Mt Hood, Oregon

In an impulse decision Mike and i left Golden for Mt Hood about an hour from Portland in Oregon. We now live at a ski club in bunk beds hostel-style. Its great the only thing we miss about this accomodation is the ability to cook food for ourselves so since we left canada our food budget skyrocketed and the nutricious value of burgers, thaifood, mexican and microwavables makes me think of the Supersize me movie. And that experiment didnt work out too well... Check out the movie if you havnt seen it. In a sudden second impulse decision three days after we arrived in mt Hood we felt an urge to have a bath and what better place to swim a bit than Hawaii. We booked a flight and about 29 hours later we were sitting on the airplane taking us to Oahu.

Arriving at HNL, Honolulu

Waikiki Beach, our hostel is about 200m from the beach

Sun is setting in Waikiki and everyone wants ther piece of the last fading light of the day

 

Waikiki from another angle.

The first two nights we spent in Honolulu and Waikiki beach. Nice place but to really see what Oahu is all about, behind the glitz and glamour of the worlds most famous beach, we were told to go to the north shore. To make it easier to get around for us we got a rental car and went on a roadtrip on the small island for the remaining five days.

Not a 60's Volkswagenbus but kind of a presentday hippiesque mobile home for us, and when you wake up to a sunrise in some of the worlds most beautiful places you cant complain about the $25 a night this particular accomodation set us back.

I'm enjoying the sunset, it only happen once a day

Mike is the lucky one tonight and sleeps in the trunk, for the record Hyundai Sonatas trunk is really big and could potentially house two people if folding both parts of the backseat. Not Volvo 2/745-good but I'll give the car 3,5 really tired camels running through the Gobi-desert out of 5 for the sleepability

The road leading into Haleiwa with the typical american uglyass electricitywiring.

Loads of brown ditches housing shrimpfarms made for a good meal from the famous Giovannis shrimp bus. Shrimp served Fresh from the Sewers of Haleiwa, with Garlic! Since it sounded so delicious I thought I would get sick and while eating i was mostly thinking of Morgan Pålsson taking in the whole southeast asia...

We also rented surfboards for the week, a funny note is that 7 days surfboardrental is about the same price as renting a car the same period. Either its really cheap to get a rentalcar or its REALLY expensive to rent a surfboard. Off we went to the Worlds best surfingspots on the north shore with our surfboards strapped to the Hyundai Sonatas roof. Unfortunately we both got a bad sunburn (especally me with my computernerd-pale-no-good-for-sun-exposure-nordic-winterskin) and the 7 days of surfing quickly shrank to 4. I was the only one on all of Hawaiis beaches that were using jeans and longsleeve shirt at least that was what peoples looks said to me. 

But all in all we had a kickass week on Oahu and we got to see some really good surfing in the waves on Pipeline and we got to try out the surf ourselves and got scared of the raw power of nature. when the ocean suddently turns into a big wall coming towards you the thinking you do is more "Whoa! lets get back to the beach alive" rather than "fun, lets go surfing!"

Mike has more good Hawaiipics at http://www.mikaelnorrman.com take a look!

Thats it for now and the next update will be about mt Hood or something completely different...

Have a nice day!