ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

After two days fending for ourselves we met up with Matt and his friend Regis, also from Florida.  We’d never met Regis and it turned out he didn’t even know we’d be crashing!  (Thanks Matt!)  Luckily, though, he was super cool and we found out quickly the rest of our time in Hawaii would be a lot of fun.  We’d only been away for 10 days so far, but we were a little homesick and it was great to hang out with people we could relate to.  Regis booked a condo at the Turtle Bay Resort, a bit of a step up from our shabby hostel.  The place was stocked with all the comforts of home and even had a full bed-sized air mattress so we slept like kings for the week.  The resort also had a pool/bar/restaurant with a breathtaking view of the bay – amazing for after surf rest stops.

The next day the contest was still on hold so I went surfing with Matt and Regis.  We paddled out at Sunset, a well known but intimidating break on the North Shore.  It was a dream fulfilled for me.  After some guidance from the boys, who had surfed it the year before, I was catching some waves that I’d only seen in magazines before.  Jenny, who was so happy with our new home she had jogged almost the whole island, met up with us afterward and we all did a bit of exploring.  We celebrated the day with a great Mexican dinner. 

The contest was on for the next two days so we witnessed some of the most amazing surfing we’d ever seen at Pipeline, all from a perch on the beach 50 yards away.  It was crazy to see the pros free fall into the 8 – 10 foot waves then turn and try to outrun the barrel that engulfed them.  Whenever someone would make it out of the other end of the barrel safely the crown would go nuts.  Many of the rest paid for their efforts with broken boards or banged up bodies from the reef only a few feet below.  Matt went to wish his brother Kelly good luck and Jenny got some good shots of her and her friends’ “favorite surfer boys.”  When one of my favorites, Bobby Martinez, stopped just behind us on the beach to talk to some people before his heat, I turned around to wish them good luck.  They turned out to be his parents, Bob and Joan, from Santa Barbara, and they were the nicest, most down to earth people despite their son’s success.  They were also staying at our hotel, so we all met up several times during the week to grab a beer and compare stories.  Of course, there was no shortage of pro surfer sightings, whether it was at the beach, in the line at the Foodland supermarket, or joining the party in the hot tub at our hotel.  Besides the fun of hanging out with the Martinez, my favorite moment was talking about the surf with Jack Johnson’s dad Jeff, who still charges 25 foot waves on his longboard well into his 60s and is as normal and laid back as they come.

The waves got a little smaller the last two days we were there so we surfed again while the contest was on hold.  One day we did three separate sessions at different spots around the island which gave our shoulders a good ache from paddling.  Jenny, inspired again to be around all the mangos, worked on her own ache as she ran 10 miles, her new personal best.  Every time we came back from a surf, we couldn’t believe all the exercise she had been doing.  The last day we surfed Sunset again and it was even better.  After ward, we all visited the Waimea Falls, a truly magical park for viewing the natural treasures of the island.  Although we would have to leave before the final rounds of the contest were run, we got a great dose of Hawaii in our first visit.  At 3:30 the final morning, we got up and snuck out of our comfortable setting to catch our flight to Bangkok, more nervous than ever at starting the next leg of the trip half way around the world.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 2:48 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.