north shore

we spent wednesday on a trek up the north shore - on the way we stopped at the dole plantation, mostly because it was on the way...

we took the walking garden tour, which we have to say, was very well done - they had some incredible specimens of native plants and trees, and i took lots of pictures - here's one of my favs - the bird of paradise.


we took the train ride, which we have to say, was not very well done. it was impressive to see the massive pineapple fields, but other than that...silly. we passed on the world's largest maze, due primarly to the heat, and opted to partake of some of the pineapple flavored ice cream. it was good to try, and good to hear of the history of pineapple's role in hawaii's agriculture, but don't need to stop there again.

then we headed up the coast farther in search of giovanni's famous shrimp truck. my visual memory of it's location on the map failed us, so we stopped at one of several other trucks/restaurants in the north shore area - shark cove grill - right across from shark cove, where we were planning on doing some snorkeling.

here's the truck - scary, and dirty, with a small 'parking lot' and eating area.

here, however, is the food that came out of said truck - shrimp pesto skewer and ahi (tuna) skewer, brown rice, and fresh mixed greens salad. it was awesome, and one of our best, and cheapest meals on the island so far.

then we went snorkeling in shark cove (don't let the name fool you, we didn't see any sharks). there were portions of this cove that were very shallow and easy to navigate. we saw hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of sea urchins and many varieties of smaller fish. we made our way into the deeper portions of the cove for just a bit, as it was much rougher water. here we saw some much larger and bigger varieties of fish, and had a great afternoon in the water.


on our way back towards our condo, we stopped in the historic north shore town of haleiwa, to do some shopping and endulge in the world famous matsumoto's shave ice. you can get shave ice pretty much anywhere on the island, but matsumoto's is the most famous (we even saw it on the travel channel in preparation for our trip!) jason got lime flavored and i got guava, coconut and pineapple. they are amazingly flavored and are basically enormous sno cones, except the ice is MUCH smaller particles, so it can be almost as smooth as ice cream.

our drive back to the resort was under a complete rainbow, we were so close and it was so large i couldn't get the whole thing in one picture, but was amazing.

we enjoyed a relaxing, quiet dinner at our resort at chuck's seafood and steak restaurant that overlooked the koi pond, with the ocean in the background. hard to get a good picture because it was dark, but this gives you some idea of what we enjoyed while dining...