Hawaii Day 7, 3 January 2020

After picking up our little 2 door jeep we got out of town!

Lance has driven on the right hand side in several countries, but it is always a challenge starting out in the middle of town. With minimal yelling and no heart attacks we took a bit of a curly route out to Diamond Head and onto the the coast road. We had driven this way in the tour bus on our first day in Hawaii so had a bit of background knowledge. 

The day was cloudy and whilst the views were still beautiful they were not as impressive as the views on our first day. 

As we got further out of town we saw a few dumped cars and it was clear that this area was not as salubrious as the areas that we had already seen. But there were also areas that had a familiar Polynesian feel to them and many houses had tarpaulin structures attached to houses and garages. There were also quite a few dwellings that looked as if they may belong to vagrants as they were totally tarpaulins with piles of rubbish around them. Not so bad really though when they were planted right on the most magnificent beaches. You do have to wonder if it is such a bad life.

The road curled around the coast and from time to time we encountered a tricky intersection. Picture me saying "Turn left here" and Lance saying "Keep right, keep right." It was okay when he had someone to follow when turning, but nine times out of ten he was the leader.  In fact later in the day as we approached the city of Honolulu he was in this predicament and just said "F@*# it! I’m going straight ahead."

Both busting for the toilet we took a stop at a macadamia nut farm touristy place.  It was on our side of the road and we had enough warning, so in we went. It was a nice place with free macadamia nut coffee and plenty of touristy things to buy. I had to queue for the toilet, and it was clean, but cosy! Ladies, you will understand me here when I talk about ‘the hover’. Well it was impossible to hover and I just had to check the seat and sit. If I had hovered my head would have been pressed hard against the door.  There was only a finger length between my knees and the door!

We were hoping for more to eat as by now it was lunch time but alas there was not much at all. I bought a pack of macadamias nut butter cookies and we scoffed them in the car. And that was lunch, no cocktails, no beer, no NZ wine!

At one stage a bus was waiting to come out from it’s stop and into the traffic, the man in front stopped to let him out and a sign flashed up on the back of the bus with the hang loose sign 🤙  and then ‘mahala’ which means thank you. I would love one of these on my car and also one that says ‘oops sorry’!

When we got to the top of the Island we turned inland and took the highway back to Honolulu which was very efficient!

The car was returned and frayed nerves calmed with the remaining cookies.

As we are flying to Kauai tomorrow we thought that we would lighten the load and drop a couple of cases off to the Outrigger, which is the hotel that we will return to after a week. We had asked the concierge previously and he said that it wouldn’t be a problem so we trundled our cases up the road with our passports and booking voucher in case there was a problem. Amazing! He took our name, gave us a chit and took the bags! With all of the lunatics around I thought that the last thing they would do was take bags without some sort of security check. Anyway, I hope that they are there when we return because they have most of our shopping in them!

I checked out the opening hours of Ross Dress for Less. Would you believe that they open at 7am and close at 1am!

Lance had booked us into Tommy Bahamas restaurant and bar for dinner so after a rest off we went.  As I said earlier it was a cloudy day and it had been sprinkling on and off, so we were glad that we hadn’t booked rooftop. Our entrees were superb we had Ahi tuna tacos with island slaw and wasabi & avocado creme. Along with ‘World famous coconut shrimp’. Both were outstanding and we gobbled them down with a Heineken and wait for it... a rose that was not from Aotearoa. Well I had a go, but I didn’t like it much so went for a NZ Sav after that.

Mains arrived promptly, in fact a little too promptly as we had only just scraped up the last of the entrees. And needed time to breath after the feeding frenzy. Lance had Guava glazed baby back pork ribs which were nice, I had a special which was mahi mahi resting in a light but fragrant Thai curry sauce accompanied with a delicious risotto. The fish was good but the risotto was great. We had a go at sharing the key lime pie but couldn’t finish it.  And I must be honest, twice that we have had key lime pie here it hasn’t been as good as my own home made.

Off we toddled home for our last night in our psychedelic hotel.  

Post script

Two events last night:

1. Lance always puts the safety lock on the door and he says that he always worries that he will get up in the night and think that the door is the toilet and will get locked out in the corridor.  I have always thought that this was bloody ridiculous but have gone along with it. Well in the middle of the night last night I woke up and though,"Why is there a light behind the wardrobe door?" I got out of bed and opened the door and lucky the safety lock only let me open it a couple of centimetres because it was the door to the corridor!
2. In the morning Lance told me that he had smashed his head when he had gone to the toilet in the middle of the night and told me and I just grunted. Poor bugger went to sit on the toilet for a wee (night time don’t want to put the light on for a stand up job) and bent over too far and hit his head on the basin! He has a small split on his forehead!

WE WERE NOT DRUNK! ONLY HAPPY!