Bad Decisions

Chris thinks I'm trying to kill him.  And it isn't like "kill him with kindness" either.  He legitimately thinks I'm trying to kill him.  Ok, let me tell you what happened, and then you can judge for yourself.  Disclaimer:  I did not, in any way, try to "kill" him,  it was more of a case of air headedness (mine).
So, Chris got here on Sunday at noon.  He slept a majority of the eight hour flight, so he thought he would have no problem adjusting to the time difference.  Even so, I suggested we take it easy for the day.  A light walk to the beach, hang out for a few hours, and then call it a day.  He was agreeable so off we went.  Well, remember the other day when I told you a huge swell had come in?  Yeah, so by Sunday, it still hadn't left and the waves were huge!  We all went in the water anyway but Chris spent a majority of the time being the ocean's ragdoll.  I was also knocked down quite a bit but I think that was due to being off balance from laughing at him so hard.  For the record, I did try to help him as much as I could.  By the end of the day he was all smiles though!

We were all asleep extremely early on Sunday night so we could get the most out of Monday.  We decided to go to Makapu'u Lighthouse and then go see the tide pools below.  Being the native Hawaiian that I am, I googled high tide/low tide times.  For those of you that don't know, tide pools are best seen during low tide.  One of the reasons is so moronic adventurous people don't get swept out to sea by huge waves when trying to scale rocks to get to said tide pools.  Low tide = no drowning.  Well, the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) said low tide would be at 9:30 am and high tide doesn't come in until 4:30 pm.  They seemed like a reputable source so I believed them.  

First, we walked to the lighthouse and did a little sightseeing.  It was a lot of fun for all of us to be doing something together after six weeks of separation!  Below are some photos of our hike.   

We don't color-coordinate on purpose, I swear! 

If you jump, I jump

By this time, it was only 11 am.  We had five hours before high tide so we walked down to a separate trail that led to the tide pools.  This did require some rock scaling but nothing our agile bodies weren't capable of.  An odd thing happened though.  With every rock we climbed, it seemed like the waves were getting higher and more powerful.  We I suggested that we persevere.  Chris ended up leading the way, but as he stepped onto a lone rock with no shelter, a massive wave toppled over him.  He must have the balancing ability of a tight rope walker because he did not fall off the rock or get swept out to sea.  He was, however, totally soaked, along with his brand new phone.  When he suggested that we don't go any further,  I happily obeyed.  We'll never know if it truly was high tide or a rogue wave, but, again, I wasn't trying to kill him!

We decided to tone down our adventures and head to Kailua Beach.  The sand here is soft and the waves are ankle slappers.  Jaden and Chris played football in the water while I worked on my tan.  Chris even inflated my float for me.  What a guy!  After his brush with death and a day at the beach, I treated us all to shave ice.  By this point, I was back in his good graces.  But not for long.

After our full day, we showered and headed to dinner.  It was nice and uneventful.  We talked about what we should do the next day.  I still had a cabana rental to use at the Hilton from that timeshare presentation.  Since I knew we would be able to completely relax at the pool all day, I suggested we hike the Haiku Trail which is also known as "Stairway to Heaven".  This is one of the most famous hikes on Oahu for many reasons.  The trail was installed in 1942 to enable antenna cables to be strung from one side of the cliffs to the other.  These cables transmitted very low frequency radio signals that could reach US Navy submarines as far away as Tokyo Bay (Japan).  The trail is composed of 3,922 stairs and if you go early enough in the morning, hikers can watch the sunrise and see a 360 degree view of all of Oahu.  Sounds pretty amazing right?  We thought so.  The only slight problem is this hike is closed because its access is through a residential neighborhood.  A security guard gets on duty by 5 am and will turn hikers away if you don't beat him through the gate.  We set the alarm for 3 am and were out the door by 3:15!  We had flashlights and a detailed step by step map to guide us.  We arrived in the neighborhood by about 3:45 am and there was no guard in sight.  Success!  It took us a little while to find the entrance but we eventually did.  Well, I guess from the entrance to the stairs is about a 20 minute walk.  Directions to the stairs went a little like this:  at the fork in the road, go left; at the next fork in the road, go right; up a ways find the man made trail that looks like a u turn and take that; then find a hole in the fence and climb through.  I'm sure those directions were doable in the day time, but for us, it was pitch black (flashlights didn't help much), in the rainforest, animals all around us making noises, and not a soul in sight.  When I uttered the direction of "find the man made trail" I thought Chris was going to kill ME!  Jaden was terrified and Chris and I were both pretty scared too.  We decided to go back to the car as quickly as possible.  On our walk back, we passed two people (a man and a woman) who seemed to appear right in front of us and didn't say anything.  Chris and I independently thought they were ghosts.  We made it back to the car in one piece and high tailed it out of there.  It was still dark so we were able to grab a quick breakfast and go back to sleep.

After we all got a good second half night of sleep, we headed to the safest environment possible:  the Hilton Hawaiian Village.  Jaden swam all day and we tried to forget about the horrible morning.  By the end of the day, we were laughing about our adventure (at least I was).  Chris still thinks I was trying to kill him though.

He's too cute to kill  :)