Mostly Harmless: Hawaii 2019, Oahu

It's this time of year again! After a few busy months, we're finally taking our annual vacation in paradise.

The road to Oahu was long for both of us. Jan was on several business trips, and I, after having finished yet another exhausting semester, was asked to introduce this year's commencement speaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Which was a great honor but also caused some slight anxiety on my end - speaking in front of so many people (3000 or so?) is really not my thing. On the plus side - it was just for about two minutes or so, and I can keep it together for that amount of time :D. It actually was almost fun!

Then it was finally VACATION TIME!!! We dropped off the pets at Billie's on Monday evening (bitter sweet, as always). This is the first time for George without Abby, and it took him a bit longer to warm up and show is beautiful face. But he managed - evidence below :).

Here now a more detailed report of what we were up to:

Tuesday, 05/21/2019: Arrival and checking out the area.

Our flight left at 8 am, which meant getting up pretty much as per usual. Not a bad start! The flight was uneventful (just the way I like my flights!), and after a mere 5.5 hours we had been transported from cold and cloudy Portland to warm and sunny Honolulu. Ah, the wonders of modern technology!

This year we had picked the Turtle Bay Resort on the Northern Shore. Last time we were on Oahu we had stayed on Waikiki Beach, which wasn't bad, but was pretty crowded (as expected). So we were eager to try something else. It took us slightly over an hour to drive from the airport to the resort. The resort is pretty much what you'd expect - hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, pools, beach, etc. So no big surprises there. The view from our room is gorgeous!

After settling in and switching into some lighter clothes we grabbed a late and healthy lunch.

Afterward we walked along the beach and beach trails to explore the area. It was pretty hot (no cloud cover), but thankfully there are some nice trails in the shade of trees, and we took advantage of those. Here are a few impressions along the way.

After an early dinner we headed to our room and were in bed by - what? - seven? Yeah, we're such party animals...!

Wednesday, 05/22/2019: Scuba diving and chilling.
We got up early so that Jan could get to the southern end for his annual scuba diving trip. He'll fill in more detail here later. For now: Photo time!

Jan: This was my first wreck dive! Located just off of Honolulu at 65-120 ft (20-36 m) depth is the Seatiger - a 165 ft vessel about 40 ft wide. After dropping straight down onto the ship, we got to explore it a bit inside and out.

We were not alone, of course: a couple of white tipped reef sharks napped in the sand below while a photogenic turtle hung out on deck.

At 28 minutes this was a pretty short dive, as you'd expect for spending most of that dive at ~100 ft. We had a second, longer dive (~40 minutes) at 'Turtle Canyon' shortly thereafter. Much shallower (~40 ft), but with beautiful views of turtles at their cleaning stations. A few eels, sea slugs and countless, colorful fish rounded out a very enjoyable dive morning.

I spent the early morning on our balcony, watching the world around me wake up, writing this blog post, and writing a little on my review package (I'll come up for review and promotion to full professor this fall). Not a bad way to start the day! Equipped with a big Americano, tons of podcasts, and a good book I headed to the pool area and found a comfy shaded spot where I spent the rest of the morning. Ah, sweet, sweet relaxation.

In the afternoon we first tried to stay in shaded spots outside (which meant moving chairs every 10 minutes), but eventually gave up on that. Instead, we headed to our room, sat on the balcony, and played the latest Escape the Box game. A lot of fun, as always, and dare I say it - we rocked!

After yesterday's dinner disaster (fries for me... that's it :( ) we decided we can treat ourselves to some nice fresh fish. It turned out to be a good decision - very tasty and with a beautiful view of the ocean.

After dinner we walked along the beach and watched the sun set. No green flash, unfortunately, due to those pesky clouds. But pretty nevertheless!

And look at this little fella - a gold dust day gecko. Nosy, aren't we?

Thursday, 05/23/2019:
After the first breakfast in the resort - breakfast buffet, yum! - we headed to CLIMB works, a short 10 minute drive to the east, for our ziplining. Before the first ride - Jan's still relaxed :).

I admit, I was a bit nervous. After being strapped into the harness and ushered to the baby ride next to the building- to see if we can handle it -, I can say my heart was a bit pounding. The first step off the platform (well, really, you just have to lift your legs is all...) was tough. But once I was sliding it was a lot of fun! And the first time really was the most difficult. Easy-peasy from then on! Well, except for the one brief rappel that required me to step into the void. Not good with that... After the first failed attempt our guide gave me a nice shove and voila! - not that difficult after all. I'm such a wuss...

We couldn't take our phones with us, but they provided us with a few photos they took along the way. And since we didn't take two of the ziplines (they were under maintenance), we each got a free T-shirt! I'm a sucker for free T-shirts...

Here are a few impressions along the way: Here's Jan and me on top of one of the platforms. Looking happy (because we were!), and a photo of the whole group: Us, a couple from Arizona (Marty and Carol, very nice folks), and a group of seven from Utah who joined us later (so I don't know their names). Their little boy was a hoot, though. Fearless!

One exercise was pulling yourself up to a platform with a 4-1 pulley system. It started out really easy, but toward they end my arms got a teeny bit tired. Brave smile for the camera, though :)!

On the last zipline we were supposed to pose by letting go of the inner hand, which was supposed to turn us toward the camera. Jan got this all down and is showing his best left-hand-rule. But for some reason I started rotating away from the camera. So - enjoy the back of my head and my right-hand-rule :D.

After this much fun we rented a cabana and spent the rest of the afternoon reading, listening to podcasts and audio books, and snorkeling. Lazy afternoon aka vacation!

The dog loved surfing!

Friday, 05/24/2019:
After a casual breakfast and some time spent on the balcony (where we witnessed the 5 minutes of rain per day that this area gets)

we headed to the Gunstock Ranch, a short 11 minute drive from the resort to go on a relaxed 1.5 hour ride through their property.

I really enjoyed being on a horse again (and western saddles are super comfy!), but I also realized that the horse craze from my teenage years had long gone. I think I'm good for a few years again!

Here are our two horses: Jan's horse Gus on the left and mine (Nelly) on the right. Both very friendly and calm ones.

And here are a few more impressions form the ride.

In the afternoon we did some snorkeling in the ocean. There were quite a lot of waves, though, so the visibility wasn't that great. Still, we saw a bright orange neon colored fish that we can't identify despite a .. oh... five minute google search, and a really BIG one (well, something like a foot and a half or so).

Saturday, 05/25/2019:
We started the morning slowly with a rainbow, a good breakfast, and some reading on the balcony.

Then we headed to the surfing school, conveniently located next to the pool, and rented some stand-up paddle boards for an hour for some water fun in the next bay over (which is a bit calmer). Exciting - the first time for both of us!

Jan did the actual *stand up* part of stand-up paddle boarding (and he did it really well for the most part... except for the few wipes due to random sneaky big waves). I preferred the knees-on-the-board paddling alternative. Way more control that way! I did stand up twice (no paddling though - just keeping my balance, and losing it once while trying, was tough enough).

I saw three turtles (or maybe the same turtle three times, who can tell) when they came up for air. Lots of fun and definitely something we'll do again!

After about an hour we were surprisingly exhausted (the legs were weak). So we called it a day and walked back to the hotel, a nice one-point-something mile walk that we had done twice before already.

In the afternoon we drove to the Waimea Falls Hike which turned out to be a walk on a paved wide road toward a waterfall (note: tourist trap and so not worth it). On the way back to the car we took the smaller side roads which lead us through various botanical regions where we saw lots and lots of plants. Here are a few photos of the prettiest: