Day 5 — Kailua (South East)
Started our day a little later this day, but we were out to Kailua the south east region of Oahu. We visited the Makapu’u Tidepools, which often gets missed. It is a hike off the main trail up to the more well known Makapu’u Lighthouse.
After the parking in the Lighthouse Trail parking lot, walk up the paved path for about 20-25 minutes. While it is paved and isn’t a hard trail it is uphill and it is hot, so you will be tired. There are signs along the trail that educate you about the area and wild life, when you find the sign about the whales you will reach the part where you begin you descent.
If you look down you will see the tide pools below in the distance. From here you just make your way down the lava rocks, I wouldn’t say there’s a defined path but just keep going down the safest way possible. At the bottom you can swim in the tide pools and see the parallel blow holes called Dragon’s Nostril’s.
After our morning hike, we wanted to spend the rest of the day just hanging out at the beach. We headed to Lanikai Beach and this was our first opportunity to just do nothing and hangout. We picked up some poke and chips and laid out our beach mat. I also wanted to get some more photos of the haku before it completely wilted.
Lanikai is a gorgeous beach, pretty crowded and hard to find parking, but has nice snorkeling if you swim a little farther out and a view of Chinaman’s Hat.
After a few hours just relaxing, we wanted to finish the day with sunset at China Walls. This was a great spot to watch the sunset and surfers surfing the last waves of the day.
After sunset we headed to Costco to pickup souvenirs, the classic chocolate covered macadamia nuts but also bags of toffee nut cookies. Post Costco we met up with his family at Sura Hawaii for KBBQ. It was pretty good, they had some really good sides too!
Bonus, look how cute Jordan’s grandma is:
