Exploring Hawaii - North Shore of Oahu and Dole Pineapple Plantation

The North Shore of Oahu is very different from our home hood of Waikiki. It is a quiet retreat where you would not find high-rise resorts, upscale stores or fancy restaurants. It is a place to escape from hustle and bustle which gives you an opportunity to slow down and think and have few calm moments. At the same time, North Shore is a place to push yourself to the unthinkable limits if you dare to ride waves on one of the famous surfing beaches.

To make the experience even more unique, we left our Sebring to rest at the parking lot and took a mighty Honda V-Star for a ride. After few clunky turns, Ray regained his expert riding skills and was carving some very sharp edges on the island highways.

The most popular surfing spots on the North Shore are : the Banzai Beach Park (The Pipeline), Sunset Beach Park, Waimea Bay Park, and Ali’s Beach. Only expert daredevils have the courage and the skill to challenge 20-ft tall monster waves Hawaii is famous for.

This is Sunset Beach. The waves may not be 20ft tall, but they are massive and ferocious. Enlarge the pictures and look close to spot tiny dots of surfers in the waves.

When Ray and I took surfing lessons and asked our instructor if she would surf at the North Shore, she mentioned that one should be able to hold his breath for several minutes because of the danger of being pulled under the water for a long time.

On the way to North Shore we passed Dole Pineapple plantation. While Hawaii is famous for its pineapples, the fruit is not original to Hawaii. It originated in South America and was discovered by Columbus during his visits to Caribbean Islands. Columbus brought it to Europe and the fruit was later brought to Hawaii by Captain Cook in 1770’s.

Dole was the first to build a plantation on Oahu. He also constructed a cannery to solve the problem of long distance travel required to transport the fruits to the mainland.

Neither of us has ever seen how pineapples grew and we both thought (how ignorant of us) that they grew on trees. Apparently, pineapples grow on very low plants which produce one fruit at a time. Cultivating pineapples is a hardship even today because each one needs to be planted by hand. Gathering pineapples is an even more difficult job: each fruit needs to be cut off the plant by hand. Pineapple leaves are very sharp so the plantation workers have to wear solid protective clothing.

Turns out there is more than one type of pineapples. While writing this post I learned that there are actually five of them. The most widely available one is called The Smooth Cayenne. We also saw the Red Spanish pineapple.

We got pineappled-out when we completed our plantation tour with pineapple ice-cream and a chocolate-covered pineapple.

If you like to learn more about the history of pineapples or about Dole Plantations visit these links:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/pineapplehist.htm
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/22634/the_history_of_the_incredible_pineapple.html?cat=17
http://www.dole-plantation.com/

Some useful links about North Shore beaches
http://www.aloha.com/~lifeguards/nshore.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/43329/best_beaches_on_the_north_shore_of.html?cat=16