Brandon Fuller

The North Shore

Woke up to rain on Easter. I ran it and declared it was going to be a crappy beach day. Felt like it wasn’t going to stop. So we decided to rent a car. I went to the concierge and they said that Budget was sold out. This is who they normally contract with. What else is available? She called Dollar and they had cars. Cool. A shuttle picked me up 10 minutes later and took me down the block to a neighboring hotel where they had a single lady manning a rental desk. There was just one Japanese tourist family in front of me. They get theirs done and we should be on the road. 30 minutes later, I am still standing there. This isn’t going to happen. They had some rate code issue combined with some pre-paid deal combined with a language barrier. I told the shuttle driver that I was done and asked to be returned to my hotel. He said this was my best shot because the main rental location is jammed. We started driving back and he took me by that spot. There were people standing under a tarp-covered walkway out to the street waiting for cars. At the end of the line, they were holding umbrellas. Ouch. The driver suddenly turns in. I am not waiting in that line I say. He tells me not to worry about it and drives me around back. He takes me up to a window on the back of the building. I feel people staring at me but I am just going with it. A guy inside quickly says “driver’s license and credit card”. I fork them over. I sign and initial. He throws me the keys to a new Dodge Charger and says have it back by the next morning. I drive away — while people still stand in the rain. I still was in shock over how this went down but I didn’t ask questions. I got lucky for once.

Picked up the family and we headed to the famed North Shore. Wanted to see some waves and feel the vibe. Maybe an hour over there and we stopped to eat. I used Gowalla more than anything to find out where people were checking in. This meant it was popular to me so we checked out those spots. We drove way down the coast and U-turned and slowly proceeded back to where we started. We stopped at the beaches that looked popular, had big waves, or looked like something to explore. The waves ended up not being anything special that day. We are late in the big wave season. The news had them at 15+ over here the other day but only 5 today. Oh well. I came and saw. Otherwise, not a lot going on over on this side of the island. Depends what you into for vacation.

Later, it started to rain over here so it wasn’t fun on the beach. I noticed a turn off to Waimea Valley so we went in there. It was a natural conservation area with plant life walking tours finished by a swimming hole at the base of a waterfall. We have done waterfall swimming before in Maui. Its free over there I recall but we were willing to pay today just for the kid’s sake of saying they did it. I let them all take their turns and then I dove in and swam across for my big photo op — standing in the mouth of the falls! I was up on a single rock with unsteady footing. After, I jumped forward into the 30 feet deep water. I got back to shore and the lifeguard on duty told me I wasn’t supposed to do that. Oops.

We took our time hiking back down to the car and taking in the plant life while constantly putting our poncho on and off as the rains came and went. We made the most of it. Really our only bad weather day here so far.