Try an island vacation at home

O'ahu's beautiful North Shore beaches are just one of the reasons for O'ahu residents to vacation at "home." Advertiser Library photo • Feb. 2003

Advertiser Staff

Here's an idea: For your next vacation, stay home.

That is, skip the ticket lines and the security hassle and the rental car and just pack some stuff, hop in the car and become a tourist on your own island. With the money you save, you might be able to afford a longer vacation, or a more luxurious spot to stay, or pricier activities such as a glider ride or a whale sail.

That's the premise of this project involving a half-dozen Advertiser reporters and a lot of nice surprises. For O'ahu folks, it was a toss-up between Waikiki and the North Shore as the places we ordinarily leave to the tourists. We chose the North Shore, but we'll get back to Waikiki another time. Our Neighbor Island correspondents filed itineraries for their own islands, which we'll share next week.

O'ahu's ever-changing North Shore offers a hodgepodge of activities for kama'aina

Stephen Gould, curator at the North Shore Surf & Cultural Museum, shows one of the once-popular paipo boards on display at the museum. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Hale'iwa Town characterizes the blend: plantation remnant, tourist trap, surf village.

From Kahuku to Ka'ena, the shoreline offers a constantly changing scene: exclusive resort, wildlife preserve, internationally known surfing beach, family-friendly park, basking beach for turtles, nesting place for wedge-tailed shearwaters, storied heiau, diving hole, snorkeling reef, harbor, historic valley, wave-bashed trail and remote dunes.

Even with 60 years of residence on O'ahu between us, we found ourselves oohing and aahing like first-time tourists.

We learned that settling into a vacation rental may just be the most relaxed form of vacation there is. ("What did you do? Well, let's see. Read, ate, slept, swam.") We found a restaurant to die for in Turtle Bay Resort's 21 Degrees North — as sophisticated as anything townside. We swam with sharks and hiked hidden trails. We listened to shearwaters moan and call through the night as they huddled in their beachfront nests. We sipped lattes with surfers and ogled a pair of abstract sculptures that turned out to be Boscoe Burns' board-waxing shoes in the North Shore Surf & Cultural Museum. And we held on to our pocketbooks with trembling hands as we encountered the way-too-tempting shops of Hale'iwa Town, surprising in their variety, sophistication and selection.