Day 8: Last day on Oahu! Waimea Falls, Shark’s Cove, cliff jumping…

Friday, June 7

Our last day on Oahu! And one week into our trip. I said this before, but I feel like part of me was like, Whoa, we have seen and done so much already and we still have a week to go! And the other part was like, omg, we’re one week down already?! Too fast!!

I debated how we should spend this last full day. I had intentionally left it open and without any scheduled activities.

The one big thing I felt lacking yet from our week was more exploring of the North Shore.

The North Shore of Oahu is well loved and many people say it’s the “true” Hawaii, the most beautiful area, etc.

I had definitely wanted at least one full day up there, but if you recall, we ended up detouring over there on Monday (midday), meaning we only had about half a day there- and we ended up mostly staying put at one beach. A great beach, but still. I didn’t feel like we had really fully SEEN the North shore yet.

The North Shore is about an hour from Waikiki, so I wasn’t sure if everyone would want to drive back… but everyone ended up being game!

Morning:

In the morning I felt all the “it’s our last full day!” feels, so I tried to get up a little early and spent time both on the balcony:

And then down on the beach!

Ivan and I sat down there with our coffee/tea for quite a long time:

It was hard to drag myself away from the beautiful morning, but I also really wanted to get back up to the North shore!!

Waimea Falls and Garden

Our first stop was Waimea Falls and Garden. This wasn’t on my “MUST DO” list, but more on my “NICE TO DO IF ABLE” list. It’s a botanical garden + access to a waterfall you can swim under! Which sounded really cool, but also- we swam under a huge waterfall in Costa Rica just last year.

I was actually more intrigued by the botanical garden part than anything. The other garden we went to, while wild and beautiful, didn’t have many flowers. This one sounded like it would.

Also, this place costs $25/person to get in. Not a super high price or anything, but for 6 people that’s $150 on top of many other paid activities we’re already doing plus countless expensive meals.

But, in the end, we decided to do it. We are not really big “repeat destination” travelers, so there is a very good chance we’ll never go back to Oahu. So… it was probably now or never on Waimea Falls!

We set out. The trails are mostly all paved, minus some dirt path off shoots. The garden is divided into different sections- South America, Africa, etc.

It was beautiful in there! Lots of huge flowering shrubs.

The cool thing here too is that it had big exhibits displaying how native Hawaiians and island people used to live. This was neat!

We had several other stops on our list for the day, and we kind of puttered around too long in the morning, so we didn’t linger or explore every bit of the gardens that we could have.

Primarily we stuck to the main paved trail which led to the waterfall. (This is another great spot for kids/families!) It’s very “Hawaiian” feeling in there with the huge trees, plants, shrubs and flowers. The garden alone is worth seeing!

Also, there are snack shops and a shaved ice place in there, plus changing rooms, bathrooms, etc. and a restaurant at the entrance.

The Falls

The trail to the fall was maybe a mile? Not sure exactly. We meandered through the exhibits too so it took us maybe 45 minutes.

I had read reviews and knew that a) this was not the world’s most impressive waterfall, b) it is typically rather crowded and c) it’s required to wear life jackets.

And yep, the reviews were accurate! It is a beautiful spot (and would be more beautiful if you could wave a wand and remove all the people!)

Nauyaca Falls in Costa Rica was definitely more impressive (and way less, um, regulated 😆. That’s Latin America for you!) At that one, there were no life guards (despite being like 30 feet deep!) and people could climb and jump, etc.

At this one you really can’t jump exactly. Well, we did climb up on the base and kind of did a little jump from there, but with the life jackets it’s a little anticlimactic! Lol!

The water was pretty cold (ie “refreshing”) but it was still fun to swim in a pretty spot! And besides, I figured… I’m in Hawaii, there’s a waterfall, YOLO, right?

Anyway, we swam for maybe 15-20 minutes and then got out to let other people who were waiting use our life jackets.

My parents, who did not opt to swim here:

And then we reversed and walked back out!

All in all, I’m glad we did this. I do think it fell appropriately on my “nice to do” list vs a “must do” list, but it was beautiful and a nice experience. Also, it only took a couple hours total so it fit in easily.

Food Truck Lunch

It was 1:00 by this time, exactly. (I remember looking at my watch.) Time for lunch!

Next up I had planned we’d stop to snorkel at Shark’s Cove, just up the way from Waimea Falls. There was another food truck court across the street.

The burgers coming from this place called Seven Brothers smelled heavenly, so I decided to forgo more shrimp (though tempting) and got a burger. IT WAS SO GOOD!!!!

After lunch, we walked across the street, got the boys’ snorkel stuff (newly purchased from the hotel surf shop that morning- had planned to rent but then learned it was almost the same price to just buy a set vs rent for a day) and went down to Shark’s Cove.

Shark’s Cove

The most popular place to snorkel in Oahu is Haunama Bay, on the east side. But it also involves paid entrance and a very complicated and annoying reservation system that involves logging on at a certain time and trying to get a spot. Plus complicated sounding parking. I decided to skip that whole ordeal.

Shark’s Cove here on the North shore is only an option in the summer (rough in the winter) but is free and supposed to be just as good!

It’s a very pretty spot- a shallow cove with very clear water and lots of fish.

Here’s Asher getting ready to go:

Off they go!

There were also some huge schools of fish! Like, thousands! They’d fully surround us in some spots.

We spent a good couple hours here I’d say. We had only bought two snorkel sets- mostly just for the boys. Ivan and I took turns borrowing their sets though.

It’s a very nice spot!! Just watch out for sea urchins which we spotted all over some of the big rocks underwater! I was barefoot and after that I became a water-treading machine, hahaha. (I was like, under no circumstance am I stepping on a rock anymore!!) 😆

Banzai Pipeline

We packed up and headed up the coast. I had a few more spots flagged that I wanted to check out.

First, the famous Banzai Pipeline. Home of legendary surf competitions and deadly huge waves (in certain seasons).

On Friday, it looked like this!!

Not very scary today! Though even on this calm day we could see some swells out there rising.

Turtle Bay

We didn’t stay at Banzai, so back to the car and continued up a few more minutes to Turtle Bay. I had heard you can see, well, turtles here! That sounded cool.

It’s also where the very nice (and very expensive) Turtle Bay Resort is.

The boys were still sort of drying off from snorkeling, so they didn’t really want to swim here too. We walked the beach area and looked for turtles, but didn’t see any. (It’s possible if we had snorkeled or swam we might have? Or they may come up on shore later in the evening.)

We ultimately decided we were a little thirsty, so in order to enjoy the views here longer, we grabbed a beer at the resort’s beachfront restaurant. (Open to public).

This was nice! Sun felt good and it was a relaxed little stop. These little “breaks” are typically how we build downtime into our vacation days. (We are not people who usually go back to our hotel rooms and like, nap, on most vacations. Chilling in a beach chair with a view = our version of that!)

Waimea Bay Beach

Finally, on to our last stop (now backtracking back the way we came from, heading south again down the coast).

I really wanted to make it to Waimea Bay Beach!! It just looked like a great beach, and also, I had read there was a big boulder in the water people can jump from. Figured the boys would like to try that!

It was evening already- maybe 5:30/6? Sun sets by a little after 7, so they headed right for the big rock.

There were a bunch of people up there jumping already. Ivan and Asher headed up to survey the situation and I planned to stay on the ground and photograph. 😉

Turns out the sun just happened to be in an awesome position to get some crazy good photos!!!

Asher jumped first:

Then Ethan went:

Then Ivan went:

That just left… me. I was all nice and dry and was not planning on swimming anymore. But the boys pressured me and said “come on!! You have to try it!”

Again, I felt like… ok, look at this view, I’m in Hawaii…. YOLO! Let’s go…..

So, I did it! Whew it was exhilarating!!! Once I got up there it seemed SO high and for a minute I thought, omg I’m never going to bring myself to actually jump off! I stood there for a little too long (with other people kind of waiting for me to go so they could go… maybe the peer pressure helped….lol) and then finally let ‘er rip! 😃😃

It was super cool and I’m glad I did it!!

The boys ended up jumping multiple times each and then found the waves were really fun for body surfing. They stayed in the water until the sun went down.

The rest of us stayed on the beach and were graced with the most beautiful sunset ever:

And that was a wrap on our more full/complete North Shore of Oahu day! It was 100% the right call to go back up there and I’m so glad we did.

Final Waikiki Night!

We drove back to Waikiki and didn’t get back until probably almost 8:30. Now we still needed dinner but didn’t have stuff to eat really in our hotel room.

So, we quickly cleaned up and ventured back down into Waikiki Beach for some food! Being Friday night, Waikiki was hopping- and also, there was a huge Pan-Pacific festival going on.

It was packed down there and the vibe was insane!!! Really fun, actually.

We decided to go back to Maui Brewing Company since it’s a huge place (easy to get into) and the boys loved their food there the other day. (We did, too.)

Ate a fairly quick final farewell to Oahu dinner overlooking Waikiki and had a great time.

It was 10:00 something by the time we walked back to the hotel. Such a gorgeous night out, too.

We had an AMAZING AMAZING week in Oahu!!

But next up.. Kauai! We still had to pack up all our stuff, but fortunately our flight wasn’t until 12:40 the next day, so no big rush or early morning.

Stay tuned for Kauai recaps! 🌺🌺