Steve and I are waiting on a few more pieces of media to share with everyone about our trip to Oahu.  We will be sharing some stuff about our surfing lessons and parasailing adventures when we can.

In the meantime I would also like to mention that I conquered one of my biggest fears this past Sunday in Oahu…SKYDIVING!!!  Since the videos and pictures were insanely expensive, we decided to just do it for the experience and HOLY CRAP was it insane!  It was so much fun!  I screamed bloody murder for the first few seconds because my tandem dude, Chad, and I jumped right into a cloud and I couldn’t see the ground and it freaked me out, but other than that it was AMAZING.  The view was beautiful and the experience just indescribable.  Now I can say I really have touched the sky :)  Oh man…

Also, on the 4th of July, Steve surprised me with a Hawaiian cruise on the Navatek boat just outside of Waikiki.  There was an amazing fireworks display off the shore and we had front row seats to it right on the water!  Lots of free drinks, a lobster and steak dinner, and good times :)  I got to dress up too!

Other than waiting for a few more bits of media to share, we made it home safely and were greeted to two kitties waiting for their dinner :P  I wanted to share a few more pics that I managed to snap along the way.  The lifeguard stand on Waikiki and the Hawaiian Palm trees  (Steve took this one).o

So far with everything Steve and I have done in Oahu, we have gone with our gut instincts on the activities we chose to do and with whom.  For example, Steve and I took some surfing lessons on the Waikiki beach.  We were just strolling along and noticed a lot of little areas along the beach where you could pay for an hour of surfing lessons.  We stumbled across a really cool hang loose bunch of surfer dudes who taught us how to have the time of our life catching waves in the ocean.  The little hand painted “Learn to Surf” sign sitting in the sand was anything but fancy, but had that sort of inviting charm you see that sparks that sense of adventure within you.  We seemed  to have the luck of the draw when it came to choosing our activities from people who loved what they did and loved meeting new faces of those looking for something new and exciting.

And that’s exactly how we felt when we called the number for the Kahuku Kai Ranch.  It seemed to be singularly operated by a woman named Linda.  We found her information in the Oahu Revealed book and chose her ranch for horse back riding because it was described as being the only on-beach ride on the island.  We gave her a call and set up a time to go riding.  She was really nice and told us what we needed to bring and what to wear, since we were both novice riders.  I personally have never ridden a horse in my life (until now), but Steve had when he was younger.

When we arived at the ranch, is seemed very homey.  It looked a bit rugged, but still very inviting and unique.  We were given a quick overview on how to handle the horses.  I seemed to get the hang of it very easily.  The horse I rode was very responsive and friendly.  Steve’s horse seemed to be a little bit on the wild side, but was still very tame and he seemed to be able to ride him well.  Here is a picture of the ranch.

Kahuku Kai Ranch

The actual ride was beautiful.  The sun was starting to set and we rode along the beach even in the water at some times.  The scenery was just stunning.  We were also able to stop and have a quick photo shoot near the end of the trail with the ocean behind us.  I am glad we got to ride along the ocean.It was wonderful.  Very peaceful and fun.  There was another couple with us as well.  The guy actually proposed to his girlfriend on the ride!  It was really cool :)  She said yes of course.  There was also a little pony that followed us along the way.  The other girl with us was riding on the pony’s mother.  It was cute watching him run ahead and hop around and play.If you are ever in Oahu and want to ride horses along the Hawaiin beach, this is the place to do it. :)

When Steve told me about our trip (at the time It was unknown to me of our destination) the only thing he said we had to do was learn how to SCUBA dive before we went.  Long story short, he slipped and accidentally told me where we were going, but still managed to keep all of his pre-planned activities (aside from diving) a secret.  We didn’t manage to get any sort of diving certification or experience before we came to Hawaii, but Steve found a great SCUBA Diving and Watersports Center called Aqua Zone that spent about an hour teaching us on land the diving basics, then put on all of our gear and stuck us in a hotel pool where we practiced using our regulators, masks, and hand signals for communicating under water with our instructor.  I have to admit that after the pool exercises I was a bit nervous to go out into the actual ocean and dive.  But I am glad I didn’t chicken out.  2 out of the 10 people who signed up did :P  Here is a picture of me in the pool.  Oh and just a heads up, our instructor, Greg, took all of the photos of us diving.  If  Steve and I do more diving in the future I might invest in a waterproof enclosure for my camera…but they are mighty expensive.  For now, these turned out great!

Greg was a cool dude, really chill and laid back.  He made the entirety of diving seem more fun than anything else.  Even though I was a bit nervous I kept thinking…if this guy can do it (and does it 5 times a week) then I can do it too.  After being driven to the docks near Maunalua Bay we set out on the boat for about 10 minutes and then geared up in wetsuits and all for our dive.  At first, we thought we were only going to dive one spot, but we ended up diving in two areas!

Fishies! We just held this underwater rock and the fishies loved it.

We stayed under for about 30 minutes each spot.  We saw a lot of fish on the first dive, but the second one was the coolest because we got to swim with TURTLES!!!  We also saw eels and the fish just swam right around us. Check us out!

TURTLES! We saw about 4 total on our second dive.

This turtle had some sort of tumor on his face. Poor guy :(

SCUBA Diving was probably the most amazing thing I have done in my life so far.  Just spectacular.  I can’t wait to try out some dives in San Diego.  Greg told us he originally lived in San Diego then moved to Hawaii about 5 years ago.  He said there were some pretty neat dive spots in San Diego that we could check out.  We had a blast.  We didn’t want to come up out of the water!  Can’t air tanks just last forever please?

Our travel book about Oahu told us of a secret hidden beach on the island.  We read the snippet about the beach in the book before even going on vacation and it recommended renting a 4×4 vehicle in order to get to the beach.  We did.  And it was awesome.

The highway that lead to the beach (the 930) ended near the coastline of the far west tip of the north shore was long and narrow, but ended with a dirt road that extended all the way out to the farthest edge of the island.  We began to count the 15 telephone poles past the metal gate until we reached pole number 196.  The road couldn’t even be considered a road.  There is NO WAY any non-4×4 vehicle could have survived that road.  It was a BLAST riding that Wrangler on that roller coaster of rocky sandy trenchy path.  We finally reached the hidden beach just before sunset and got a few photos.o

After the sun went down, we hung out on the beach for a bit.  And since we seemed to be the only ones anywhere around, we decided toss off our materialistic skin coverings and roll around on the beach, listening to the waves and seeing the moon and stars above us in the Hawaiian sky.   ♥