School’s out. The bus to the North Shore started to choke just before the Dole Plantation as groups of kids in board shorts crowded on. I made a smart-ass comment to myself that you never know here if school’s in or not seeing as they hardly go anyway; not knowing that the next day it was to be announced that the furlough’s were ending. Anyway, school is out for summer.

I got off at Pupukea and filled up with an açaí bowl the size of my head from Kava Roots. Nourished, I started the steep walk up to the state monument, dismissing two drivers sympathetically offering rides. The walk up the road was tough, but the dirt road after the turn-off felt a little creepy. No cars passed through there and I tried to wave away thoughts of lurking psychopaths as I hurried along the path through acres of woodland and nothing else.

Puʻu o Mahuka Heiau is Oʻahu’s biggest heiau (temple), a site of religious ceremonies until 1819 when the kapu system was abolished by Kamehameha II. It was thought to have also been the site of human sacrifice. The site consists of three walled enclosures; discreet placards on each warning you, kapu; do not touch the rock walls.

I walked around the outside of the walls, veering off the path to take in the view. Slipping slightly down the cliff edge, I raised my camera for shots of Waimea and beyond. The sand at Waimea was dotted with more bodies than I’ve seen there on a weekday–since the Eddie in December. Kids were hurling themselves of the rock, clambering back up and doing it again; the water below in regular turmoil with giant splash followed by giant splash. Right; school’s out, I reminded myself.

I climbed back up and onto the path around the temple. Paused for a few moments by some stones wrapped and laid on the walls, then at the fruit and lei offerings at a tree at the end of the path.

I walked back down to Pupukea and waited for my bus. Carrying just me and a waitress on her way to a shift at Cholos in Haleiwa, it quietly wound its way past the church. At the stop outside Waimea, the doors opened and it swelled with soggy, vociferous kids. The same ones from the journey here. It must have been them jumping off the rocks.