Land ho! We’ve finally reached the Hawaiian archipelago and solid ground!

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I’d hazard a guess that most folks chose excursions today that involved Pearl Harbor, but as Canadians that memorial has less significance to us, so we opted for a tour of the north island and to experience some of Oahu’s famous food truck cuisine. Sadly, our tour overall rated a 5/10. Take a look at the tour cost to help put that in perspective. It’s what Ted and I paid for an excellent full day personal guide to Vimy Ridge from Belgium.

Today’s excursion description:

It’s a “semi-circle” tour because it does not include the west side of the island. I’m going to intersperse my rants about the tour with pictures of some of the gorgeous scenery we saw. Otherwise, when I re-read this in years to come it would just be too depressing.

We’d been forewarned that the sights we’d be seeing would mostly be from the bus, but in the past that meant a bus with clean windows. We were at 8/10 pretty quickly. Nonetheless, bus tours can be great if the guide is interesting and well-informed.

Our first photo stop was in the Valley of Temples, at the Byoto-In Buddhist temple, a copy of a famous Japanese temple. It was built to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants arriving in Hawaii.

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We could enter the temple only after removing our footwear. It is considered sacrilegious to take photos with a buddha, but quite okay to photograph the buddha.

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The surrounding hills, koi ponds, bridges, and a small meditation temple, make it a very serene spot.

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The only information that our guide shared was that the koi were likely overfed; good thing there were signs explaining the temple’s history.

Our second stop, which our guide explained was the premiere arrangement that his tour company had on the island, was at Kualoa Ranch. It shows up in “Jurassic Park,” “Jurassic World,” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” as the wide, expansive space where all the famed stampede scenes were filmed. The ranch has definitely capitalized on the publicity and now offers tours of the property and many of its popular film locations by bus, boat, ATV, or e-bike in addition to other outdoor activities. We had time to do none of those things – just 20 minutes to peruse the gift shop and use the restrooms.

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By the time we reached Keneke’s Grill at Punaluu (NOT Oahu’s famous north shore food trucks, some of which we later passed), my tour rating was already at 7/10.

Our guide explained that he had specifically requested that we be allowed to stop at this particular roadside restaurant on the east coast (a wooden building perhaps best described as “ramshackle”, with half a dozen interior tables, none-too-clean looking walls liberally hand-painted with Bible verses, and a “back yard” with picnic tables) because the family running it – and its adjunct goat farm and goat-soap making business (I’m not kidding) was having trouble keeping the venture afloat. He actually shared that he had talked to the owners about “cleaning it up”, and was pleased to see that they had made some improvements. So…. we expected excellent food trucks and got lacklustre food, which most people in our group of 40 didn’t finish. My teriyaki beef was actually quite tasty, but the large slices were almost impossible to cut with plastic utensils. We fully expected to eat picnic style, but did not expect that the picnic tables would not have been thoroughly cleaned, especially since chickens were roaming freely. That took us to 5/10, at which point I decided I simply wouldn’t go any lower. I looked up the restaurant on Google, and can’t believe the reviews and photos there are the same place we ate – except that the table colours match.

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Our very next stop was at a roadside fruit stand, run by a friend of our guide, where folks had the option to buy fresh fruit. An purchases needed to be consumed before we got back to our ship, since fruit cannot be brought on board (nor taken in the other direction, of course).

We had a scenic drive along the north shore past many of the famous surfing beaches: Sunset, Pupukea, and Waimea. Although the surf was not high today, we certainly got a feel for how beautiful and simultaneously rugged the coastline can be. Our guide told us stories of fishing in these waters with his brothers during non-surfing seasons.

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Our last stop of the tour was at the Dole Plantation, where we were told that the three most popular things to do were the factory tour, the garden tour, and the train ride … but that we would not have enough time to do any of those.

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No matter. There was Dole Whip. (Not included in the tour price though, and no longer 99 cents like it was at Disney World when we first took our kids there in 1989. It’s now $7.50 USD plus tax for a cone!)

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As Ted will never ever let me forget, I honestly used to think that pineapples grew on trees, like coconuts. After all, they look a bit like a palm tree, no? I even told our sons that they grew on trees! Anyway, I’ve long known better, but here I am “picking” a pineapple. They’d just harvested, so there were only the small beginnings of the second generation fruits visible without doing the garden tour.

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The return drive home took us along Highway 1, which skirts Wheeler Army Airfield and Pearl Harbour. Our guide said that the military is actually the biggest business on Oahu, bigger even than tourism. I couldn’t find any actual statistics to support that though.

Ted felt less than 100% today, so it was his turn for a nap when we got back to the ship. As we settled in, this super-yacht entered the harbour: the Anawa the $100 million USD boat owned by Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, who had just sailed down from Victoria BC. To think that we could have hitched a ride!

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Our pre-dinner live entertainment in the World Theater tonight was Drums of Polynesia, with musicians and dancers representing Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand.

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We ended our day with another lovely dinner in the main dining room. Since switching to the late seating, with a different server team, the pacing of our meals have been much better. Kudos to Tresna and Ari!

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We returned to our rooms to this (the flower is a real one):

Despite the less than stellar overpriced excursion, still a wonderful day overall.

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Tomorrow is an early start again, but on the island of Kauai, where we hope our chosen half day excursion to a waterfall and historic sugar plantation lives up to its description.