North Shore Eco Tours on Oahu is expanding its offerings, recently launching a new tour and a new shuttle service from Waikiki to Haleiwa.
Keola Ryan, who founded North Shore Eco Tours with his wife, Tasha Kawamata Ryan, previously worked in ecotourism for another company but he longed to do tours in his own way, with an emphasis on the Hawaiian culture and history. Eventually, he left the other company after working out a deal to provide educational tours on conservation land owned by Kamehameha Schools, a private educational trust and large landowner in the state. They launched their tour company in 2011 and have developed a handful of hikes and an off-road excursion.
"I think when people travel, they relate to other places through culture, food and stories," Ryan said. "When I was working for a different ecotour company, they approached the natural resources through a very scientific lens, focusing on geology, volcanology, botany. There's nothing wrong with that style, but it is quite sterile, and I wanted to highlight the wonderful relationship Hawaiians have with our natural resources. We talk about things more from the cultural perspective."
In December the company introduced the Puaa Ahiu (Wild Boar) tour ($95 adults, $75 for ages 6 to 12), a roughly 20-mile off-roading adventure. It runs three hours and is offered Tuesdays and Fridays at 2 p.m. Up to eight guests are shepherded in Swiss Military Pinzgauer four-wheel-drive vehicles up steep ridgelines, over muddy trails and onto a mogul-style course (weather permitting). The Pinzgauers are elevated safari-style vehicles, and participants get to pick seasonal fruit, swim in a mountain lake, tour World War II fortifications and visit the Anahulu valley, where they'll find one of Oahu's longest rivers.
"It's sort of a survey of everything," Ryan said. "You get scenic lookouts. We visit various areas and are able to get into some overgrown, thickly vegetated roads with mud and do some real off-roading. We're not just driving on gravel dirt roads. We climb down into the valley and get down to the headwaters of the river where guests can swim. We also pass farmland where we can pick fruit, and there are wild boar that we see all along the way. The other day we ran across at least eight of them on our tour."
In addition to the new off-road wild boar tour, North Shore Eco Tours also offers three different hiking tours, ranging from easy to challenging. The toughest outing is a six-hour, 3.5-mile roundtrip excursion offered Thursdays and Saturdays at 9 a.m. for guests age 10 and older. After a seven-mile ride to the trailhead, hikers are led to freshwater pools for mountain swims with more than 10 stream crossings and an opportunity to find wild fruits and plants like tangerines, lilikoi (passion fruit), ohia ai (mountain apple), mango, and hau (sea hibiscus). Along the way, guides share the history and cultural significance of the area. Two other less challenging hikes offered are roughly 2 miles roundtrip and last four hours.
"One of the cool things about our tours, in general, is that we operate primarily on private conservation land," Ryan said. "It is inaccessible to visitors and the local public. Despite the fact that we're on the most populated island that has some more traffic and craziness, you can still escape into an area that we have exclusive access to. You can immerse yourself in nature."
North Shore Eco Tours is dedicated to providing the "native perspective" on the natural resources and wonder of Hawaii, Ryan said. They always start with Hawaiian names for their tours, and believe in the inherent value of representing and preserving the native Hawaiian culture, traditions and knowledge.
Additionally, the company has started offering a Waikiki-to-North Shore shuttle service that departs from the resort area twice a day in the morning, with two return trips in the afternoon departing from the town of Haleiwa.
"It is a new service we're offering to get people up for a day on the North Shore, either on their own or for one of our tours," Ryan said. "You look at Waikiki and it's so highly commercialized and all that. A lot of people want to escape that for a little bit, but maybe they don't have a rental car. Now you can come for a day, or even half day, and explore Haleiwa, which is a town with a lot of character with shops and restaurants, and the rest of the area at your own leisure."
Ryan added that it is more than "just a taxi ride," and the drivers make an effort to provide history and point out landmarks, including Puowaina "Punchbowl" National Cemetery of the Pacific, Aloha Stadium, Pearl Harbor and the Dole Pineapple Plantation, along the way.
The Holo Haleiwa shuttle ($50 per person) operates Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays with nine different pickup points in Waikiki.
"We have some more things in store for the future that we're not quite ready to announce," Ryan said. "We're experimenting with some different tour formats and experiences including possibly lining up a new hiking trail."