The Circle Island Tour

On Saturday, we decided to take the bus on the circle island route. The bus in Hawaii is extremely useful, and runs nearly everywhere someone may want to go. Like any other bus, it nay take a little while longer to get some places than it would with a rental car, but there are some definite advantages to the bus. Starting with the low, low price of a monthly pass of $60(compared to 2.25 per trip). For senior ciizens t is even more ridiculous, as they can buy a year pass for $30 total.

The circle island route starts at Ala Moana Shopping Center, and goes up H2 through Mililani and.  On its way towards the north shore of the island and Haleiwa.

Haleiwa is an old plantation town that in recent years has become more of a small shopping area for those looking for something slightly less touristy than Waikiki. Like many of the other places on the island, there is a very quiet beach there.

After getting back on the bus, we continued the tour northeast. The bus follows Kamehameha highway the rest of the way, and we got off at the Turtle Bay resort, which is where the first half of the route ends.

The Turtle Bay resort is a semi-private resort up on Oahu's North Shore. For all intents and purposes, it is a very nice resort, but there really isn't a whole lot out there at that point besides the resort. As a result, nearly all of the guests of the resort go to the beach that is there. We had packed a picnic lunch, and found a shady spot under a tree near the beach to relax and eat.

After taking some pictures on the rocky edge of the beach, we headed back to the bus stop to wait for the next bus going to the windward side of the island. The bus was supposed to run every 30 minutes, so we figured we would not be there for long.

30 minutes went into 45 and nearly an hour passed before the bus we wanted finally arrived. In the meantime, we talked with another person waiting for the bus. An elderly lady, she was definitely a local. She told us that she took this bus just for the views off of the road, and that she thought it was one of the prettiest stretches in all the island. She was right. Around every turn seemed to be another small to mid-size beach, but missing were the tourists. Only the locals really stop at these beaches, she said, since they were so far from Honolulu proper. The most amazing thing to see was the water. Off the windward coast, these beaches were very much untouched, and not really affected by the issues that large quantities of tourists can bring. As a result, we could see at least 4 different shades of blue in the water as we passed it, and was practically clear in a lot of areas.

As the bus ride continued, the elderly lady continued to point out different spots off the side of the road, which realistically we probably would not have really noticed without her there. About halfway back to Honolulu, another local man also began to point out different landmarks along the ride. Essentially, we had a pair of tour guides from the time we left the resort, without having to pay for them. As we came back into the Honolulu area via the Pali Highway, we were shown a couple of locations that we needed to visit at some point during our stay here in Hawaii.

Overall, it was a very interesting trip, and has given us a whole lot of places that we can go visit that are a bit off the beaten path here in Hawaii.