Aloha: Far Side of the World

Welcome to Jurassic Poop 

It was another early morning for us, and I was still up before my alarm. Today we were leaving Waikiki early for our drive to Kualoa Ranch. You are no doubt familiar with it, whether you realize it or not. This is a hot spot for movie filming, including 50 First Dates, Kong: Skull Island, Hawaii 5-0, Lost and the most popular.... Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. I scheduled us for a movie tour to see some of these filming locations and was very excited to get to see the beauty up close in person.

Allowing extra time to get there allowed us some time to go to Kualoa Beach across the street for some photos of Mokoli’i, aka Chinaman’s Hat, a quick testing of the warm water and time for Katura to run around collecting things.

Checking in for our tour was ridiculous easy. To kill time we checked out the gift shop, hooked Katura up with a banana and drink, pet the horses and ditched the stroller. At 10:45 we were officially face to face with a dinosaur, eager to board an old school bus for our journey through the ranch.

We were the last to get on, which was probably best because we ended up in the last row. This would be good later in the tour. Just wait....

*I'm adding this now, way after the fact.* The ranch itself is very interesting and full of history. If you get a chance, take a visit. There are many different types of tours and recreation options available. We learned all about King Kamehameha, burials on the top of the mountain, committing suicide so as not to let it be known where people are buried up there, about the animals on the ranch.... there is a lot!!

Remnants of their sugar mill, built in the 1800s

The ride was very bumpy!! We didn’t have seatbelts or a car seat, so this was a whole new experience for all of us. Our tour guide was wonderful, telling us all sorts of facts about the Ranch on our way up to an old World War II bunker. Once at the bunker we got out of the boat and went through the bunker seeing props from various movies and tv shows. And this is when it started to go downhill. *Let's insert some photos from the bunker now!*

 

From Lost

Hawaii 5-0

First, it was so hot out. And humid. And lightly raining. These things are all fine. But today, together, with a baby starting to get cranky, and the new crowd... it was just a lot. The tour group behind us started plowing over us in the bunker. It was very overwhelming. And they didn’t speak English, which led to some confusion here and there. And Katura wanted to run around everywhere. But that wasn’t really an option given this crowd that was taking over. Shawn an Katura went ahead to meet up with me after I finished the bunker.

Back on the bus, she seemed to be happier, but antsy. We started to finally see the big landscapes from movies and had some really great photo ops. I don’t know how they turned out (I will see when I get home and post this), but you’re seeing some now!

The big climax was seeing the recognizable area from Jurassic Park. Again we were getting out of the bus to take a fun pic! And this is when it all went to poop.

Cows roam all over the ranch. Katura is currently obsessed with dogs, cats, birds and now cows. She and her dad went wandering into the fields to get closer to the cows. It was time to start loading back into the bus and it happened. Shit happened. Literally. Katura, in her sandals, walked in cow poop. Shawn was furious and trying to rinse poop off of her in a muddy puddle.

I tried to keep the family calm. We are a team and need to keep each other sane. Well that went to poop, too. Epic meltdown. The nightmare moment parents never want to experience. Thankfully we were in the very back, but still. Flailing. Crying. It was awful. I was almost in tears and absolutely mortified. I wanted to just get out and walk the rest of the way with my head hanging in parental fail shame.

We went through beautiful areas but it lost some beauty given the situation I was in. I have no idea how long it lasted. Maybe 5 minutes? But it felt like an hour. Absolute misery. She eventually calmed down and was fine by the time we finished. Fine but there was still the issue of cow poop being on her and her dad’s shorts. I apologized to our driver when we got off and she was so gracious. (I have over 3,000 from this vacation, so if you need more from the Ranch, you know how to track me down!)

Immediately we went to the car to change her clothes and clean her up. Back up to the main building to wash her shoes and myself. I was happy to leave so that we could go pretend we didn’t have a possessed baby on our hands.

It took no time at all and Katura was asleep during our drive. We went north for random sightseeing. McDonald’s caught our attention! I had a goal to go see Spam on the menu and sure enough it does exist! I fully admit we did end up getting some McDonald’s and eating in the car so as not to wake up devil child in the back seat. No Spam was ordered, but we did get the surprise of two free cups of chopped up pineapple!

Continuing on our way, we drove through part of the BYU campus and saw the Mormon Temple. Impressive!

Next we stopped at a roadside food truck/merchandise area, but passed on buying any cheap clothes. The garlic sure smelled good, however!

Soon we were near Sunset Beach and things got awesome! The HIC Vans Pro Surf tournament was going on. I’ve always wanted to be a surfer and I was actually seeing a big time surf competition in the works!!

There was no place to park but that was fine. I was on a mission for something different. I had a date with the Banzai Pipeline!!

Those waves were NO JOKE. Even standing in the sand I found them intimidating. Watching the surfers ride them in .... complete awesome!!

After we left Banzai and went toward the next stop we saw some wild boars roaming on the side of the road! I think there were 6 in total. Seriously, how adorable is that??

The last destination (all of this was unplanned, FYI) was Haleiwa and the surf shop. I spent too much time and too much money there. No regrets!! Katura, my little Turtle, left with a couple turtles and a T-shirt, while I took home a magnet, T-shirt, tech jacket and a free backpack as my shopping bag!

From there we went straight back to Honolulu. It was just about sunset, so we hurried into swimsuits and went down to have a sunset swim. Katura loved playing in the sand again, and eagerly wore her life jacket down so we could ease into the ocean together again.

She’s been an angel today ever since the meltdown. Thank goodness!! She and I shared dinner again, and have been playing beauty salon together on our bed. Our bed? Yeah, Shawn gets one to himself, she and I share the other. I think next she and I will shower the salt and and off of us....and any cow remnants. Then we go to bed and sleep in!!

This was long. If you made it to the end, I humbly thank you!

~ ALOHA ~