When I was a little girl, there was one beach that we always visited during our trips – Waimea Bay. \u00a0I remember driving through the sugar cane fields for what seemed like hours to get to this beautiful bay on the North Shore of Oahu. \u00a0There we would spend all day floating in the surf, basking in the sun, and snorkeling. \u00a0Well, the last time I visited Waimea was sometime in the early 90’s. \u00a0Other beaches claimed by allegiance and Waimea was just too far away.<\/p>\n
And so today, after a 15 year absence, I went back to my old beach. \u00a0It was the first time both Kevin and the girls had ever been to the North Shore. \u00a0It was still a long trip as we are staying on the southern tip of Oahu and Waimea is on the northern tip so we had to wake up so early and retain our sanity as the kids moaned “are we there yet???” \u00a0Once we got there, all moaning instantly stopped. \u00a0It was just like I remembered. \u00a0A beautiful blue bay with a huge stretch of sand. \u00a0Now it was my girls floating in inner-tubes in the surf and spinning around and around. \u00a0Leina figured out the joys of snorkeling and we had to drag her- literally!- out of the water. \u00a0We checked for webbing between her toes but so far she hasn’t begun her transformation into fish yet. \u00a0 But really, it’s only a matter of time.<\/p>\n
But the best part? \u00a0Well, when we arrived most of the beach was taken over by fishermen who were casting out along the shore. \u00a0Us swimmers were regulated to the far edge of the bay because a large school of fish had taken shelter near the shoreline. \u00a0The fishermen weren’t having much luck and things took a definite turn for the worse for them when a giant pod of spinner dolphins showed up. \u00a0Yup, about 50 spinner dolphins swam into the bay, rounded up the fish, and started munching. \u00a0Many of the fins were in sets of \u00a0two and the lifeguard announced that this pod had many nursing young with their mothers and warned swimmers to stay away. \u00a0The pod was so close, people were paddling out to swim with them! \u00a0And the best part? \u00a0Well, they call them spinner dolphins for a reason. \u00a0I guess they enjoyed their meal because all of a sudden, they started jumping out of the water. Jumping, spinning in the air, and crashing back into the sea. \u00a0It kind of reminded me of the fireworks display at Disney Land. \u00a0Every time a dolphin launched into the air, the whole beach would erupt in ohhhhs and ahhhhs. \u00a0It was beyond amazing. \u00a0They stayed there for hours eating, swimming and spinning in the air. \u00a0The fishermen were bummed but we were ecstatic. \u00a0The only damper was when the lifeguard announced that this pod was often prey to “large predators” and that perhaps swimming among them was a very bad idea. \u00a0Any romantic vision I had of\u00a0frolicking with the wild dolphins quickly vanished and I clung nice and close to shore.<\/p>\n
We drove home the long way hugging the shore line all down the east side of the island. \u00a0The kids slept while Kevin and I rubbernecked. \u00a0This place is simply unreal as far as natural beauty goes. \u00a0Every turn offered a new view to wow \u00a0us. \u00a0Perfect.<\/p>\n
Kevin’s favorite view? \u00a0When we turned the corner into town and saw the Leonard’s malasada van parked in a mall lot. \u00a0He practically grabbed the wheel to get me to pull over. \u00a0Fool that I am, I let him order the malasadas and he returned a few minutes later with a sheepish look on his face and three boxes pilled in his arms. \u00a0Yes, that would be 24 malasadas. \u00a0Of course, the girls had their hearts set on shave ice so we stopped for some. \u00a0As soon as we were done, we headed home to break into those malasada babies.<\/p>\n
So for dinner, I had a shave ice appetizer followed by three malasadas. \u00a0One chocolate filled, one lilikoi filled and one haupia filled. \u00a0I washed it all down with a cup of hot coffee and it was good. \u00a0I must admit that as I picked up that last malasada I felt the slightest twinges of guilt pricking me. \u00a0I knew I was going to pay for this indulgence later but I decided, what the heck! \u00a0Pass the malasadas and put it on my tab. \u00a0I’ll pay later. \u00a0Once all 24 of these puppies have been finished off!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a little girl, there was one beach that we always visited during our trips – Waimea Bay. \u00a0I remember driving through the sugar cane fields for what seemed like hours to get to this beautiful bay on the North Shore of Oahu. \u00a0There we would spend all day floating in the surf, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hawaii"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Kqhb-ne","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1446,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions\/1446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}