So Much To See... So Little Time

Sadly Amber's trip came to an end at 4pm on Saturday. She was here for four glorious, gorgeous and fun-filled days. We did all that we could squeeze in and then some. Haha! She posted about all four days separately if you want more detail, but as always I hope to provide a comical and informative summary...

Wednesday
Amber arrived at 2pm and we headed to Tiffany and David's house to unload her stuff. Since they live on a resort (KoOlina), we spent the afternoon on the beach at one of the Lagoons on the property. It has calm waters and quite a few fish so I thought it would be a great location to take Amber snorkeling. We saw lots of fish and a turtle but the water was murky and the pictures didn't turn out very well.


After snorkeling we watched the sun set on the beach and then headed to the resort for dinner. It was quite good and made for a great start to her trip.


Thursday
We rode TheBoat into Honolulu and then took a bus to Wikiki for surfing lessons. I was pretty nervous about surfing but I loved every second of it and I didn't even lose a contact! I had a 12 foot surf board so getting up was not much of a problem. I even managed to get up twice on my own without the instructor! I hope to surf again before I leave. I got a rash on both of my elbows though from paddling out. Now I get why all those people were wearing long sleeved surf shirts.


Friday
Amber has a great description of our quest for lunch that I will not repeat... Check out her blog for the details, but our long story ended in Taco Bell... which is never good...


We headed to the Polynesian Culture Center and learned some pretty cool stuff about the Polynesian culture. The center is run by Brigham Young University of Hawaii and the proceeds of the Culture Center go towards the education of the student workers. It is pretty cool to think I was a small part of someone who otherwise might not have been able to go to college getting an education. We were only freaked out once when a lady asked us if we "wanted to go on the temple tour." We (hopefully) respectfully declined.... We joked about saying "we love Jesus" but I was fairly confident that would not have gone over well. After a day of cultural education we went to a luau and then saw the Horizons show, which was fantastic! It is what the PCC is known for and well worth its notoriety.


Saturday
I decided to put my extensive hiking skills to good use and to take Amber on the Judd Memorial Trail. I had hiked all of twice in my life before traveling to Hawaii, so I was fully confident we would dominate the trail... Yeah... Not so much. I talked to Tiffany and Courtney for about thirty minutes on Friday night and felt fairly confident I could get us to the trail without a problem... After that I was not so confident. Courtney warned us that the trail gets kinda confusing so we went in ready to beat the tricky trail. We failed! We hiked for about an hour and despite our three maps describing the trail... we were not where we needed to be. Once the trail we had been following ended and we decided to cut our losses and head home...


As soon as we headed back across the river to head back up to our car we saw a woman walking with her dog below us... We decided to go check out where she was coming from and saw the trail head... Crap! No wonder we were lost. We weren't on the right trail.


We decided to go on the actual (and clearly marked) trail. Sadly we made the same mistake later and also fallowed a "trail" that was not marked that headed up the mountain. We were looking for 25 switchbacks (I do actually know what those are, just couldn't find them) that headed up the mountain and instead we were greeted with a steep incline. My calves were still a little soar from my hike on Tuesday and I didn't want to climb the mountain so we headed back down and around the remainder of the trail... Where we saw this...


The entrance to the actual trail up the mountain... Crap again! I am no longer assuming the worst. Tricky does not mean "unmarked"... Got it! At least it was an adventure!

After hiking we headed back to Tiffany and David's and Amber got ready and finished packing and I took her to the airport :(. As I dropped Amber off at the airport, I picked up Kameron (a friend from law school) and her sister Walker. They had a 9 hour layover in Oahu on their way to Kauai. We went to Pearl Harbor and then ate dinner in Wikiki. It was good to see Kameron and commiserate about the brutality of the Bar Exam.