Kapolei, HI
Sunday Dec 20th
It was a slow start to the day with Matt, AB, Mark and myself taking a morning walk before collecting Ali for a bit of a further walk on to buy some coffee. There is coffee shop located within a small shopping village that was just a 10 min walk away from our Villas. Island Vintage Coffee serves great coffee and we rested there for a while to enjoy the brew and watch the Sunday morning activity.
The plan for the day was to drive up to the North Shore to check out the waves as Pipeline had only just completed. We set off by midday for the 30 min trip but were rather excited to see a Farmers Market en route and just off the two lane highway. On closer inspection, though, this turned out to be the saddest Farmers Market we’ve ever seen…it was just a few stalls, struggling in the wind, and they were too busy to serve customers as they were holding their stalls and supplies together. This turned out to be a rather short detour and so we then ventured on to Pipeline where we spent about 30 min checking out the local talent handling the 5 foot waves.
Hunger had started to set in by this time though but Matt had researched the best of the food trucks and we luckily found Giovanni’s Shrimp truck, the top of Matt’s list, quite easily. Matt, clearly, wasn’t the only one to do some homework on these food trucks… this truck had the longest queue but it was well worth the wait to savour the tasty garlic shrimp and rice offering. Mark and Tom however opted for the Burger Truck with no queue and they both now know why!
We went back to Hale’iwa after lunch to check out the shops and galleries lining the two lane highway. We were meant to be having Kris Kringle gifts on Christmas Day to the value of $50 and the gift was supposed to be purchased in Hawaii. Well, I found my desired gift but the only trouble was that it tallied at a round $13,000! See the carved surfboard in the photos. (http://www.wysgalleries.com)
The journey home was punctuated with an entertaining side-trip to Costco and Safeway before another BBQ dinner with a Hunter Valley red.
