Saturday, January 3rd Kualoa Ranch Ocean and Garden tour

This was a Go Oahu card day. I had thought we might go to the Bishop Museum on it in the morning, but it turned out we didn't have enough time. We got there early for our 12:30 check in after a stop at the Coral Kingdom for some coral beads so Harry could finish a project for making earrings out of some carved pearls we were given as an extra when we designed and purchased my pearl necklace. We also stopped at the retail pearl store at Tropical farms where Harry had them reserve some Mobe pearls, pearls that are embedded in the oyster shell. He wanted to return to buy them. I also suggested I would like to buy him a carved koa wood necklace, a stylized fish hook for Christmas. We did return afterwards and purchased those things.

Our excursion for the day at Kualoa ranch was their Ocean and Garden Tour. We had taken a Catamaran ride on New Year's day in Honolulu harbor, but we didn't consider this catamaran ride to be a duplicate since we were going to be sailing the Windward side and seeing different shore. I had hopes we'd see some wildlife this time. 

We had a lovely experience. They put us on a bus and drove us a short way down the road to the Tropical Farms which is in the midst of the Kualoa ranch land and then taken on a simple fiberglass catamaran across a large fish pond, The fish pond was a construction created many hundreds of years ago. They made a stone wall with a lattice in the opening that let small fish in to feed in the rich pond environment. The fish would grow and be unable to leave again and remain in the pond where they could be harvested. Predator fish would be eliminated. Kualoa ranch doesn't harvest or eliminate predators, so they find Barracuda in there that exceed 2 or 3 feet, much larger than they grow in the ocean. 

From that ride we walked through some woods to Hidden beach where the Catamaran was moored.

 It was raining off and on all the time until we got on the boat. We went aboard and got the safety briefing, then got underway. The rain stopped, and although we could see it falling on portions of the land, but we had blue skies the whole sail. 

The trip took us out to the island known whimsically as Chinaman's Hat because of the resemblance of the shape of it to an old time conical Chinese coolie hat. We kept our eyes peeled for wildlife and spotted a couple of large turtles briefly. On the way back we stopped by a reef known as a home for baby turtles and did see several there. Those were the only turtles we saw our entire time in Hawaii this time. 

Coming in to the beach again, we got a preview of our next day's activity which was to be three hours on Secret beach. We could see people kayaking and riding on stand up paddle boards as well as swimming and possibly snorkeling. There were hammocks stretched between the trees. It looked like paradise.

We returned across the fish pond while learning about its ancient origin and present use and condition.

When we returned,we were shown some movie sets, one of which I recognized, got onto another bus that was 'air conditioned' or in other words, had no windows. We were then treated to a ride around the gardens to see a lot of different fruit trees and other trees.

 I did get a sense that there was some disruption to the usual tour, maybe because of the storm damage. We'd heard about the cleanup that took place that morning before the Tropical Farms could open and a temporary shed was tipped over. In addition it seemed that the oyster tubes had blown away and that was something we were supposed to be shown. The tour guide apologized for the 'wonky' tour, but we really enjoyed it. 

After the tour was done and we were back at the ranch, we had grass fed beef burgers. They were huge, with wonderful fries. We were so full we didn't need dinner that night.

While eating, we noticed a beautiful rainbow across the water.

On our way out I got photos of a strange looking palm tree I noticed on our bus ride to where the boat was.

 We stopped off again at the Pearl shop and got our purchases there, and then went to the Tropical farms store for some macadamia nuts. After that we decided to go to a movie in Kaneohe at the shopping center with the Times Market. We saw 'Unbroken'. It was really good.

Back at our room, we watched some TV and Harry polished off most of a bag of Honey Macadamia nuts.