Christopher Rowe

“Let us continue the voyage”

I am not sure whether Jeeps were always popular or whether Jurassic Park made them popular, I know for me it was the latter, and the fact we were on Hawaii where the franchise was filmed, it meant all that more to tour Jurassic Park… ahem Hawaii in a Jeep Wrangler and it seemed I wasn’t the only one with this idea….

After trying both Budget and Alamo – both of which had no Wranglers left, Hertz came to the rescue and provided us with a brand new 2015 Wrangler. So new in fact, when we returned the Jeep it had a grand total of 700 miles on the clock, and 200 of those were ours!

The Jeep was a compact two door, bright red, with all the electric trimmings to go with it – the perfect touring vehicle for our day out.

We tore off down the road, joining all the other Wranglers and Ford Mustangs (clearly the two favourites of tourists) and set off for the coat.

Working counter-clockwise around the island, we left Waikiki and headed for Highway 61 – the Pali Highway. This highway is just one of three popular passes through the Koolau Range (that big green mountain range made famous by the flyby sequences in Jurassic Park). Although the H3 Freeway is dubbed one of the most spectacular pieces of freeway on earth and the LikeLike Highway (Hwy 63) which also goes from Honolulu to Kaneohe, the Pali Highway which we took goes past the spectacular Nuuanu Pali lookout, through two Pali tunnels and then descends into Kailua.

The drive through to Kailua was incredible – the scenery was breath taking (I had the theme music of Jurassic park playing through my head), and the Jeep took to it effortlessly. With every bend of the road came a new exhilarating piece of scenery more incredible than the last. The roads wound their way down the mountain, through the tunnels with the cars chasing each other down to the bottom, lanes merging, new cars entering on the route from side roads, it was all a buzz.

Once we got through to the other side, we noticed the weather had completely changed; we had left the clear blue skies behind in Honolulu and were greeted by dark grey clouds. But much like with the rain in Oahu (the Hawaiian island we were on) the rain comes and goes with regular consistency and frequency, and in a matter of moments the skies had cleared up again.

Our morning was spent taking a closer look at some of the more popular beaches we past in a bus tour we did the previous day. We stopped at two beaches, Hauula Beach park and Sunset beach. Hauula beach is on the eastern side of the island; the water was calm, a greeny-blue colour, and warm! it felt more like a heated pool than the beaches we’re used to back in Oz – where even on the hottest days the water is below 10.

Sunset Beach, the more popular of the two had a white sandy coastline that stretched out as far as the eye could see. Unlike the calm and still Hauula beach, Sunset had quite a swell going which attracted a great many body boarders and provided us with the challenging task of trying to avoid being carried away by the waves.

In addition to the beaches, we also called in to a macadamia farm and sampled some of their produce, including an assortment of coated macadamia nuts in chocolate, honey etc and tried their macadamia nut infused coffee – which being a coffee lover, was fantastic.

A little bit further down the road was a large temple/shrine welcoming people of all faiths. The temple grounds were breath taking. The drive up to the car park weaved among a variety of head stones, structures and smaller shrines. Once at the top, looking down, with the majestic mountain range as its backdrop laid the main temple, complete with bell and a lake filled with cod.

For lunch we stopped at Titas Grill, a small shack-like structure on the side of the highway advertising the worlds best garlic shrimp. It was a bold statement and I knew I had to give it a try. The shrimp were locally grown in fresh water, carefully prepared in a garlic sauce and served with fried rice and macaroni and cheese. The combination, as odd as it sounded worked very well, and before I knew it, my plate was polished clean.

After a day of chasing waves and exploring Oahu, and getting accustomed to motor ways and driving on the wrong side of the road, we wrapped up our day of adventure with a pint of cold beer at Hooters where we put on our game faces, pulled out the maps and tried to figure out how to get the Jeep back to the rental depot in the heart of Waikiki.

Fortunately with the assistance of google maps on the iPhone, navigating our way back wasn’t too difficult, and thus ended our day with wheels! I have to admit, I would strongly recommend a car rental to anyone going to Hawaii – the roads were not too scary, in fact, with a lot of them being one way, it did make things rather simple, and with the island being as small as it is, it is easy to get around in a day without using so much as a sniff of fuel.