A story of getting attacked on the beach at Waimanalo Beach on Oahu, south of Hūnānāniho Campsite.
From my original post (Aug 29, 2022)
I posted this video on my Snapchat story. I took a trip to Oahu with plans to camp out and just experience the whole island without getting into hotels. I didn't know about needing to get a permit to camp. Although we stayed at a designated campground with 30–50 other campers the first night and it was amazing waking up on the beach at sunrise to swim and had no worries in the world. With no one checking permits we thought we were set for the second night. We arrived around 9:30, the gates were closed. Turns out they lock the campers in and other people out 8:30 PM to 5:00 AM — we missed that time.
With no other good options to camp we parked the car nearby and walked in to the edge of the camp. Three other campers were between us and the larger portion of the camp. My friend Chris decided to sleep in the car since he didn't feel comfortable with the location like the night before without as many people. I should have listened but then again I wasn't too worried and didn't want to sleep in the car. So I set up a tent and fell asleep till 3:30 AM. It is super windy at this location so you can't hear much.
But I woke up to a loud boom and slowly woke up to realize my tent was ripped up then soon after realized my mattress blew up and that was the cause of the noise but it was extremely loud even over the wind. As I was still waking up I pondered different ideas on what happened. I looked around with a flashlight and saw nothing, but with the extreme noise and lightning in the mountains before I thought maybe that was it? Maybe a limb — but with no evidence still putting it together I packed my stuff and left the tent to come get soon as it was no longer worth sleeping in.
As I walked back into the trees right near the car I saw two guys less than 10 feet from me with sticks, or poles of some kind hiding / tweaking out or whatever was going on in their mind. My stomach dropped realizing it was them that attacked me and most likely got scared off by the noise of the mattress, thank God. There was a hole in my pillow inches from my head that went through with enough force to pierce through the ground and what appears to be knife cuts in the tent where they likely viewed inside my tent to see who was inside. A great learning experience. Only more to learn from here — take my experience and use caution. Get permits, be sure to make it in before the gates close. I'll get a new tent and do it better next time.
