The Suite Life: Camacho Edition

Our first home in Hawaii: The Hale Koa, Room 1164,
located in the tower tucked behind and to the right of the large one in the photo.

It's been a while since I updated this so-called blog.  Life happens, and maybe being on "island-time" has decreased my urgency to post updates, or maybe it is my frustration with Apple and the "upgrades" to the photo applications, or maybe it's just that I am tired.  Nonetheless, it's time to update...

What have we been doing these last 7 months?  I last wrote about the house hunting process.  We ended up purchasing that house, and we like it.  It's a nice, quiet neighborhood (except for when our dogs bark and annoy everyone, or when Steven and Isabel practice their instruments at the same time).  This house is all about Location, Location, Location.  Walking the elementary school kids to school this year has been wonderful, and the twins walking themselves to middle school has been priceless.  I felt like I lived in the car when we were in California (where I was driving people around for over 4 hours a day).

Moving into the house was exciting.  I can't even remember it that clearly.  But now it is time to back up the bus...

Way back in August, Kate came to visit us after finishing up her camp duties.  She was glowing from a summer of outdoorsy stuff, and excited for starting college in the fall.  But she needed a break from socializing, and of course Hawaii with her family, where no one knew her really, was a great opportunity to just huddle under five layers of blankets in the hotel room watching videos or whatever on her computer.  We did get her outside, though.  She snorkeled, hung out with the kids, declared that she would NEVER ever EVER drive in Honolulu, (Honolulu thanks her for that), hiked, and sampled a lot of cuisine.  We were living in hotels, working on paperwork for buying the house and enrolling the kids in school, and Kate was on vacation.

At first when Kate arrived, we had lots of time to explore the island.  Not entirely sure about the house yet, as we waited for contracts to be negotiated, we took advantage of our prime Waikiki location and relatively free schedule.

First up:  Hiking.  Kate, a self-proclaimed Lover of Nature, a girl Wild at Heart, often suggested hiking, but by the time she woke up at 11:30 AM...  Nonetheless, we did get her up early enough a few times to go on a few hikes.  Of course, we did Diamondhead.  Hot, desert-like, full of tourists, and with an impressive lack of parking.  It's a "must-do".

Already tired and hot at the trailhead.  

Wow what a GENUINE smile!  This guy LOVES hiking!

They had to risk their lives for this shot.  Worth it. 

Just what you want to see at the end of a windy and steep hike: a flight of stairs that look like you most likely are walking yourself into some type of prison.

Diamondhead was great, really.  Beautiful views of Waikiki, etc, etc.  But we have lots of hot, dusty hikes all around the beautiful Yakima valley.  So, we sought out some hot, steamy jungle hikes.  First, Manoa.

Welcome to the Jungle...

The end of this hike (for us) was the waterfall.  Here we are next to the stream near the bottom of the waterfall.  

Loved the monkeypod tree roots growing everywhere!  VERY jungle-like.

Manoa Falls was a little bit muddy, but not bad.  We are, after all, outdoorsy people.  We don't shirk away from challenges.  So, we headed out for the next hot and steamy jungle hike:  Makiki Loop Trail.  When we found the trailhead, in a residential area of course, we noticed all the warnings about mud.  And then of course, the loop was closed due to a mudslide somewhere, so we were not able to do the complete loop.  We had to choose a trail to go up until reaching the mudslide block, and then return to the trailhead the same way.  We went to the left, because that's what you always do, of course.

Can you see the dirt on Kate's legs?  That's mud.  This trail was MUDDY.

Nothing can stop Josie.  She's a machine.  

Hiking was fun, but you have to wake up early to do that.  And plan ahead.  And so, we didn't do too much hiking.  We did mix in some snorkeling.

For our first snorkeling adventure, we took all our shiny new gear out to what some internet site claimed was the "best" place for snorkeling on the island.  A few U-turns and skeptical comments later, we arrived at a little local beach, known as "Electric Beach" because it is located next to the main electric plant.  Apparently, the fish like to gather out in the ocean a bit off shore where the water is warmed due to some type of emission from the plant.  Anyway, there was an unusually high-surf that day...

So we were supposed to swim out about 50 meters during the 30 second break between these massive 10-foot waves that crashed in this little closed-in area...  Not happening.  The kids had fun playing on the waves though.  They were crazy.

Since Electric Beach was a little too hot for us, we decided to go to a calm, man-made lagoon nearby.  Ahhh, yeah.  Love it when people manufacture natural settings.  They are so much more user-friendly that way...

Josie, Mac, and Katie.  Looking Good!

You can barely make out what Kate's swimming towards.  She wouldn't actually touch a Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, because that's illegal.  But still fun to swim with those guys!

And there he is.  A lot of fun!

Whee!

We also snorkeled at the famous Hanauma Bay.  It's much more developed than it was eight years ago, which was the last time I had snorkeled there.  There were tons of fish (and tourists) there.  It was kind of amazing.

The view of Hanauma Bay from the visitors area.  From here we walked down a paved path to the beach.  The dark patches in the water are all reefs, teeming with fish.

Fish everywhere.

After Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, we went to the famous Boots and Kimo's in Kailua for macadamia nut pancakes and other health food.  The 45 minute wait was worth it.

Most of our aquatic adventures happened right outside the Hale Koa.  With direct beach access, it was just too easy.  The snorkeling in Waikiki is not great, but we did see a 4' eel about 50 ft from the beach.  YIKES!  There were also sea turtles occasionally, but mostly other tourists with snorkeling masks on who thought they could game the system and just snorkel outside their hotel (the ocean is the ocean, right?).

In our hotel room and ready to hit the beach. 

The Hale Koa hotel in the background.

Another highlight of the trip was going on the Atlantis Submarine to visit "hidden reefs" located at "the bottom of the ocean".  Well, these are man-made reefs, at about 75 to 100-ft ocean depth, located maybe one mile or so offshore.  But it was a fun way to see a lot of fish, up close, and stay perfectly dry.  In a submarine.  

They sunk a ship of some type to use as a base for a man-made reef to attract ocean life. 

An eel cruising along the ocean floor- about 100 ft below the surface.

Right outside our porthole.  Beautiful fish, and the water was so clear even though we were "at the bottom of the ocean".

Another fun thing we did while in Waikiki:  watch sunsets.  Kate claimed she wanted to see a sunrise, but that never happened since we could not figure out how to delay sunrise until 11 AM, when she was ready to wake up.  Anyway, sunsets happen at a much more convenient time of day...

Ala Moana Beach.  This is a fun spot to watch surfers, crabs crawling all over these rocks, brides and grooms taking ocean-side wedding pictures, and of course, sunsets.

"Do we HAVE to wait for the sun to set?  This is taking too long."

There it goes!  Like clockwork!

The boys give it "two thumbs up".  Good job, sun!

We also went to Sunset Beach on the North Shore to watch the sunset from a different vantage point.  Here in the rocks-- lots of crabs.

And with the crabs, one crabby kid.

I think the sun is setting somewhere behind Josie.  She's too busy making faces at the camera to notice.

Awwwwww.  Sweet!  This was just before Steven told her "Get Off Of Me Josie!"

Yep, the sunset works on North Beach too.  Good to know.

Anyway, after spending many days in the pursuit of house hunting, beach-going, and family togetherness, it was time to get back to reality...

Having settled on a place to live, we searched for a swim team for the kids.  I set up a tryout of sorts, and the kids ended up going with Swim Team Number 2.  The first team had no boys swimming in Steven's age group on the day we were there.  What a shock to the system that was, coming from a group of about 30 boys all his age on his old team.  Anyway, we settled with the Hawaii Swimming Club, and it's been nonstop training since then.  Swimming in Hawaii, like everything, is different.  Most of the meets are held at a large pool located about 15 minutes from our house.  This is the same pool where the kids train, so it's nice to not have quite as much driving to do.

This pool, however, is located quite far from the Hale Koa.  Nonetheless, the training must go on.  So for about a week, we commuted daily from the Hale Koa to the pool for swim practice.

We soon found that it takes about 45 minutes to cover a nasty patch of 8 miles of highway at 4 pm, not to mention the the 15-30 minutes to get out of Honolulu due to construction and the mass exodus of workers from the city which starts at about 3 pm.  We left the hotel by 3:30 in order to make it to practice by 5.  Ah, yes.  The traffic problems in Hawaii are legit.  And no HOT lanes, and no plans to put in HOT lanes...  The carpool lane is an epic failure.  Our realtor didn't even know what the diamond-shape referred too.  That should've been my first hint that we were not in California anymore.  Island life, baby.  There are 2 ways to cross Oahu without doing a big scenic circle- and BOTH of these routes are under heavy construction.  At the same time.  It's been delightful.

This is an example of our enjoyment of family time in the car.

Well at least SOMEONE is having fun.

By this point, Mac had started work at the hospital.  He was mostly inprocessing, and taking all sorts of on-line training courses to get prepared for real work.  It was a tedious process.  With our afternoons taken up by driving to swim practice, the rest of us spent the mornings shopping and lounging by the pool.  We saved our big activities for night-time.  One big activity:  The Hale Koa Luau.

This was the kids' first luau, and I think they enjoyed it.  There was a show to go with the luau which was strikingly similar to the show we had just seen at the Macadamia Nut Farm.  Seems like there may be one script for all the island, especially when it comes to demonstrating how to start a fire or climb a coconut tree.  Nonetheless, it was entertaining.  But it makes me wonder why the tourists ALWAYS think that the guy is actually going to jump from one coconut tree to the other one?  Every stinking time they make that joke, and every time the tourists get their camcorders ready and are waiting breathlessly for the big jump, then the guy climbs down the tree and makes a joke of it all.  Every time.

Lei bracelets.  Luke was one of the first boys to sit down there and start crafting away.  By the time they left, the group was nearly half-boys and half-girls.  Stereotypes-- get thee away from me!

It takes a lot of concentration, and a lot of patience, to string together plumeria blossoms sitting next to Josie.  

I don't know the name of this game, but it's some type of thing where you swing these foam-like balls around as a part of a hula dance routine. 

The show where they take the pig out of the hole where it's been roasting.

Our table in the luau, near the back, under a shelter which was good for us because it started raining during the dinner show.  All those people in the expensive seats got soaked...

We also went to a crab bake at the Hale Koa.  This was different from the luau.  We discovered that Isabel has a way with a knife.  Future surgeon?  She could extract the crab meat better than anyone else (including Mac, the surgeon amongst us).  

Another epic event happened while we were living at the Hale Koa:  Josie had her 6th birthday.  It's kind of a bummer to have a birthday while you live in a hotel, but she rose to the occasion.  We bought a rainbow cake from the famous Leliha Bakery (a place we visited way way too often), and had a little party in our hotel room one evening.

Not sure if candles are allowed inside the Hale Koa, but we didn't set off any alarms so that's good.   

Rainbow Cake.  It has several fruity layers.  Josie liked it a little bit, but Luke liked it a lot, especially since it had no chocolate at all.  

Thankfully, we did not do the "driving to practice during the rush hour" bit for long, because the schools were able to enroll the kids as soon as our home purchasing contract entered the escrow process.  This meant that we left the city by 6:30 AM to drive about 40 minutes to school, then I would pick the kids up in the afternoon, and we hung around for a bit, usually looking for wifi hotspots so that they could do some homework, and then went to swim practice.  We would finally roll back into the hotel at around 8 pm, to make some kind of a dinner in the microwave by the vending machines.  At that point, vacation-mode was DEFINITELY over, and we were DEFINITELY ready to move into a more permanent home.

6:30 AM, waiting to cross the street, to go to the parking garage, to drive to school.

That's a lot of gear...  School and swimming.

It was good for the kids to get back into school, though, since they had already almost missed the entire first quarter.  School starts earlier in Hawaii.  In fact, Steven and Isabel's middle school classmates had been in school for about 2.5 months by the time we arrived on the scene!  Their middle school runs on a multi-track system which means year-round school, peppered with random breaks that are inconvenient to everyone.  The elementary school follows a traditional calendar, but even then kids go back to school in Hawaii around the first of August, so Josie and Luke managed to miss 2 months of school.

Steven and Isabel on their first day to school.

A few days later, Josie started first grade.

And Luke started 5th.  That smile is DEFINITELY forced.

We had very high hopes for the school.  But alas, public school is public school.  Even in paradise.  It's school.

Anyway...  Where was I?

A sad, sad day came when we needed to move out of the Hale Koa (after 31 days in residence).  Kate helped me pack up an obscene amount of luggage and cram the car with it all so that we could move  across the island to our next hotel.

The eastern shore, or the Windward side, is what I call the gorgeous side.  It's jaw-droopingly, astoundingly lush and beautiful.  Movies and TV shows are filmed there.  The pace of life is slow, especially if you are trying to drive on the one two-lane highway in the North-South direction.  It's also the side of the island which has a resort crazy enough to house our family and willing to accept our two large dogs.  Paradise Bay Resort is an interesting little place set on the bank of what I think is a river, in the middle of a very residential village.  Local chickens and local dogs run around at will, and people park wherever they feel like it.  Kate loved the hotel, as it's full of island charm and wildlife.  The rest of us mourned the moderately-high-tech amenities and posh location of the Hale Koa.  The wall-unit AC was terrible, and there were not many ocean breezes, so we sweltered away in that 2 bedroom suite for a few weeks.  At night it cooled down a tiny bit.  Sometimes you were tempted to even use a sheet to cover up.  Also, at night it would rain.  In fact, it rained most of the time, but especially at night.  We were fortunate enough to enjoy that jungle setting during record-setting heat waves.  Thanks a lot, Global Warming!

Anyway, Kate sweltered away with us all for only a few days before needing to leave the island for college at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, WA, Mainland, USA.

It was my job to deliver Kate to college, and to bring the dogs back to Hawaii with me, so that got me out of the jungle for a 5 day weekend...