We ate breakfast at the local coffee place where I had arguably the best breakfast pastry I have ever had. Yum. Found out that the Banzai Pipeline surf competition was on hold for the day so we made a quick change of plans. Pearl Harbor didn't have any reserved tickets left, so we decided to drive all the way down the coast to the windward side of the island and visit Kailua, a town I had almost decided to stay in before settling on our tent on the North Shore.
The drive was beautiful- and very, very wet. The rain didn't let up and the puddles that we drove the jeep through proved it! We stopped a couple of times to check stuff out along the way and finally bought some clip on lights for our baseball caps to make reading easier at night in the tent. We ended up at Koalua Ranch around 1030AM where we found souvenirs for the kids (Score! We found exactly what we had been hoping to find). They also had bumper stickers and other paraphernalia devoted to Lost fans. I settled with a sticker for our car top carrier and resisted the urge to buy the Dharma Initiative sweatshirt.
We kept driving through one small Hawaiian town after another with amazing views of mountains on our right and ocean covers and beaches on our left until suddenly it became a scene out of Suburbia. Kailua, not the cute little small town I had thought it to be, was full of stores just like at home: Whole Foods, Starbucks, Pier 1 Imports, Macy's, GameStop, and more. It was still pouring rain and after wandering around trying to find a local place to eat at we quickly realized most of the local stuff was closed on Tuesdays (who knows why?), and we were drenched so we ended up finding refuge from the rain at the California Pizza Kitchen- OK... not exactly what we had in mind. I won't lie. I was a little bummed. Up to that point we hadn't spent more than 25.00 TOTAL on any one meal since we had arrived. CA PK blew that for us- and we both agreed it was the worst food we'd had on the trip so far!! Besides some very cool HUGE houses and what looked like a nice beach, I wouldn't recommend Kailua. After staying in our little piece of paradise in our tent, the mall-like atmosphere of Kailua just didn't cut it for us. We both left feeling really glad we are staying in the North Shore.
We got back in the car and headed back up the coast with just a tiny bit of blue poking out in the sky and the rain letting up somewhat. We stopped at Turtle Bay and had a Mai Tai, then, seeing just a teensy bit more blue on the horizon I changed into my swim suit and took a nice swim at Turtle Bay before heading back to the tent to change, shower, and read on our porch for awhile. Still no sun, but at least it stopped raining for the time being! Now we are heading out to dinner and an early bedtime. There is no nightlife here... but that works well for both of us as we never quite adjusted to the time zone and are happily snoozing by 830 or so each night :)
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