We had read and heard that Oahu and specifically Waikiki was expensive, over populated, full of people and resorts, so we weren’t surprised when we walked around on our first day. Still, the beaches are big enough for you to always be able to find a free spot under the shade of a palm tree.

Beach parks are something that should be replicated worldwide. I’m guessing this is a common thing to have in California or Florida or other coastal states in the US (I know for a fact that they exist in some beaches in Mexico like Los Cabos), but this should be universal.  A small, clean and well-maintained building with bathrooms, changing rooms and parking spaces on most tourist beaches.

On our first night in Waikiki we walked by a very busy noodle restaurant, Marukame Udon, the food looked tasty and the prices were affordable but we were starving and not on the mood to make what looked like a multi-hour line to eat. But on the next day, with our minds set to it and a bit of planning to try to avoid peak waiting times, we went for it and we can definitely say that those hyped noodles were worth it all. When you enter the restaurant you’re still in a line where you order your choice of noodles and then grab for your tray whatever looks appetizing and pay; by then, there’s an empty table for you to sit on and enjoy your meal. 

We flew to Kauai next, Hawaii airlines was our best option to fly between islands. Contrary to what people might think when imagining getting from one island to the other, there are no commercial ferries or boats to connect them (except for Molokai and Lanai, from Maui), so you have to fly, most of them are less than an hour long and less than $100USD one way.

We had some trouble as soon as we landed in Lihue Airport in Kauai because it turns out that car rental agencies are very tight on their policies and I couldn’t make our reservation valid because my absolutely genuine Mexican credit card doesn’t have my name embossed in it. I had used this same card to rent a car in Mexico and other states in the US, but it turns out that identity theft is a real problem in Hawaii and no major car rental agency would give us a break so we had to walk for a couple hours asking until we found a smaller rental that seemed to buy all the used cars from the big agencies and took cash and didn’t mind about our fake credit card to take an insurance deposit.

And the thing is, you can’t get around Kauai without your own wheels. Public transport is almost inexistent and there’s just too much to explore for us to depend on a tour or any sort of schedule that wasn’t ours and ours only.

So we left Island Holiday Autos with a beaten 2002-ish Honda CR-V that saved our week, headed to the southern part of the island where we had a beautiful AirBnb / guesthouse waiting for us in the small town of Waimea.

We spent three nights there. We understood why Hawaii and specially Kauai are usually portrayed with roosters, they’re everywhere! Just roaming around, and chilling and crowing at 2 and 3 and 4 in the morning.

It was here where we first got that sense of being in paradise. Our AirBnb was a room in a very nice guesthouse, meters away from the beach. Waimea has coffee shops and small restaurants to have breakfast, a couple supermarkets where we would get Ahi Poke, beef jerky and snacks for the excursions, and a very popular Shave Ice shop called Jojo’s. Shave Ice is a big thing around here and Sam and I thought it might be just like a Mexican Raspado but it’s not: It’s made by shaving a block of ice into a big snow-like mountain that is covered in natural flavors coming from local ingredients and sometimes combined with actual ice cream. Very refreshing and just what the warm weather makes you crave. Sam had like a hundred.

The Waimea Canyon was the main reason way we decided to spend some nights around this area. We spend almost a full day here, we drove up early in the morning, stopped at some viewpoints and walked a couple of trails, there are a lot of different options with different distances, some more challenging than others, and passing through different parts of the canyons and its views. It’s not hard to get a map of the trails or to ask around in order to decide for the best option.

The other day we spent in the south-shore, we drove around looking for beaches. We stopped on the side of the road somewhere between Waimea and Salt Pond Beach Park because we saw there were other cars parked and some people, mostly surfers, taking a small trail that led to what we found to be a beautiful beach.

Our favorite beach and one of our favorite adventures of the whole trip was going to Polihale Beach. It had been raining for the past week and even though it was sunny that day, there’s a 25 minute dirt road that takes you to Polihale State park. And it was muddy, and we were scared, and our non 4x4 vehicle nearly gave in, but we didn’t panic, we just screamed in excitement as we made it out of every muddy, uneven and terrifying mud pool that made our van zig zag and splash red mud all over the place, not wanting to imagine what we would have to go through to get and pay for a tow truck while we were in such a secluded part of the island with no phone or internet signal. This was both getting there and going out, double trouble, so much fun. Thankfully, the beach is perfect, its flanked to the north by the Na Pali Coast mountain ridges so its a unique and beautiful view.

We then drove up to the North Shore and spent a couple nights in a very hippie house that rented out rooms and was posted as a hotel but clearly was not. And even if our poor accommodation choice was not so memorable, the North Shore is magic: We first drove to Queen’s Bath where  local kids jumped from cliffs into the roaring ocean with curious sea turtles swimming around; all over the place, the roads are so lush and green and have an eventual one lane bridge that makes drivers cautious and thankful and share a smile; we had a bite in the small town of Kilauea, at a very tasty and hard working bakery that made us go back the next day.

A bit further from where we were staying, Hanalei has a very picturesque pier and there are a bunch of beautiful beaches all along the northern shore, one of the most memorable was Ke’e Beach that Sam and I walked for around an hour, the weather was beautiful and we crossed a Hawaiian sea monk (an endangered species of seal) and a sea turtle swimming meters away from us in the crystal waters, it was all dream-like. Right next to Ke’e Beach, is the challenging Kalalau Trail which is pretty long but has several different options: making it to the waterfall for 5 miles; or the serious trekkers can make it all the way to the beach for 11 miles; or what Sam and I did which was walking until we felt like turning around and walking back.

And so we went back to our guesthouse, went out for a run in the nice neighborhood, did some laundry and arranged whatever we had to do to prepare for our next morning’s early flight to Maui for the second half of our Hawaiian honeymoon journey.