Waimea Bay is just up the coast toward the North side of the Island. It was about a 45 minute drive through luscious forests, along the rocky beach coast and through the famous Dole pineapple plantation. It was pretty incredible to see the pineapples hanging off the plants, in rows and rows and rows for hundreds of acres as we drove up the highway.
Wiamea Beach was incredibly beautiful, and of course, much less crowded than Waikiki beach. We brought along our floaties and a boogie board from the condo. Sycely was glued to that thing spending almost the entire day afloat, riding the waves in to the shore.
We grabbed some lunch before heading back to Honolulu and made our way to Turtle Beach, just 5 miles down the road, back toward the city. Turtle Beach, as it's come to be known, is a warm, sandy beach where 28 green sea turtles frequently come to bask. It's pretty much a daily occurrence to find a few turtles lounging here and soaking up the warm afternoon sun. Because the turtle frequent the area so often, they are used to people and have even been named by the Guardians (volunteers who help protect them). They have a binder with pictures of each of the 28 that use the area and they note distinctions in the head markings in order to tell them apart. They know the ages of some of them and they stick a sign in the sand with their name and other details when one of the turtles comes ashore. They also put a red rope around the area the turtle are laying in. This is to keep people at least 6 feet from the turtles so they are not disturbed.
When we arrived there were two turtles ashore basking-Wully Bully and Olivia Dawn. I was literally in tears being so close to these sweet creatures and was so touched that Lem had thought to research this place and give me this once in a lifetime opportunity. It wasn't but a few minutes after we arrived that we spotted another turtle not too far out in the water, making its way to the shore. It was incredible to watch the turtle drag itself slowly up the beach and snuggle up with the other two.
Turtle Bay was definitely the coolest thing I've ever done in my 4 trips to Hawaii and I would LOVE to go back again and stay in the Northshore area so that I could go and watch them every day and maybe even be a Guardian volunteer at some point.
We headed back to the big city to wash up and get packed. I snapped a few photos of our condo and our view. I went up to get some shots of the rooftop pool area and was greeted by this gorgeous rainbow. Hawaii was giving us quite a send-off!
We had a direct flight home that night, so we headed to the airport, returned our rental car and grabbed some dinner before changing the girls into their jammies and getting settled on the plane for the trip home. Both the girls were exhausted from all the fun in the sunshine and Sycely was sacked out about 2 minutes after we took off. Ella took a little longer to fall asleep, but was snuggled in and asleep before long. All in all and pretty smooth flight home after a pretty fabulous trip to Paradise :)
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