Hawai'i: Part 4

The next major item on our agenda was to rent a kayak and head out to Sunken Island. Sounds pretty cool right? Well...it was. We rented our kayak in Kailua Bay on the Windward side of the island, strapped it to our rental car and drove about 20 minutes north up to Kane'ohe Bay. We placed our kayak in the water at the park recommended by our guidebook and we were off.

From the dock at He'eia state park we only had to kayak about a mile north to reach the edge of the reef that makes up the sunken island. It was cool being in deep water and then all of a sudden you could stand. At one point we found it a little easier to just walk in the sand rather than try and avoid parts of the reef with our paddles.
If you go at low tide then a football sized beach can be seen rising from the sea. We went a little later so that we could kayak over it and stand or stop whenever we wanted. The island used to be part of O'ahu some 12,000 years ago and stood about 180 feet above sea level but vanished after the water levels rose. The summit can still be seen further out. We opted out of going to it although we easily could have.

The view was incredible. (The pictures were taken with a disposable waterproof camera so they are just okay)
We could actually see 'Chinaman's Hat' from where we were and it was cool seeing it from the other side. It was only a brief reminder of our inability to conquer it a few days earlier.

At one point we headed over to a a group of people that had come out with their boats and asked them to take a picture for us. Locals head out there and sometimes spend the day. They bring their grills (the legs would only be slightly submerged if you are in the right area), their lawn chairs, volleyball nets, etc and hang out in the water with amazing scenery. One guy we talked to told us that not too many tourists make it out there...especially since there are no kayak rentals in Kane'ohe bay. He seemed impressed and we were once again grateful for our fantastic guidebook.

Since we were on the east side of the island we thought we had better stop at the only Macadamia Nut Farm left on O'ahu. (Most of them are located on the Big Island) We were able to try a variety of different flavors but we didn't feel the need to spend too much time there.

We headed back to Waikiki and were able to catch yet another gorgeous sunset.

We hung out for awhile at the barefoot bar on the beach but then decided to call it an early night. We'd had another active day and we were planning a sunrise hike in the morning so we needed to catch a few zzzz's.