Magic moments at North Shore's Turtle Bay Resort

20.11.2023 - 15:37 / travelweekly.com

There's something soulful about being on Oahu's North Shore. I've heard other people tell me how that particular place is special in some indescribable way, and when we rounded Kamehameha Highway and looked down on Waimea Bay, I felt it, too.

Needless to say, people who love the North Shore, and people who are experiencing it for the first time, need a place to stay. And that place is possibly -- probably -- Turtle Bay Resort.

The only upscale, full-service hotel in the area, it's situated on a peninsula on the northern tip of Oahu and therefore is an excellent base for exploring the area. But it's also got energy in its own right.

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From the drive through the golf course to the porte-cochere, the resort's big, boxy design doesn't lend itself to rapturous descriptions on arrival of "a sense of place" or "at one with its surroundings." Recall, it opened in 1972, and the blocky architecture appeared to me to be a throwback to that era: It was built in the hopes of becoming a casino-hotel (didn't happen).

But there's beauty at Turtle Bay. For example, when you realize its particular layout -- three identical wings of rooms jut out from the center, windmill-style -- means that every room has an ocean view. It's hard to avoid Hawaii's invigorating sunrises or astounding sunsets here.

A renovation that looks fresh

A renovation, completed during the pandemic, shows its public spaces off to the best advantage: Guests enter through a massive, wood-framed doorway into a light, bright lobby, its size broken up by floor-to-ceiling panels of undulating, translucent white fabric, with earthy, wood-toned furniture and plenty of places to sit.

Behind the check-in desks, giant windows provide views down to the Kuilima Cove beach and the Beach House by Roy Yamaguchi restaurant. Directly to the left of the entry, I was drawn to the look of the Off the Lip bar, where a circular banquette and a bar back up onto an infinity-edge water feature. Beyond that is the new adults-only infinity-edge pool and then the redesigned kid-friendly swimming pool. Still beyond that is the Kuilima surf break (more on that later).

Turtle Bay said the redo team was led by architect and Hilo native Rob Iopa, who has long been active in conservation and planning on the North Shore, and that it was his idea to open up the lobby to the views and light.

Of course, the hotel only takes up a small fraction of the complex's 1,300 acres. There are two 18-hole golf courses; stables; a Jamie O'Brien surf school; tons of hiking, jogging and horseback-riding trails; tennis and pickleball courts; a 468-acre farm; and