Day 2 came and the jet lag was in full force! We woke up at 6:00am and couldn't force ourselves to sleep any longer. We got up, got ready for the day, and ventured outside.
The hotel wasn't called "Beachside" for nothing! It was literally across the street. We crossed over and I snapped that picture just as the sun was rising behind us. It was quiet because it was so early, so we strolled down the street to Cheeseburgers in Paradise for breakfast, where we had toast and bacon and a "scrambled cheeseburger." And Tyler got his fresh papaya that he has been dying for. Mmm.
After breakfast we went back to our hotel to wait for our tour to pick us up. We are avid fans of the TV show "Lost," which was filmed in Hawaii, so we were taking a day tour all around the island to different filming sites. When we got back, there were cop cars with lights flashing and a big crowd, so we thought some accident had happened. But the cops looked too pretty and clean to be real. And then we noticed lights and cameras. We realized they were filming "Hawaii Five-O" right in front of our hotel! And the best part is, the actor they were filming was Daniel Dae Kim--who was a major charater (Jin) in Lost!!! We sprinted over to get a closer look and take some pictures.
We inched closer and closer until we were right next to him!!! But just as Tyler was reaching to ask for his autograph, the crowd wrangler came and told us to move because we were in the shot. (Would've been fine by me!) So we were moved back.
I took a few more pictures and then we headed back towards our pick-up spot. We passed a port-a-potty trailer that I found pretty funny. They must have problems with tourists using their bathroom, and clearly it upsets them!
Also, we discovered the motorcycle had a double. In case being parked in the scene for two minutes was too stressful...?
Pretty dang cool, if you ask me.
Well, anyway, we crossed back to our hotel and got picked up for our tour. It was most excellent. We spent the whole day in a mini-van with two other couples (both newlyweds on their honeymoons) being driven from place to place by a man who is actually more obsessed with Lost than we are! The first thing we did was drive out to Waimea Falls. There are several scenes filmed around/in the pool under the falls.
Not only did we get to see it, but we also got to swim in it! It's 30+ feet deep and ice cold. We were told there was a ledge to sit on under the waterfall, but it turned out to be a giant slippery rock, and we almost drowned trying to get up on it. We gave up on that pretty quickly.
The next stop was the crash beach. It's on the North Shore, and the point where the land ends is the western-most point of Oahu. It was very pretty.
This is definitely a local beach and not a tourist one. A fisherman had his poles stuck in the sand, and he was out spear fishing at the same time!
I went down closer to take a picture and just as I did a giant wave came and crashed into me all the way above my knees. Oops. Good thing I didn't get swept out to sea or drop my camera or something!
This is also an important spot on the crash beach. Tyler told me he took the picture so I started walking away, and then I heard the click of the camera... *sigh*
How romantic...
Really close to the crash beach was another important place: the Dharma Barracks! They were very, very cool. A lot of things in the show happen here, so it was really fun to explore.
The next place was a beautiful Buddhist temple in the back of a cemetery. It was used for scenes that took place in South Korea. It was a really peaceful and pretty place.
Many times throughout the day, our guide would park the van on the side of the road and we'd step through a fence or around a hill and suddenly we would be in the middle of the rain forest! It was really cool that we didn't have to hike for hours to get to such pretty, secluded places. Which is why they liked to film there, I suppose.
This was a very thick bamboo forest where the opening and closing scenes of the show were filmed. It was crazy how close together the bamboo was growing. It made it really dark in there.
This was a cathedral that was used to be Oxford in one part of the show, and a Scottish monastery in another.
And here is another site of several rain forest Lost scenes.
Nearby was the entrance to The Caves from season 1. Although it just looks like the opening of a cave. There really aren't any caves there. It's all the magic of CGI.
There were lots of other interesting places we saw, but we were going through them so fast I couldn't possibly take pictures of them all. The tour ended at 5pm, so we enjoyed a nice relaxing swim in Waikiki and a trip to the International Marketplace while we waited for my sister Sarah to get off work. (She works in Hawaii, in case you didn't know!) Then we met her and some of her friends at Cheesecake Factory for a delicious dinner. Darn that jet lag, though. We were falling asleep in our cheesecake! So after dinner, Day 2 came to an end.
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