The next morning was an early start as we had to leave for the airport at 6am so that Inderpal could get to work on time. We had breakfast at Chilis inside the airport. Khivan had breakfast tacos, and I had the equivalent of Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast: pancakes, eggs, bacon, and hash browns.
On our way to the gate, we ran into Amit and Mandeep. Our wait wasn’t long before boarding began. The flight was mostly full, but Amit and Mandeep had the aisle seat open next to them, so I sat with them and played games for the majority of the way to Hawaii. Khivan slept a bit, read a lot, and conversed with her very chatty neighbors.
Once we landed, which was unpleasantly bumpy, we rented a car. We upgraded to a Mazda CX-9 to get something with more space and higher clearance, which worked out well because we ended up going off-roading more than a couple of times. It also had leather seats, a backup camera, and Bluetooth, which we used to sync our phones and play music whenever we were in the car. Amit wouldn’t drive unless someone was playing music!
Our first stop, Authentic Thai. It was a food cart, but it was really good. Not sure why they served blue rice, but it tasted normal, and we all agreed, in hindsight, this was one of the top three meals we had on the island all week. Next stop was Costco and then the grocery store. Then we settled into our timeshare and headed for the beach on the back side of the resort.
We splashed around and attempted to toss a frisbee amid the waves. We ran back to our room when the rain came. The rain stopped really fast though, so most of us hung out at the pool and hot tub for a bit. Khivan had gone ahead of the group, so she spent the time washing her hair and napping, not knowing why we hadn’t followed her. We made pasta for dinner and called it an early night. We were all tired from the travel, but also because of the three-hour time change. We were all asleep by 9pm.
The next morning we woke up and had egg boorji and croissants and made sandwiches for our day out. Amit and I went stand-up paddle boarding, while the girls went to Lydgate Beach. The river was pretty cold and brown. Not inviting for falling in. I didn’t like SUPing as much as I thought I would. It was slow and tiring, you didn’t get wet at all, you had less control than kayaking, and it was really hard in a headwind. We ended up spending more time sitting on the board than standing. Amit may have spent as much time lying on the board as anything else! I’m still glad we did it as it was something new to try. The girls came to the river after a little more than an hour, and they all tried it too. They didn’t go down the river like Amit and I did, but they went out to the middle of the river and did some loops. Mandeep was nervous, but Khiv and Niv picked it up super fast and looked like naturals.
We ate lunch at Lydgate beach, napped, snorkeled, then wave rode. The snorkeling there wasn’t great except for this school of large blue fish that would swim in circles around you. Otherwise, it was murky and a bit deeper in parts than I prefer. The waves kept splashing over the rocks, making it hard to see the fish hanging out there. Wave riding was really good though. Good sized waves, crashing pretty hard. Mandeep got wiped out a couple of times though, so we decided to head back home; we’d had enough at that point anyway.
Back at the house, we got dressed up a bit and went to Dukes for dinner. We had fish tacos and pork tacos, which were pretty good. The nachos were pretty lame, but the dessert was awesome. It was called hula pie and consisted of ice cream, cookie crust, whipped cream, fudge, and macadamia nuts. It was a HUGE dessert, but the six of us devoured it like there was no tomorrow. It was so good!
Next we went to a luau. We didn’t get tickets for the buffet because it was outrageously expensive, but we did pay extra for the seats closer to the stage. Boy was that a good decision! We were front and center, literally the closest table to the stage. Our tickets also included unlimited free drinks. Too bad they didn’t tell us that when we bought the tickets over the phone, otherwise we wouldn’t have bought any drinks at dinner. Plus we would have gotten there sooner so that we could enjoy more. Once the show started, no one wanted to get up to get drinks, and the bar was closed by the time the show ended. Anyway, the drinks weren’t that tasty anyway, but the show was awesome. Good story, good performances, beautiful people. Fire, action, romance. It was a really good show! I got to dance with one of the girls as she pulled me out of the audience.
Leaving the show, we turned the music way up and pretended to be G’s all the way home.
8 Trips in 8 Weeks 