Day 5: Pineapple Park!!!
Posted By Kelly Orange on September 24, 2008
Road trip to the beach in the north! The drive was beautiful. We took the route along the Eastern Edge of Okinawa and the view of the China Sea was breathtaking. Blue-green water and jagged dark brown rock outcroppings held my interest the whole way. Believe me I took lots of pictures out the window. We stopped and ate at A&W, Rick had the Mozza Burger, not sure exactly how it`s different from a regular one but he said it was good. I of course spilled ketchup on me, never good for photos, but I washed it off in the bathroom and since there are no paper towels all the restaurants have hand driers so I stuck my shirt and part of my skirt up under the blower…..I had to stop when someone came in though because it was a little embarassing… but it got the job mostly done! With fully bellies we were off to Pineapple Park in Nago.
Rick`s been hyping this up for a whole year now, so I was anxious to see what it was all about. It was funny, you are basically in a golf cart that is run over a magnetic course that`s about 10 minutes long. It was hysterical actually, they give you information on all the plants of the pineapple family and then they drop you off in front of a gift shop that is longer and more winding than the actual tour. We tasted multiple pineapple wines, pineapple chunks, pinapple chocolate, pineapple brown sugar and I even tried the Goya juice. Not so bad, actually, but I`m sure it`s sweetened and it did leave a weird aftertaste for a while. It was fun, and now we were finally on our way to Okuma.
It took another 45 minutes or so to get up there, but once we did, man oh man were we excited. A vacation on a vacation! We were staying in the “Executive Suite” which came with a golf cart! There was one bedroom with two big beds, a good size living room and a kitchen area with a full table and a refridgerator. Heaven. Rick and I brought the folding lacquer japanese wall thing from the kitchen right into the bedroom between the beds. It was hillarious because a couple days later the cleaning ladies went in there and thought we were geniuses for doing that. “Very nice, good work. No one has done that before. I like that!” We were cracking up. The room was in the D building, the farthest from everything and right on the beach. Then behind us was the golf course. The golf cart was awesome, it really did kick ass that we could just cruise to where we were going and back since it was so hot, but it really wasn`t that far anyways….we were just lazy.
We jumped in the water right away to cool off and we realized there really wasn`t anyone around. We had the whole resort to ourselves! The water is really salty here, it`s so easy to float, and since I`m a fish I did just that. A little bit later we got cleaned up and went to dinner, played a little slots (I won $60 right off the bat and I should`ve just stopped there… but of course I didn`t) There were only 4 slot machines, it was a funny little room. The bartender already knew us well by the end of the 1st night.
After dinner Rich went to bed and Nancy, Rick and I went through the maze, a cool little labrynth they had built out of bushes, it really did look out of place, but it was fun, and I found my way out first. I rule. Then the three of us grabbed our drinks and went out to the beach to look at the stars and listen to the surf. It was beautiful, we could see the whole milky way & we showed Nancy Orion and Pisces which for some reason was so clear to me here. I saw 4 shooting stars, 2 of which were right after I got pooped on by an unidentified flying object. I`m pretty sure it was a bat but none of us saw it and we were all looking up. Rick`s lucky it didn`t fall into his mouth. Eeeew Bat Guano. My wishes on the stars were all the same and they came true. Maybe the Bat Guano helped, sandy sandy sleep.
