Here we go - onto the second part of our "Eating Dessert First" Tour!  Sunday we leave to spend one night in Seattle, and then off to Hawaii - our first stop.

Here is the general itinerary of our South Pacific trip.  And if you're reading this - we're happy to have you with us.  :-) 

(Before we left, we picked up a little Australian and New Zealand currencies for the trip.  Fun, colorful money to play with! )

Our flight to Hawaii was a nice one on Hawaiian Air, and it went by fairly fast.  When we went to get our rental car from Enterprise, we noticed they had the 100% electric Nissan Leafs – and it would only cost us $12 per day extra – and no need to buy gas… so we rented it.  It was fun!  Smooth, quiet acceleration and some high tech bells and whistles.

But our gamble didn’t pay off – we were hoping that there would be somewhere to plug in the car at our condo – and we are having no luck with that.  The car has a 100 mile range, and it took us about 30 miles to get to our condo.  So we can definitely get back to Honolulu, and more, with the original charge – but now that we have no plug – we are limited.  We are actually thinking of taking it back and exchanging it so the rest of our days here we can travel freely.  But the car is great – just wish we had a plug for overnight charging.

The condo itself, although it has a pretty nice ocean view and balcony, is a little underwhelming, but we are certainly making do.  We took a late afternoon walk on the beach – which is very nice – and we came upon several sea turtles – just lounging on the beach.  It was very cool –they just sat there totally un-afraid of us. 

After our walk we went into town for dinner and ate at Haleiwa Thai, and it was great!  A small little hip place.  I had Thai basil – hot and flavorful!!  Joanie had eggplant salad with a great, light dressing that she loved as well.  Nice find – we told the waitress we’ll be back.

We took it pretty easy today.  We took a very nice Morning walk on our beach, finally got the internet to work in our condo and then decided to take a drive and explore the North Shore.  We drove past famous surfing beaches, like Sunset, Waimea and the Banzai Pipeline.  We ended up near the northern most part of the island in the town of Kahuku – which is “famous” for its Shrimp Trucks, fresh from their local shrimp farms.  We pulled into one of these places – although the Kahuku Grill wasn’t a truck – and had their grilled fish and “garlic lovers shrimp” – which was tasty.  As we ate, we plugged the Leaf into an outlet at a small little Kaiser clinic next store – with their permission of course. 

On the way back we stopped in at a few of the beaches we  passed on the way out, just to check it out and take a few photos.  We weren’t going to “beach it” today – just explore.  Stopped at a market for a few more items and a Starbucks, and drove back into Haleiwa to check out the town a bit more… and found tonight’s dinner location – Cholo’s Homestyle Mexican.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing a bit more.  We had some time to kill (gladly) since we finally found a plug in the condo complex that would work for a few hours.  So we just whiled away a few hours at the condo.  And got a charge good enough to get back to Honolulu tomorrow to exchange the Leaf for a gas car – so we can drive around the entire island tomorrow.  (We could have made the trip with the Leaf, but not without the ability to charge the car overnight.)

So, Cholo’s turned out to be really good!   They had good tequila, good Margaritas and Joanie ordered this Chile Verde and I had the Ahi tacos – both great.  A delicious ending to an easy going day. 

Well we made a change to our plans.  Since we were able to get a good place to charge the car at our condo, we decided to just hang out in Haleiwa today while the car charged to 100%.   This morning we walked into town and had breakfast at Kono’s… another good meal in Haleiwa.  I had their green eggs and ham – a macadamia pesto, eggs, provolone and tomato breakfast sandwich, and Joanie had a fresh papaya. 

The rest of the day was uneventful – which was good – since we have some busy days coming up.  Hung out in the condo – had a picnic lunch on the grass  by the beach and not much more. 

Tonight we are going back to Haleiwa Thai since it was so good last time.  Should be another very tasty meal.  Tomorrow we head around the northern most tip of the island and down the east coast to Kaneohe to see Brooke Beitner – then onto Honolulu.  More about all this tomorrow. 

Today we packed up early and hit the road, along the north shore, to Kanehoe, to meet Brooke.  The ride down was very pretty, although it was fairly cloudy so it wasn’t a picture postcard type of day.  We did stop at the Byodo Temple – a Buddhist Temple modeled after a 950 year old temple in Japan.  It was very beautiful, and a gorgeous setting.

We then met Brooke at a restaurant in Kailua and had a very nice visit with her.  She’s doing well as a Marine’s wife.  We then drove to our hotel in Waikiki, checked in and then headed out for a walk.  The weather was still cloudy, and it started to rain a bit so we cut our walk short and ate at a little bar and grill right on the beach.  Joanie had something delicious – edamame hummus – which was served with some pickled ginger.  It was really good. 

We then went back to the hotel, packed up everything for our early (5:30am) drive to the airport and went to bed early.   Nothing too special today – but there’s nothing ever wrong with an easy paced day. 

We woke up this morning, Friday October 28th and now, about 16 hours later, we’re going to bed on Saturday, October 29th.  Time sure does fly when you’re flying across the International Date Line.   Yup, spent most of the day getting from one amazing island to another.  Left Honolulu at 8am, landed in Samoa – which was beautiful from the air and also from the plane on the ground.  (We had a layover of an hour but couldn’t leave the plane, but the flight attendants let us go out on the exterior stairs.)  

After another two hour flight we landed in Fiji, and walked from the airport to our hotel (about 3 minutes) and hung out by the pool and bar for the last couple of hours of daylight.  The hotel is really nice, and our room is very cool.  It’s decorated in a sort of Polynesian / Asian contemporary style.  Too bad we’re here only one night, but after all, Fiji was an unplanned stop – just a layover on our flight itinerary. 

Just got done eating at the hotel’s restaurant and it too was great!  (We are really having some good luck with food so far!!)  Tonight we had Indian food – Dahl soup with spicy chicken curry – all great.