Day 5 in Hawaii

Since it had been so cloudy and windy in Kailua the day before, we decided to head to Waikiki and try out the beach there. Plus we wanted to have dinner at a certain restaurant that night and it was in Waikiki. Instead of taking the Pali Highway this time, which takes you right through the mountain, including through two tunnels, we drove along the Winward coastline so we could check out some of the sights along the way.
This stop, called The Blowhole, was really cool in person but this picture just doesn't capture it since the sun was behind it.





This place is called The Lighthouse and there is a lighthouse around the mountain but this view of the coastline was just gorgeous.

Tyler said this was called Cockroach Cove. If you click on the picture you might be able to see the guy who was swimming down in it! I don't know how he got there or how he got out but he was just bobbing away the whole time we were there.


We made it to Waikiki and after hunting down a place to change, we staked out our little piece of beach. Waikiki was really crowded and the beach was quite small. We were just down from the famous Royal Hawaiian (or Pink Hotel) which was closed for renovations.

While this wasn't the best beach, it did have the warmest weather so far and no wind. We stayed an hour or so and then decided to do a little shopping. From there we headed to the famous "Dukes" named after the king of surfing, Duke Kahanamoku. Amber & Andy had been waiting for us at the bar and had sweet-talked a waiter into a prime location table with a view of the pool, beach and the upcoming sunset. This was our first sunset in Hawaii.

This is a view down Waikiki Beach toward Diamondhead, just after sunset.

Everyone agreed the food was delicious.


Scott especially enjoyed the purple Poi rolls again.

After dinner we walked down the main street of Waikiki, checking out stores and the statute of the famous King of Surfing, Duke Kahanamoku.

Further down the street we came upon a Hula show that was just finishing up. Just about that time the lights suddenly went out and when we looked around further, we discovered that ALL the lights in the whole city were out and we were officially having a blackout. We decided the best thing to do was head back to our cars a few blocks away and try to make our way back to Kailua. When we got back to the car we started hearing the reports on the radio that Oahu was indeed having an island-wide blackout. The official word from the electric supplier was that the blackout would last for "awhile". Being in Hawaii I wasn't sure how long "awhile" might be! It's pretty laid back there so it could be an hour or a week, who knew? The drive back was a little dicey until we reached Pali Highway as there was a lot of traffic and no traffic lights working.

Once we made it back to the house we had other challenges as there were no candles or flashlights. Howard finally went across the street to a neighbor and asked if we could borrow a couple candles. Since there wasn't much else to do we decided we might as well just go to bed. Thankfully the power came back on about 6:00 a.m. the next morning. I guess with Obama staying just down the street we were lucky they concentrated on our area first. We never did get an official word on what caused the outage though the popular consensus was electrical storm. It was odd too because the weather in Waikiki had been perfect, no rain, thunder, nothing. Tyler said in the two years he had lived there they had never even had an electrical storm.

Never a dull moment for the Mitchell clan.