Clare and I took a trip up to the famous ‘North Shore’ today to do a bit of wave watching.
The drive took about an hour, through amazing ‘Jurassic Park’ type scenery. The hills sides are all impossibly steep and densely forested with tropical trees. First stop, (recommend by friends), was for a quick snack of local garlic shrimps, from the famous food trucks.
Then it was onto the main event - the most beautiful beaches!
The ‘Pipeline’ wave was incredible to see so close up. You could literally stand on the waters edge and look into the barrel of the wave as it peeled over - usually with a surfer trying to ride through without being caught by the tonnes of water crashing down behind them. (Look closely at the wave to get the scale!).
It was mesmerising and sweat inducing watching them.
Some of the big sets were three times the head height of the surfers, so we estimated them to be about 18’ high! I’d never seen anything like it. Such power!
Along the beach front were super cool mansion houses that were all owned by the major surf companies, to house their pro surfers. Photographers lined the balconies and a few drones flew overhead to catch the action close up.
It was a totally amazing, front row view!
We were so hot at the end of the day, that we went along to ‘shark cove’ for a snorkel to cool down. Thankfully there were no sharks, but there were lots of spiky erchins so we had to be careful where we stood.
The emersion in the water cooled us down nicely to enjoy the drive back to base, past Wiamea Bay, where it was hard to believe that 30 foot waves roll in during the winter!
For the drive home we stopped to try another Hawaiian classic - ‘Shaved Ice’ (a cup of ice shavings), with tropical flavours.
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