That’s right, after a tip off from a cameraman of the TV series “Lost” who was staying in our hostel, we had plans for the final adventure of our trip. He lent us his car for two days and drew us a map on a napkin. That was all we needed, apparently, as it was ‘dead easy, you can’t miss it, just look for the padlocked gate’.
We were off to find ‘Lost’, after posing with a tin man in downtown Honolulu, obviously!
Driving up to the North Shore in a 4X4 was pretty exciting, although as night began to close in and we still hadn’t found the signs it became apparent that we may in fact, ironically, be lost. Still driving along the main road which now no longer had any street lights lining it and for the last five minutes hadn’t even had any road markings, suddenly we were on a beach. We had literally driven straight onto the beach, but this wasn’t the right beach, as we soon found out! After lighting a fire, with our socks and over-sized pieces of driftwood, and encountering some undesirables we figured it was best to hole up in our car and wait until morning to re-evaluate our route!
Once we’d managed to get our car moving again (somehow we managed to get it stuck on a rock and was the main reason we were unable to find another beach to spend the night) we were off to actually find ‘Lost’. An hour later and still not much luck we decided to call our buddy at the hostel who had sent us on this bizarre adventure. He advised us that once we’d found the padlocked gate ‘Then you’ll see a “No Parking” sign, park by that, climb over the “No Trespassing” sign that leads you to a Private beach, it’s just down there.’ Sure enough, he was right!
The Papa’iloa beach (sometimes called ‘Police Beach’) was stunning and utterly deserted, aside from two huge turtles who were surprisingly inquisitive and shuffled over to say hello. Ambling a little further down this beach we finally found the set! But our excitement was short-lived by the harsh bark of a local security guard who shooed us off the site and chased us all the way off the beach. We legged it back to our car and sped off just before a tow truck turned up to take it away.
The next stop in this wild adventure was Hanauma Bay for snorkelling, a final chance to make friends with the fishes and even more turtles before the last-minute rush back to Honolulu to return the car to our friend, grab our luggage and leg it to the airport! What an epic adventure!
On our way to the airport, our final sight of Hawai’i was this awesome billboard. The Hawai’ians do have a great sense of humour!!
The Adventures of Elle Coco 