Day 2 -- Oahu, Hawaii

6/11/2016 Saturday

It's our second day at Oahu and we decided to spend the day exploring North Shore and dropping by different places on our way there.

After breakfast at the hotel, we started our journey and our first stop was the Dole Plantation.

We went on the plantation train ride which was about 20 minutes ride through the field and saw many different crops such as chocolate, sugar cane, lychee, banana and of course pineapple as well. Did you know that pineapple is actually not native to Hawaii? They originated from South America and were brought to Hawaii and grown there. Dole plantation provides pineapples to 90% of canned pineapples worldwide.

After the train ride, we tried the Dole Whip and it was quite tasty with some tangy taste. With that, we decided to move on to our next destination for lunch. We picked Macky's shrimp truck which is about 5-10 minutes away. 

I have a separate post on the food.

After a fulfilling lunch, we traveled more north towards our next destination, which is the Haleiwa Alli Beach. We wanted to go there as I was researching online and saw that this beach was well known for  the green sea turtles (aka Honu). The beach was nice but I have been to many more beautiful beaches. While the kids were playing/swimming in the ocean and the dads looking after them, I was trying to look to see if I can spot the sea turtles.

Initially, I was disappointed as I didn't see any sea turtles right after we got off the parking lot, so I looked far to the West and there was no crowd, thus I thought there was probably no sea turtles there. I looked towards the East and couldn't see much of the beach there as it was on a lower level and blocked by some plants/bushes, so I walked towards there.

After getting closer to that side of the beach, I could vaguely see some animals on the sand and as I squirt my eyes, I could see that there were 3 green sea turtles there. I was so happy and called out to everyone to come and check the turtles out. We tried to keep a distance between the animals as I have read about the warnings and giving the animals some space since some of them might be nesting.

There is another famous beach which is well known for spotting sea turtles and it's called the Laniakea Beach. Below is a map that I had mapped out for the trip but since the kids were tired, we stopped at the Haleiwa Alli Beach and decided to head back instead of going more north.

On the way back, we wanted to stop by Matsumoto Shave ice since they were famous. But when we saw the long line and no parking space, we decided to just head back to the hotel.

After we reached the hotel, the kids went straight to the pool and played for an hour or so before we went for dinner. 

I have a separate post on the food.

Afterwards, we bought shave ice for the kids since we couldn't get it at Matsumoto earlier and it's their first shave ice for the trip.