Hawaii - Day Five

Bright and early Tuesday morning we got picked up to rent a car. Road signs in Hawaii are terrible! There were lots of signs to get on the highway going west, but were than any for going east? No. I guess the locals don't want to share their glorious beaches with the tourists. Having a map that was somewhat less than complete didn't help, either. But eventually we found the highway and headed eastward. The nice thing about travelling with no kids along was we could stop wherever looked interesting.

We saw lots of coconuts washed up on shore. We thought about using our newly-aquired knowledge of how to open them from the Polynesians, but didn't.

It would have been the perfect day to go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, but they were closed on Tuesdays. We stopped at the Blowhole, but the waves weren't big enough to blow anything. There was an amazing little bay there. No place to change, though, so we kept going.

We were told that the "first" beach was no good and we should keep going to the "second" beach, also known as Makapu'u Beach. The water was aqua blue, the sand was golden (and not at all hot to step on) and the waves there that day were amazing!

The life guard on duty there said there was a bit of an undertow and we shouldn't use our boogie board, but body surfing was still fun. The waves were about 6ft high. So much fun, but it definitely wasn't kid friendly. Good thing they weren't along!

After body surfing we dried out on the beach and finished reading our books. (If you look closely at this picture you can see a light house and some parachutes. There were about 6 of them and they would just float around in circles without ever coming down! Ok, I suppose eventually they came down, but they would stay up there for a long time!)

From there we went and found lunch and another glorious beach, Kalama beach. That beach just streched on and on for miles! We walked from one end almost to the other and back again.

Along the way we saw a sand chicken! If you know Darcy at all, you'll know that he's always joking with the kids about chickens, so if we told them we saw a chicken on the beach they wouldn't believe him without a picture to prove it.

After Kalama beach we went to Manoa falls and saw lots of unique plants. This is Darcy's hand against this leaf.

I can't imagine how old some of those trees must be.

The hike up got a little slippery but where else do you see steps like this?

We made it to the falls just in time to get back down before it got dark, then headed of for seafood at Red Lobster. Yummy!