Hello to all!
My job will be taking me to Hawaiʻi, so I thought about going a little earlier and exploring Oʻahu in depth. First off, I went to Kauaʻi four years back and loved everything from the lack of people to the hiking, but especially the small, laid back towns. Does anyone have any suggestions about any laid back town where I can catch some surf or just chill out on the beach? And lastly, I thought about doing some WOOFing while here so I'm hoping someone on here has had experience doing this and could shed some light on how everything goes down. Thanks and any other friendly advice concerning Oʻahu is greatly appreciated!
That would be - the surfer's town on North Shore (pronounced holly-eva) - can't get much more laid back! I haven't been there in years, but I doubt if it's changed much.
"Surf capitals come and go, but for nearly half a century, one thing hasn't changed: The road to surfing stardom still rolls right through Haleiwa, gateway to Oahu's North Shore and some of the sport's most fabled waves: Pipeline, Sunset, Waimea. In a sense, Haleiwa, which marks one end of the "seven-mile miracle" stretch of beaches and some 40 surf breaks, is two different towns. One materializes every winter, when thousands of fans and photographers follow the planet's best surfers—including North Shore residents Jamie O'Brien, Pancho Sullivan, and Fred Patacchia—as they converge for high-profile contests like the World Cup and the Pipe Masters, braving sometimes-lethal shallow reefs, monster tubes, and wave facesthat can top 30 feet.
Once the mobs and the hype (and the swells) die down, the other Haleiwa reappears:
a sleepy old sugar-mill town where Jack Johnson learned to strum a guitar at backyard barbecues. It's a laid-back anti-Waikiki, where feral chickens shriek from the branches of mango trees, locals gear up at any of a dozen or so surf shops and refuel on ahi tacos at Cholo's, and grandparents cheer on longboarding preteens in the annual Menehune Surf Championships. On the job front, survival often entails doubling up on tourist-related gigs, driving an hour or so to Honolulu, or sponging off your friends. On the surfing front, respect is earned, not granted: Wise newcomers start out at the less hyped, less crowded breaks, such as Kammies or the more challenging Pupukea, until they find their place in the pecking order."
[ 25-Feb-2011, at 09:53 by Daawgon ]
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