This past week Daniel and I took a trip to Oahu, Hawaii! :) We have been married for almost 6 years now and since we went to Hawaii (Big Island) for our honeymoon, this trip is sort of our ‘second honeymoon’. Although Daniel and I traveled a lot in the past year, we mainly traveled for work and for visiting family. So a relaxing vacation was very much needed!! :) We picked Oahu as our destination because 1. we have never been there and 2. it’s cheaper than going to other Islands! HAHA. I feel like Oahu has a lot of bad reputation of being overly commercialized and crowded. But since I’m a city girl, I figured I would actually like it. And I did! I LOVE OAHU! I love the fact that we can go explore all day and come back to the comfort of the hustle and bustle of the ‘city’ (we stayed at Waikiki). I love that our hotel is right on the beach so no matter what we chose to do during the day, we could always come back to the hotel and chill on the beach. It was awesome!
So here’s part one of our vacation. :) Some pictures are taken with our Canon 5D with our 50mm f/1.2 lens, and some other pictures are taken with our iphones (should be pretty obvious which ones those are)!
We kayaked out to Sunken Island. I was hoping that the tide would be low enough so that a beach would surface. But all the sand is below the water. It was still pretty cool though – we were able to walk around in the middle of the ocean.
For a couple of days we rented two mopeds as our mode of transportation. It was really fun to ride around Waikiki area. But it’s kinda scary once you have to get on the real roads where cars are going fast and you’re afraid that you’ll get hit! But thankfully all the Hawaiian drivers are so kind and nice!
The first time we rode our mopeds out to Hanauma Bay, it was on a Tuesday. And we didn’t realize that Hanauma Bay is closed on Tuesday!! Imagine our disappointment when we got there only to find out that we can’t go in. But it was an overcast day anyway. We went back to Hanauma Bay 2 days later and it was a GORGEOUS day. I snapped this picture of the bay when we were leaving (after we snorkeled). We were really lucky (I think) – we stayed on the left side of the bay where we found tons of fishes (and not a whole lot of people)! The snorkeling was surprisingly decent since a lot of people have told us that Hanauma Bay is getting ‘snorkeled out’. I really wanted to go back to Hanauma Bay later that week but we didn’t get a chance to. We had too many things we wanted to do.
Another highlight of the trip – possibly my favorite moment – watching a pod of spin dolphins swimming around our boat!
A picture of us on the excursion. :) I love the Hawaiian sun in this pic!
Oahu is so crazy beautiful (not that you don’t already know that)! One one side of the road is the beach where as on the other side of the road you can find a view like this:
We went to Turtle Beach at North Shore to get a glimpse of the sea turtles. When we first got there, there was no turtles in sight on land and in the water! I was really disappointed. We stayed there for close to an hour before we left to visit other places at North Shore.
We came back a couple of hours later….and there was one turtle on the shore, with two more in the water!
We brought our snorkel gears so we could get into the water to swim with these guys! It was really fun. The visibility of the water was really bad though, so unfortunately I have to say it wasn’t good as when we snorkel with sea turtles at Big Island.
And an obligatory photo with the turtle that was basking in the sun. :)
Back at Waikik, our very own orange turtle Daniel was also basking in the sun.
to be continued…
by Orange Turtle
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