Chinaman's Hat and NYE

 

Chinaman's Hat is this island standing off the coast of Kualoa Ranch.  The thing to do is to wade out to the island - there is only a shallow reef between the beach and the island.  We checked the tide maps and began our venture about 3 hrs before the lowest tide.  We bought some reef shoes which are a necessity. To make a long story short this is one of those activities we slightly underestimated.  On the way to the island we walked the reef about 1/3 of the way but then had to swim the other 2/3 of the way - it was just too deep for us short folk.  I'm an average swimmer... it's just a little intimidating to be out there in open ocean, so exposed.  But we made it!  It was about a 40 minute trip.

The path to 'wade across' (left) and the trail down from the summit (right).

 The trail down, me being staying put, afraid to ascend further (left) and the trail up (right) (!).

So once you get to the island many people scramble around it on very hazardous trails.  We saw some silly girls who had just come from the top and Matthew decided we should climb it.  From my observation of the photo I'd say the kinder slope is about 2:1.  Well interlace within that a few vertical rock faces that are 1:1, and you've got a pretty daunting trail.  And I'll loosely call it a trail, because at some point the vegetation stops and you are left just to scale and scramble on exposed rock outcroppings.  Needless to say in my oversized, wet reef shoes and wearing nothing but a swimsuit I felt less than prepared for the climb.  I got about half way up and stopped.  But Matthew was into it, so he finished the climb and made his way to the top alone.  About 15 minutes later he makes it back to the point where I stopped and confessed that the climb was very challenging and that that was the most scared he had been in a long time.  I thought the view wasn't so bad from where I had stopped.

Of course I didn't get to this view at the top.  Did I mention that another factor to complicate his climb was that he took along the small dry bag with my camera and his iPhone inside, just to make sure he got a photo?  I'm a little obsessed with documentation as you can tell.:) It was worth it for this great view of Kualoa Ranch!

A quick photo together before we begin the final descent. 

Also a popular place to kayak to.  I briefly considered stealing one, not really excited about swimming back to shore.  But the tide had fallen enough that our return trip only required a short bit of swimming.

Below:  Matthew with the dry bag.  On the left we model our awesome, ill-fitting ABC Store reef shoes and the bruises and scrapes from walking the reef.

We finished off our last day on O'ahu with shrimp from Giovanni's and spent the last hours of sunlight watching the surfers on Sunset Beach.

We hurried back to our apartment where we finished packing our bags and did some furious cleaning to prepare for the next guests.  Then we showered and hit the town!

NYE events: fireworks at the Hilton, a late dinner at Roy's, and then fireworks again on Waikiki at midnight.  And did I mention drinks?  Way too much to drink.