Today was a nice, lazy day. Lounged around, had a leisurely buffet breakfast downstairs and took our sweet time getting ready in the room. We spent some time on the balcony too, watching the action below; there were cheerleaders practicing on the beach, and hula lessons in front of the hotel.
We didn’t hit the road until late morning. We checked out Ala Moana Shopping Centre. Grabbed a few goodies at the ABC on the main level. The second level is all window shopping – Bulgari, Dior, Chanel, and Cartier. And those were just the ones around the escalator!
After that we drove out to the Plantation Village. They have different buildings, each showcasing the type of home that would be built for different ethnic labourers that came to Oahu in the early 1900’s. There were houses for Chinese, Japanese, Okinawans, Portugese, Koreans and Puerto Ricans.
Gary, our tour guide, was amazing. He was great at getting people involved and kept grabbing people to act out different bits of history. He made a couple of high school kids a picture bride and her husband; there was a Hawaiian-Okinawan girl and a Korean-Okinawan-Hawaiian man that he kept quizzing about Hawaiian and Japanese culture; a man from the South became a rich Chinese entrepreneur and Darrin was a wealthy white landowner through the whole tour. It was pretty funny, but the actual history is pretty sad. Between the picture brides, and labour contracts that were NOT in the workers favour, and people never being able to return to their home countries, it was sobering. But Gary delivered everything in a way that was still entertaining.
After that we wanted to hike the Manoa Falls Trail and drive Mt. Tantalus Round Top. Unfortunately one missed turn on the freeway and we ended up with a half hour longer trip! But, with a little recalculating on the GPS we pulled in the Manoa Falls parking lot around 4:30.
We were warned that part of the trail would be slippery since it had been raining. Even though the forecast last night and this morning said there was 0% chance of precipitation. But, believing the weatherman, and assuming the earlier rain had been a fluke, we set out sans raingear. It’s only a 40 minute hike on a well-travelled trail so it didn’t seem worth carrying both backpacks. But I should have known better. It seems to always rain here… always.
The hike up was wet and slippery, and because all the dirt is orange your socks get stained, but besides scrambling over rocks and trees here and there it was a pretty good hike and even families with kids were passing us on their way down.
The view of the falls itself was great. 100 feet straight down into a small pool. Most of the pool is filled with giant rocks and boulders now. Apparently there was a landslide in 2002 that pushed 30 tons of debris 600 feet over the cliff and down the hill. We got some great pictures and video footage and headed back down.
Two minutes into the descent and the skies opened up. It rained, hard, the entire way down.
The rental car has one of those keys that can’t get wet or the starter won’t engage so we were scrambling trying to find somewhere dry to hide it until we got to the parking lot. Mission accomplished. My travel pants have a secret pocket to deter pickpockets, so we put the keys in there, then covered it with my tank top and then my blouse. It took three layers of fabric, but we managed to keep those keys dry!
By this time though it was nearly 6 and we looked like drowned rats so we decided to call it a day and drag our sorry wet butts home to dry off.
A couple drinks from the bar and up we went to chill in front of the tv.
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