Book It, Danno: Kualoa Ranch is a popular site for filming Five-0

Photo by Karen Weber The open spaces of Kualoa Ranch are popular sites for filming movies and TV shows.

Photo by Karen Weber
The open spaces of Kualoa Ranch are popular sites for filming movies and TV shows.

By Karen Weber

Finishing our Five-0 adventure, we visit the other side of the island.

One of my favorite Five-0 places is on the opposite side of Oahu from Waikiki. Kualoa Ranch on the windward side is a working cattle ranch, historic site and a popular movie and TV filming location. The very first scene in the Five-0 pilot is a flyover where you see a military convoy leaving a bunker.

Photo by Karen Weber The first scene in the Five-0 pilot episode shows a military convoy leaving this bunker.

Photo by Karen Weber
The first scene in the Five-0 pilot episode shows a military convoy leaving this bunker.

It’s supposed to be Korea, but is really Kualoa Ranch. Many of the jungle scenes in the series were filmed at Kualoa, along with episodes of “Lost” and scenes from movies such as “Jurassic Park,” “Godzilla” and “Windtalkers.”

The Movie Sites and Ranch Tour is my favorite of the activities at the Ranch. I’ve also been on the Jungle Expedition, which is a wild ride that charges up jungle trails in a six-wheel-drive vehicle, pauses briefly at the top of the mountains and then charges down again. Boy, does it bounce.

Other Kualoa adventures include a horseback tour, an ATV tour and a catamaran voyage. I’ve taken half-day trips out there, but it wouldn’t be hard to spend a full day and even then you probably still couldn’t see everything.

So, my advice is to pick something you love, do a little research and build a vacation around it. And it doesn’t hurt if what you love is based in beautiful Hawaii.

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