Sharkman Cave and the Lower West Side of Oahu

I took a break from my quest for waterfalls and instead decided to check out a cave I had heard about on Oahu. I had found a small cave on my Makapu'u Lighthouse Hike but when I say cave I mean "dark, slimy, tunnel in the rock to huge caverns cave." Supposedly this one was much larger.

It's called the sharkman cave since in the early days of Hawaii, a god, born from a shark father and a human mother lived in this cave. Once the sharkman had gotten a taste of meat he lived on the bodies of Hawaiians. He would take human form to lure people into his cave and then kill them and leave them on a large rock in the back of the cave in order to eat in his shark form later. Eventually the Hawaiian people were able to kill the sharkman but the cave still has a taboo aura about it.

One of the tunnels

Kristina and Christina

The cave is rather large but quickly stops short about 300 feet in. There are two small tunnels I couldn't crawl through since I had shorts on and also I have a problem with claustrophobia, so this is an adventure I will have to do with a guy.

It's real name is Makau cave and is almost to the far western point of Oahu just before the Kaena Point State Park hike.
Since there was literally no hike involved in with this cave, we decided to check out some of the beaches. The beaches on this side of the island have frequently been referred to as "Tent City" since the homeless used to live here. They have recently been eradicated, thankfully, since this area has some of the most beautiful beaches on the island. We ended up laying out at Yokohama Beach, which is so named since the Japanese used to frequent this beach back in the 40's. It's original name is Keawa'ula. Almost no one was out here on a week day which means we had a long 7 mile stretch of beach to ourself.




The last beach before Kaena Point.

Coming back towards Honolulu there is a large valley on the left hand side of the road created by the Waia'nae Mountain Range. This is an absolutely breathtaking view of one of the prettiest valleys in Oahu. I will be coming back to hike this area.


Oahu's Waterfalls

Currently I am on a quest to find and explore all of Oahu's waterfalls. I think I have done four so far, although it seems like I have done more since a few of them I have hit up more than once. Manoa Falls, Likeke Falls, Waimano Falls, and Maunawili Falls are now all under my belt. I plan on checking out Kahena Falls (these were featured in the movie Rundown, the jeep hurtles over them) tomorrow with my Russian friend Kristina. I did Maunawili Falls today and since it has been raining like crazy in the mountians and was raining while we were hiking, the falls were huge. Kristina had hiked them before and said there was only one fall and it had been a trickle. The water was pretty muddy but I was undeterred and braved it anyway. Hopefully I do not catch the dreaded bacteria leptrospirosis which seems to like to hang out in lots of the waters around here. If I do catch it, I guess I will be getting fevers and severe headaches in the next few weeks. We shall see.
Sacred Falls are techically closed but as you can imagine this wont stop me. I'd like to hit these up next week if I don't go to the Big Island like I am hoping. The only other ones I know about are at Waimaea Bay. Hopefully I can find some more after that.