end.

So we decided to reward ourselves with some pineapple ice cream! It was yummy! The Dole Plantation also has a train--the Pineapple Express (lol), a garden tour, and a giant gift shop, along with tons and tons of baby pineapples. Did you know it takes 22 months for a pineapple to grow? For real. That's forever!

Dole Plantation
Finally found the pineapple and finished the maze! Only took us an hour and a half.
When there are cut-outs for your face you have to take a picture. It's just necessary.

Baby pineapple growing out of the ground.
This plantation was directly next door to the Dole Plantation. I'm not sure what they do, but they had no visitors, except us!

After the Dole Plantation we continued up to the North Shore. We ended up in Waialua, which is a small town on the North Shore. It was so...Hawaii! It was really cool but seemed really far away from things. I couldn't believe that we were even on the same island anymore. We also stopped at Waimea Bay and walked around the rocks. We continued to the very top point of Oahu and stopped by the Turtle Bay Resort. It was so fancy. I would definitely recommend staying there for a few nights on a honeymoon or something. After Turtle Bay we continued down the Windward side of the island and stopped at Laie Point. Jon liked that because he got to drive his car on the rocks and sand. Our leisurely drive around the island took us about 7 hours, but we covered a lot of ground and it was awesome!

Waimea Bay. Site of lots of snorkeling.
Those rocks were slippery and scary but it was fun!
The world famous Bonzai Pipeline! This is where many surfing competitions take place. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any outrageous surfing, but it was still really cool.
Surfers at Pipeline. It's April so the waves are relatively tame, although they were the biggest I have seen so far.
Turtle Bay!Laei Point--we decided to stop here due to a suggestion from my pledge brother from Hawaii.
The GPS showed us at the tip of the Point. And I thought it was cool.

Sunday we drove out to Hickam with the intention of going snorkeling. Unfortunately the water was really shallow and we would have had to walk out about a mile before the water was deep enough to swim in. So we headed to Ala Moana Beach, which I kind of avoid because there are visible fish right at the shore. But the point of snorkeling is to see fish so I just had to suck it up. It was so so so much fun. We saw a giant school of fish swimming and I started shrieking under water which Jon found hilarious. It freaked me out, but we saw some really cool fish. One that I found looked like an old man fish with really big fins that spread out like a fan. And Jon found a fish that was camouflaged as a rock. So snorkeling in the ocean is fun and I highly recommend it. I just think next time I'm going to wear water shoes...