Our plan today was to drive up the eastern side of the island and across the top, so after we went over the road and picked up lunch again we set off. We had originally planned to go into Diamond Crater but for some reason we ended up missing the entrance so we just headed up the coast, the first part was the same road as we had driven yesterday but rather than turning off we kept going and our first stop was Lanikai Beach, this is famous for its surf in winter although today it looked quite calm we were lucky in that we found somewhere to park as it is very busy, it would seem that this is one of the places that people come on a Sunday. There were quite a few barbecue’s being set up and people very much looked like they were settling in for the day. From there we continued up the coast and we had planned to stop at one of the Valley of the Temples as the guide yesterday had suggested that one of them was a smaller version of a Japanese temple that we had seen when we were there. In the end we didn’t bother as the queue to get in stretched for quite some way down the road so instead we continued up the coast we had thought about stopping at the Polynesian centre but as it is closed on Sunday’s decided not to, so our next stop was Malaekahana State Recreation area which is very much on the windward side of the island. I am not sure if no one lives on this side or if it just isn’t very popular but the beech was pretty much empty so after watching the waves crash against the shore for a while we decided to have an early lunch and found a picnic bench and had our lunch watching the surf. We felt a little inadequate as no self respecting American goes to the beech without a gazebo, tent, picnic tables, chairs, barbecue and a cool box (or two) they almost create tented communities as they have one that food is prepared in and another that the kids play in and a further one that the adults sit around eating and drinking in! After lunch we continued our drive up to the Northern Shore, if you jumped in the water here and swam north the next stop would be Alaska! This is a strange coastline as there isn’t much beach but where there is a number of ‘families’ seem to have taken root. As you are driving along you suddenly see a group of cars and if you look across you can see a small bit of beach with a group of people having a barbecue! Although I wouldn’t want to swim there the North coast is definitely my favourite. After all this dramatic coastline our next stop was Waimea Valley which is a Botanical Garden that has a quite impressive waterfall at the end of it but more of that later. There is a well defined path that you walk along to get to the waterfall and along the way there are 5,000 different plants form around the world. The seeds or cuttings are mostly from places like Hawaii that are isolated so that their evolution is different to any other, the plants are spectacular so colourful and different from anything we have at home, I could quite happily fill the garden with them but I think they may look better in the large natural setting they are in. Just to demonstrate that we are in a rain forest it actually started raining as we were walking through but just like yesterday it came and went very quickly. We finally reached the waterfall and the book had said you may be able to swim at the base, what is should have said is this is a major tourist attraction and you are welcome to swim but you must put on a life jacket which only went to prove that people are not very good at swimming with buoyancy aids! From here we drove to the end of the road (again), the end of the road we drove to yesterday for some reason you are not allowed to drive through Kuaokala National Park so we drove to the northern end of it which is far more spectacular than the western side. We got out and walked down to the beech the wind is so strong at times it was hard to stand up. Then it was time to get back into the car and head back to the hotel. We leave tomorrow for our next island but I have really enjoyed our time on Oahu.
