Visiting Tedde in Hawaii

After a VERY challenging semester finishing up my last pre-nursing science courses, I decided I should get away for a little bit over the summer and travel somewhere fun. What better way to start off the summer than visiting my sister, Tedde, in Hawaii! :) Although she had to work almost every day I was there, it was still really nice to see her and spend time with her for 10 days. Her house and the island were beautiful and I can't wait to visit again some time! My friends Amanda and McKenzie came along to entertain me during the time Tedde was working, so we were pretty busy every day.

My friend, Amanda, and me sitting in Tedde's living room with our welcoming Hawaiian leis 

 This is a view of Hanauma Bay where we ended up just having a $1 picnic (the price for parking) because we were too cheap to pay the $8 each to go to a tourist-crowded beach to snorkel.

Our lovely picnic location where we feasted with the mongeese

 Manoa Falls

After driving for miles and miles up and through the rain forest looking for a trail to hike, we got to the top where we found this tree swing. Although it didn't look very sturdy, it had a beautiful view of the city of Honolulu and the beaches below. 

Koi fish drawn on the seat of the swing...I thought they were cool :) 

Amanda and I drove to the North Shore, in hopes of finding a remote and peaceful beach to escape from the busy-ness of the south side of the island where Tedde lives, and we were in luck! This beach was huge, beautiful and peaceful and we had it almost all to ourselves!

Enjoying a Dole Whip float (pineapple soft-serve ice cream floating in pineapple juice) after a day at the beach. SO good!

This a picture of Maunawili Falls and the pools surrounding it. We hiked forever through the mud and rain and got lost a number of times, but finally found it when we realized we had to walk upstream of the river throughout the last part. Although it's hard to see, there were rocks to jump from next to the waterfall into the pool...which was a nice break after walking through the bug infested humidity. (I got somewhere in between 65-70 bug bites that day, and that's including using my bug spray!) 

Putting bug spray on before our journey through the muddy Maunawili trails 

After McKenzie joined us half way through the trip, we decided to finally spend a day in Waikiki, although we weren't all fans of the whole tourist scene, it was still nice to be downtown for one day. 

We bumped into the parrot man outside of the International Marketplace and took pictures with his awesome parrot collection 

A beautiful sunset on the Waikiki beach 

So, we decided to give Amanda some island braids....they charge $70-$90 for doing a full head of hair on the streets of Waikiki, so McKenzie and I thought we would see how well we could do for FREE! Not too bad, if you ask me :) 

This is a view of Makapu'u Bay from where we hiked up to go climbing for the afternoon with Tedde and her friends. I wish we had more places like this at home, I would definitely get back into climbing with ease! 

Me rapelling down the wall

It was SUPER windy up by the climbing routes, but it was nice to get away from the Hawaiian humidity for a while :)