As promised in our previous post, the short video we shot of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge from the coastal road can be found here.

A small update (08/07/2010): I wrote yesterday in this post that it was the Black Pearl but I just found out that it was no longer named the Black Pearl but the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’, Captain Blackbeard’s ship. This probably explains why the ship looks so damaged (and why they were rebuilding the ship when it first arrived). The ship, however, did arrive as the Black Pearl, but the current name is the Queen Anne’s Revenge.. Due to this, I changed the titles and text in this message of this message a bit.

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I have blogged before about the Pirates of the Caribbean and them going to film here in Hawaii but until recently we thought it wouldn’t be really accessible, it would’ve been more luck than anything else to see something of it all.

However, last week, we read in the local paper that they were filming in a pretty nice accessible location and today we decided to take a look if they were still there. After searching a bit along the coast (we knew on what side of the island they would be but not the exact location haha), I suddenly noticed a few masts and figured I would know where the ship would be, and I was right (they would be here for about two weeks, or so we were told, so if you are in the area and want to take a look in the coming days, you can find them here (click)).

Unfortunately we didn’t see them actually do some filming, and we didn’t see Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) either (it was probably too late on the day), but we did see the ship ‘the Black Pearl’ ‘the Queen Anne’s Revenge’. I can tell you it looked a lot better than the last time we’ve seen it, when they were still building and doing repairs and such (see pictures of that here). It looked more ‘finished’ now. Well.. finished?

To be honest, it kind of looked like the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge has been on fire… I don’t know if this is supposed to be because of the many fights in the earlier movies of the Pirates of the Caribbean, or if it was something that happened in this movie (and what we will have to see when the movie comes out). It is, however, very clear that when you look closely on the pictures that you can see the ship was pretty battered. The masts look a lot shorter than they should be (or so I think), you can see soot and burned wood everywhere, pieces of railing are missing and you can continue this list. It was pretty cool to see.

Next to the pictures of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge we also made a few pictures of the surroundings, which I will add below, so who knows, you might recognize some of the area when you’re watching the movie

And like promised, a few pictures of the surroundings.. I am curious if we will still recognize it all when we watch the movie..

We also filmed a little bit from the road that goes around the bay over there, I still have to convert that and upload it to Youtube. When that’s done, I will add it to our blog

I know.. it is pretty quiet on our blog lately. I cannot do much about it really because there are not that many things happening, and ok, maybe sometimes there is but sometimes I just don’t feel like writing for all kinds of reasons, plus it is a lot of work to write a piece like this, and to translate it. But don’t worry, no news means good news

I wrote in one of my older posts that we would have a new layout soon. Well, that layout is waiting, but I haven’t had much time to actually implement it into the blog. Mostly I am just too busy as Isabella is becoming a handful nowadays. It might take a while longer haha.

But ok, how are things here? Things are doing welll We cannot complain, nice weather and we go out once in a while, like to the beach for example. Isabella really likes the beach haha. Here are some pictures

Last weekend we also went to the Byodo-In temple at the other side of the island:

I don’t think we have that much new pictures besides these (we have them, of course, but they are a bit older by now and they don’t show anything really new in the sense of the backgrounds and such).

Isabella will have her first birthday later this month, so we surely will have some more pictures by then. There will be (and I am not surprised that this amount will be doubled) about 50 people coming to her birthday, we’re doing a buffet through a catering with some Hawaiian food, yummy We will do this a week before her real birthday because there will be some relatives from the mainland who will be visiting the islands, so they can celebrate along (this was the wish of Michelle’s mother). There goes our small party which we originally wanted haha. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, we will still do something small on her real birthday

Maybe we will go back to Kaneohe later this week as we found out last weekend that they are currently shooting for the Pirates of the Carribean on that side of the island.. who knows, we might see some famous people

We went on another fieldtrip last wednesday, this time we went towards the North Shore to grab some breakfast (haha, travelling towards the other end of the island just for some breakfast hehe). We were craving for some delicious garlic shrimp from Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck. They are not quite cheap (I mean, 12 bucks for 12 shrimp is not exactly what you call cheap, right?) but they are oh so delicious and really worth going there once in a while.

On our way there we made some pictures, of course. Unfortunately some pictures are a bit blurry but that is because they were mostly made by Michelle while I was driving. I will try to make some sort of a photo report

Of course we first have the trip towards the North Shore itself which went mostly on dry out land as you can see on the picture below. You are basically driving through previous sugarcane and pineapple fields, there is still some being harvested although it is not much:

While we were going towards the North Shore we also came, completely unexpected, in some sort of traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. We were really wondering what happened until we saw some signs in the distance saying that there was some road construction going on. Right, we had to wait for about 30 minutes, if not longer, in the middle of the island and basically in the middle of nothing since everything was so far away.

After this all we found the North Shore, even though it would still be a long drive haha. The road that you can see on the following pictures is mostly a straight line, with the exception of some small corners, which goes from a few hundred meters height towards sealevel.

Once down on sealevel, you arrive in Haleiwa, a surfersvillage which is also featured in a lot of surf movies. If you have been in the south a lot and arrive in this village (or somewhere else on the North Shore), you will notice a different mentality with the people but also a different kind of buildings. A building in the style of the next picture is something that you see a lot on the north coast of Oahu:

And while being in Haleiwa, you really have to go Matsumoto’s grocery store where they sell shave ice. Unfortunately both Michelle and I thought that the shave ice wasn’t all that good as it used to be last year and we basically think the shop in Pearl City, where we go on a frequent base for our shave ice needs, is much better but oh well, Matsumoto cannot miss in a trip to the North Shore. Michelle found a Gecko while we were eating shave ice, I tried to make a picture of it but it became a bit blurry (me and my shaky hands):

Geckos are something that you can see frequently out here, we also got one at home which comes out at night sometimes. I think to search for food and because it gets a bit more cool at night. We just let it be there since it is harmless, not scary and all he does is basically eat insects that we dont want here

When I was still in the Netherlands I also told my sister and daughter about people having horses on Oahu. They did not know this but to prove it, here is a (blurry) picture of the horses that we saw in a distance::

Right, like said, we went towards Kahuku where you can find Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck. On our way there we come close to the sea at some points as you can see on the next pictures. The second picture is, by the way, a picture of Waimea Beach, one of the more known beaches of the North Shore.

Unfortunately we did not see any spectacular waves as the ones that you can see sometimes at the North Shore of Oahu, it was clouded that day, pretty windy too on the North Shore but fortunately there was not any rain that day. We also passed by a spot where they were having some surfing championships (we think at the Pipeline but we’re unsure). Because we drove a bit slow on that point we could see a bit of it but unfortunately we were so stupid to not make any pictures… oh well, that will come since we want to go to some different championships in a couple of weeks

We ate at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck after this and with my stupid head I also forgot to make some pictures of this place but, if you want, you can find some pictures on this website. They weren’t taken by us but that’s ok. The food was, as expected, really great, really worth well driving there even though it is a bit expensive.

After the food we went ‘around the corner’ of the island, it is not really a corner, of course, but since we went from the North Shore to the Windward side of Oahu (or instead of driving on the northern coast, we went to drive on the eastcoast) and, honestly, as soon as we drove ‘around the corner’ (there is a corner which might let you see it like that), I got a slap in my face. All the sudden it was humid and stuffy. The humidity is a lot higher on the eastcoast of Oahu and you can really notice it from one moment to another, quite a weird feeling if you ask me. It also rains a lot more on this side so, as you can see on the next picture (which was practically taken on that ‘corner’), there was a lot more green to see.

We drove now from the north towards the south along the coastline and again we saw some horses (again my apologies for the blurry picture haha):

We even saw a cow later at the coast (I did not know they had cows here) which was being photographed. Maybe they arranged it like this, I don’t know, it is the first time I see a cow here anyways. A bit weird sighting to see that animal next to the ocean haha. We also made a picture of it but all you see on it is a spot… maybe next time I should stop a bit more along the way so Michelle can take some better pictures haha.

We did make some other pictures of this side of the coast also:

The first picture is just a picture, taken while driving towards the south.

The second picture is of Kualoa Ranch, a place where you can do lots of activities (yes, even horse riding in the mountains). We want to go here some day, many movies are also recorded near this place in the valley, such as Godzilla (the foothprints are still there) and many other wellknown movies.

The third picture is just a picture to show how the mountains can be totally inside the clouds sometimes. It was really clouded sometimes during that day, you can see it really well on this picture.

After that we went to a mall in Kaneohe to buy something (which they didn’t have haha) and we also went to a petstore there, where they had some naked Guinea pigs :S Those creatures are really something, they look just like pigs (maybe thats why they’re named Guinea pigs lol):

And then it was time to go towards home over the H3. We could have gone more south, towards Diamond Head, Koko Head and many other sightseeing spots but we wanted to keep that for later. Like said, it was really clouded sometimes and it is kind of funny to show it with the next picture where the sun goes through some part of the cloudes and where it looks a bit like the sky opened up to bring an angel to earth, or to take a spirit back up to heaven, a bit like you can see in movies also hehe:

And then we go on to the last picture since we are at the end of our journey:

On this picture you can see the entrance of the tunnel on the H3. On the top you can see, again, the clouds in which the mountains are hidden. The mountains are about 700-800 meters high at this point and since we were at some 250-300 meters height, you can see there is quite some mountain missing.

After this we went through the tunnel and back towards home (after being in traffic for a while since it was rushhour hehe).