Events:
· Royal Burger on Kalakaua ($9.61)
· Walk on Beach (free)
· Picked up kayak at Go Bananas on 799 Kapahulu ($47)
· Drove to Kane’ohe JIB snak ($7.01)
· Paddled to Sunken Island, Kapapa Island

Today we woke up early; about 6am-ish and lounged ’til 7am. Then we decided to grab a quick breakfast at ‘Royal Burger’ because it is next door, not too big (after having been knocked out by the after effect of eating at Duke’s breakfast buffet the day before), and relatively cheap and portable.

We took our croissandwiches, OJ’s and hash browns across the street to beach and watched the waves while we ate.

After finishing, we walked up a bit farther to where the surfer and the seal statue are (near the big film thing they use for films on the beach) and combed the beach for the incredibly off-chance my Dragon sunglasses would miraculously wash ashore just while we were there from 2 days previous (lost body-board surfing by a big hellacious wave that knocked them clean off me). Then back to the room, got our gear.

We went to Go Banana’s rentals which is just up the street from the Marriott Waikiki on Kapahulu Avenue. The owner, John, and his mom are from Murray, UT which is interesting. But they have been here for over 20 years, so…. They had only a few rentals that day for kayaks and of the two others, one couple was also from Utah, and the other from Japan. I think the Japanese couple was right in front of us when we got to Kane’ohe.

Just so you know, it was SUPER convenient to get our double kayak there and a full set of equipment and John’s excellent advice on kayaking and what to look for out by Sunken Island (or Disappearing Beach, or simply, ‘The Sandbar’) and Kapapa island was a total of $47 or so with tax for the whole day! Another interesting thing he mentioned was that there would be a drive-on ferry to the other islands starting next year. First the smaller islands, from here but in 2 or 3 years they would also service Oahu to Hawai’i. Cool! So much easier than catching a plane!

Anyway, we drove up Pali Highway and then Kamehameha highway over to Kane’ohe. We grabbed a quick bite (shared a combo meal) at Jack-in-the-Box and then just past the state park is where the canoe club and some piers are, we pushed off for sunken island, and if we felt confident, for Kapapa. It was raining a tiny bit off and on, but about 80 degrees, so not cold at all. Rather windy, the waves were pretty good, occasionally getting to a couple of feet in the deep parts before sunken island. You get pretty wet, but nothing to scary if you keep a decent angle on the waves with the kayak. It is about 1.4 miles to the sand bar, depending on which part you are heading for. We probably drifted a fair amount and zigzagged as well trying to get a rhythm. Eventually, we got out there at roughly 2:00pm, I would estimate. We didn’t stop, as there didn’t seem to be much to see underwater, but we could see a few Japanese (and other?) tourists about a half mile to the left dropped off by tour boats, a few private boats and jet skis to the right. Off in the distance, we could see Kapapa. We just kept going. As we got a bit past the sand bar, we were surprised to see at least a dozen or so sea turtles of various sizes lazing, grazing, and swimming around us. At one point I was worried about smacking them with the paddle. They thinned out pretty quickly as we kept going. They are surprisingly fast swimmers. We tried circling around a couple of lazy ones, but they take off when they want to and there isn’t a chance of keeping up with them. So we decided to go out a little closer to Kapapa and eventually decided to just go for it. Once it got deep again, you could very visibly see the waves wrapping around from the open ocean and coming around each side of the island. They would frequently crash and churn just in front of what looked like the only approachable ‘beach’ area on the island. The waves were occasionally 3 or 4 feet here and it was a little spooky. We tried to hit them at a good angle and had a bit of adrenaline rowing the last quarter mile or so. We got thoroughly soaked as well. Earlier, I had wisely tied up our gear as we were leaving the sand bar. Anything loose would definitely have been lost and very difficult to recover in the crisscrossing waves. We pulled up on ‘shore’ and found the beach was all rock and coral pieces of pretty large size. We had Teva reef-shoes (or are they socks?) on and good thing. After the coral beach, the rest of the island was lava rock. Very sharp lava rock. Not the worn down smooth stuff you see on the Oregon coast. This stuff would HURT you if you weren’t careful. Even with reef-shoes, you could feel how sharp the rock was. Don’t even think about kneeling down. You’ll ribbon your knees. My shins and knees were already a bit sliced up from body-board surfing already so I was keenly aware of the real hazard of falling on this stuff. We checked out the north-windward side of the island and watched the big waves crashing in. Glad we didn’t have to try to kayak in that stuff. We checked out the little tide-pools in the lava rock. We were in-between tides so we found a few pools with little fish, little crabs, and couple of bigger crabs. After a while, we decided to head back. Going back was a lot easier, and we actually caught 3 to 5 pretty good waves in our kayak on the way back. That was pretty fun! I was hoping we could catch some more on the deeper side past Sunken Island, but they weren’t big enough to do much. Still, it was much easier going with the wind and waves than against them. The sea kayaking was a blast! I highly recommend it and will be sure to make that a part of any of our future trips when possible!

After getting home and cleaning up, we tried to figure out where to go eat. Because I was elite status at Marriott, they had given us a voucher for two drinks at Kuhio Grill or the Moana Terrace Grill. They also were pushing the Kuhio big time on all the inroom channels and lobby advertising and in the local advertising books like “This Week Oahu”. Well, the “Oahu Revealed” guidebook did not think too much of the place, and admittedly, it is practically underground, but on Waikiki. With a coupon from above, it was only going to by $20 for the prime rib buffet. Since it was close (in and run by Marriott) I figured it should be pretty safe and besides, who can screw up Prime Rib? Prime rib is called rib because it is PRIME rib, not scrap rib, rib tips, crap ribs or whatever. Well, we went to the underground dwelling and were somewhat promptly served, and our server was very kind and gracious. We started on the buffet and immediately I was a little worried. Everything that was cooked looked very overcooked and like it had been there all day. The prime rib guy slicer was sleeping standing up and I had cough loudly to wake him. He cut me a nice thick slab of prime rib and it *looked* good. But when I sat down and tried to cut it, it took a significant amount of my muscle force to cut through the dang thing. I took a bite and was immediately deeply saddened. It was very very bland even with the au-jus. In fact, I think only the au jus had any flavour. With enough horseradish-sour cream sauce it was passable, but it was incredibly tough and sinewy. It was like chewing rubber. I tried a piece of the outer edge and it was very similar to cooked blubber; not that I know what blubber tastes like, but I bet it was similar, and perhaps worse than blubber. The rest of the buffet was also pretty dismal. All the chocolate dipped fruits and things was more like white bland candle wax dipped items. The strawberries were pretty good if you chipped all the chocolate wax off first. The bananas were way overripe. Some of the other desserts were interesting but not anything near noteworthy. The BBQ chicken was okay, a little overcooked but nothing special. The fish was bland, tough, and overcooked. The Hawaiian pork was very dry and tough, but actually tasted okay, once you got over chewing on leather. The bread was so tough you nearly had to dip it in water to make it chewable. The only things that were okay were the fresh fruits and the fresh salad. But even Home Town Buffet is capable of that. So all in all, the food was one of the worst buffet’s I had ever been to, even free ones, let alone ones that cost over $50 for two. I should have trusted the book review. But I also feel like the book review was not strong enough. They should have simply stated the food was not only not good for the price and the view, but it was simply NOT GOOD at any price. You could not PAY me to go eat there again, unless, maybe, I was starving to death. Shame on Marriott for running such a terribly food establishment. I would be ashamed to have it attached to my property and to my name. Shame on them for foisting it on their hotel patrons as something worth going to! We were both very very disappointed and felt like we wasted one of our precious opportunities to have an enjoyable evening when there were so many good places we could have eaten at. If you read this and still go to the Marriott Kuhio Grill, you will rightfully deserve the worst food you will ever pay for.
Later, as I had only packed about 3 days worth of clothes, Jenivee did some laundry in the Marriott self-serve laundry. It’s about $4 per load, just so you know. And take a little laundry soap with you from home in a zip lock baggie if you plan on doing any laundry so you don’t have to buy little boxes for $2 more per load.

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