Kayaking on North Shore

Besides relaxing on the beach, and “doing nothing,” my list of requirements wasn’t long for our trip to Hawaii. So, being the awesome wife that I am, I asked my husband if there was anything he specifically wanted to do. When he said that kayaking on North Shore would be fun, I set out to make that happen.

Using the Oahu Go-Card

Because I wanted to think less and play/relax more, I bought* the Oahu Go-Card for our time on the island. I didn’t want to spend time researching all the different companies and packages, so this card was our saving grace.

Long story short: it’s an almost** all-access pass to any of the 40+ attractions on the card, and you can pick how many days you want it for. You can use your pass any day within a two-week period; so it’s not just consecutive days.

* Not a sponsored post, but if you buy it through this link, I do get a whole dollar from it…let’s just get that out of the way.
** I say “almost” because you can pay to upgrade/prolong different activities/attractions if you want to through each specific business.

Once I bought the card I looked for things we wanted to do. Then we booked those activities through the company listed, and mentioned the Go-Card at the time of booking—we never had an issue with someone not knowing what the card was.

We’d simply show up on the day of our adventure, show our card numbers from the app on our phone, and be good to go. Total win.

Getting to North Shore

Since we were staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, we didn’t really need a car…except for the day we wanted to travel around the island.

So in true Hawiian style, we rented a Jeep through Turo for the day!

Turo is basically like an AirBnB for vehicles. People rent out their own cars for however long you both decide on. You can either pick it up from a designated location, or some people will bring them to you, and then Uber back to their house/work. It’s totally legit and worked out great for our day up north.

The drive up to North Shore was stunning. We listened to Jack Johnson with the windows down, and enjoyed our time together.

North Shore, the iconic surfing spot for Oahu, isn’t as long/big as I thought it would be (only seven miles long); I imagined gigantic beaches (almost like the SoCal coast), and it packed with surfers. Either we didn’t go to the right spot, or I should’ve researched a bit more, because it was actually a cute little village-like area.

We booked our kayak adventure through Sea and Board Sports Hawaii, and showed up at our scheduled time on Laniakea Beach in Haleiwa.

Their makeshift office on wheels was parked right next to the beach with their kayaks ready to go. (You could also paddle board and surf with them, too.)

Once we slathered on the sun screen, and slipped off our shoes, we got ready for our adventure.

Before we hopped into our little two-person kayak, our instructor disclaimed that kayaking takes a lot of patience and teamwork.

He also threw in jokingly that married couples often request a counselor at the end of the adventure, because it’s not as easy as it looks.

Challenge accepted!

The Oahu Go-Card gave us our kayak rental for a total of three hours, which was ample time.

I think we were out on the water for maybe two hours. It got really hot, so we finished early. There’s no doubt that we would’ve stayed longer if we either started earlier or if it was cooler.

I loved that we had access to go pretty much wherever we wanted. Our instructor warned us about the harder parts of the ocean—where the surf and undertow were stronger—so we kept our distance from that area, and enjoyed the calmer waters.

Before venturing away from shore we familiarized ourselves with what the heck we were doing, and we figured out how to work together though to glide through the water.

My biggest fear was capsizing and falling into the water. Thankfully, we never tipped over (hallelujah), and we never ran into anyone, any animal, or the shore (whew!)!

In fact, by the time we finished, we were kayaking along North Shore in almost perfect harmony.