Arriving at Paradise helicopters located at Turtle Bay Resort, they profusely apologized for the schedule mishap and got me all checked in. Ihad to wait for two other people, Shelby and Joe. We went through the safety briefing, got our life vest packs on,and wet out to board the helicopter. I was doing the doors off tour so I got the front seat up by the pilot. We had to be loaded into the helicopter one by one so the ground person could help is with our seat belts. I had a five buckle harness which I was thankful for. Headsets were put on and tested and then we were ready for lift off. I had a mini panic attack wondering what the hell I was doing on a doors off helicopter but the fear and anxiety melted into excitement. Plus it didn't really matter because we were up in the air and starting the tour; there was no turning back now. The ride was pretty amazing. There's so much you can see from the air that you can't see from the ground. We flew over the North Shore and into Kualoa valley which was beautiful. We flew by the 1000 foot falls and turned around to view it twice. I was not a fan of the turns. It made me a little queasy but also I was directly over the land below. I held on for dear life the entire trip. One hand on the door strap and one on my camera. We flew over H3 which is one of three highways, this one which goes through the mountains, and into Honolulu airspace. We flew over a Pearl Harbor and enjoyed the topside view of The USS Missiouri and the Arizona Memorial. Onour way back we saw an army base with grounded helicopters lining the field, passed end the pineapple fields of Dole and saw the world's largest maze from above. By this point I was not feeling well, but I was determined not to blow chunks. I breathed in and out, took random pictures with the camera in a stable position inmy lef so I didn't have to look through the view finder, and I kept my vision straight ahead. When Captain Bob told us we had about 4 minutes left, I was pretty ecstatic. When we saw the Turtle Bay Resort, I cheered in my head. The touchdown was a lot more smooth than the liftoff. There was one bump at the end as the helicopter jumped over from its original landing space but other than that it was smooth. I was I a state of shock that I had actually done it, and Captain Bob had to help me with my headset and harness. Ground control came over to get me out of the helicopter and I was back on solid ground. Once the helicopter fully shut down, yeah I had to exit as the propellers were still propelling, we had time to take a few photos with the helicopter. I'm glad I did it, and at such a beautiful place.
Next on our list was to visit Dole plantation to see the pineapple fields. It was super busy and the line for tickets was long,but we got through it and headed for the Pineapple Express, the train which goes around the plantation and gives some history of the plantation. When we finally got on board, we had to wait through two train boardings so we could sit together we were in the back of the train which worked out well becuase one of the drivers sat behind us in the last seat and pointed out different things to us that the audio track left out, or pointed out where the bananas were. We lucked out there. After the 20 minute train ride it was time for lunch at the Dole grille. The food wasn't bad, but was more interesting was watching the chickens eat leftover food, I was hoping they weren't practicing canabalism, and a cat wanting to eat the food. Surprisingly the cat didn't attack the chicken, it was the other way around! Nimbus would have been all over those birds. Once the birds had moved on, the cat moved in to finish off what the chickens had left. We had one last activity, which was the garden tour which came with an audio guide. It was cool to see all the plants and hear the history and uses for all, but unless you're really into plants I would skip this.
With Dole finished, it was time to head back to Waikiki. Unfortuntely, my ipad, which had the directions, died at the last minute so we'd had to rely on my map reading skills. We stopped at the first gas station to fill up the tank, $4.29 a gallon, and I set to work with the map. They should start calling me 'Compass McGee' as I was able to figure out where we were on the map and how to get back to the hotel without getting lost or having to turn around!
The returning of the car was a huge debacle. We were suppose to return it the next day, but had no where to park it. If we turned it I early, after the car rental place had closed down we were going to be charged a fee. The rental car place didn't open until 7 the next morning and we had a tour leaving at 7 the next morning. We decided to just bite the bullet and pay the late fee, what else were we really going to do? The only problem was that the lot was full. We drove all the way up and then all the way back down. We were suppose to park in a space numbered above 50. Even though there were spaces specifically for rental cars which was annoying. We were just going to park the car in the rental space when we noticed a few vehicles had come back down so we decided to try again and we were rewarded with a parking space.
The day had been a long one, but we knew we were going to have an early start the next morning and needed water and possibly a breakfast snack. Plus I was hungry and was craving pizza. We started down towards a food market, not an ABC store, a do the way we saw a few pizza boxes and I was intrigued. The second box I saw walking buy I was sold and just had to have some pizza. We found the outdoor place not much further along the street. We ordered a Pepporoni Plus with black olives and red peppers, but were told the wait would be between 30-35 minutes. While we waited, we went back to a little 24 hour market we had seen and got our water and muffins and the went back to wait. The whole set up for the pizza place was small, a two man job. One to take the orders and one to make the pizza and we were able to view the whole process. We felt bad for the chef who had to stand next to the open oven but it was amazing to watch him make pizza after pizza. When our pizza was ready we headed to the beach to enjoy it under the night sky.
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