LOST Driving Tour of Oahu

Until I got to Hawaii, it didn’t occur to me that I could take a tour of locations where LOST was filmed. By then, my friends and I were already booked. Besides, one tour claimed to visit 22 locations in two hours, and after only a few days on Oahu I knew that to be impossible. But we were already planning to drive around most of the island one day, and several of the stops on our list turned out to be LOST places! However, note that not all of the following places were on the show.

I’ve seen a few LOST reruns, but haven’t done a full rewatch since it ended in 2010. Luckily, Caroline, another of my best friends, just finished one. So I texted her photos throughout the day, and after squeeing, she’d remind me exactly what happened there. Teamwork!

We drove down from Kaneohe to our first stop, Lana’i Lookout, on the southeast side of the island. These beautiful cliffs are barricaded at the top by a short wall and “DO NOT GO PAST THIS POINT” sign, over which everyone climbed happily. Also blocking the way was a man with a parrot. The parrot’s name was Jackie Chan, and he has been in two movies. I know this because his owner repeated it to each of us individually and tried to extort $5 for photos. But with such an amazing view, who cared? Oh, and this is where Desmond killed Kelvin after he came out of the Hatch.

The Halona Blow Hole, while absolutely gorgeous, didn’t quite live up to its advertised wave action. Or, as we put it, “That blow hole kind of blew.”

Turning the southeast corner of the island, we stopped at Makapu’u Lookout, because how could you not?

After a stop for sushi back in Kaneohe, we proceeded to Chinaman’s Hat. This little island was on my own list of things to see and I was very excited!

On our way up the North Shore, we drove past Kualoa Ranch, a very popular LOST location. But it’s private property and we didn’t have time to take the tour.

Here’s Banzai Pipeline, one of the most famous and dangerous surfing beaches in the world. I have to assume that it was an unnaturally calm day there.

Our next big stop was Waimea Falls, which is inside a large botanic garden where many movies have been filmed (including Catching Fire). On LOST, Kate and Sawyer found some bodies here, and it’s also where she and Hurley “landed” on The Island after the second plane crash.

The garden itself was beautiful. We had to walk about a mile through it to get to the falls.

Aside: Bethany and I were also planning to jump off a famous cliff at Waimea Beach. Honestly, neither of us particularly love jumping from high places, but it seemed like a YOLO Hawaii must-do. While Google Mapping us there, I read a review that began, “Be sure to jump at high tide. Jumped at low tide, shattered my tibia and fibula.” The story continued for a while, concluding with, “Still a great experience. Would jump again.” Despite that encouragement, being unsure of the tidal situation, we decided to cross that activity off the list.

After the falls, we stopped in Haleiwa at the famous Matsumoto Shaved Ice.

THEN we headed to Mokuleia Beach, aka THE CRASH BEACH from the pilot! I’m pretty sure we were down the beach from the actual filming site, but it was still very recognizable. And breathtaking.

We stayed until the sun set. On the way back, we pulled into Camp Erdman, a working YMCA camp that doubled as The Others’ village. Bethany and I totally geeked out over the familiar yellow cabins. Unfortunately, it was dark, kids were going to actual camp activities, and my water shoes had blistered my feet so badly that I couldn’t put them back on to sneak around the premises. Still, just seeing the camp from the van was very satisfying.

And that was our DIY LOST tour of Oahu!