Friday, July 11th

The usual morning. We actually went to the beach at our condo for the first time and took a dip and a snorkel. The waves were pretty rough out there so I didn't snorkel too much. I ended up just hanging out in the water enjoying the waves smacking into me. No, seriously, I REALLY love getting pummeled by waves. It's so much fun!

After that, we packed up to go snorkeling in La Perouse Bay. On our way there we stopped at a little food stand called Makena Grill and got some fish tacos and macaroni & cheese. Weird combo, yes.. but tasty food. It was so good. The tacos had a pineapple salsa on them. I didn't even mind the cilantro that much. The mac&chz had a very smoky flavor to them. I guess from the smoker they use to cook much of everything. It was really good though.

We went further down that road and ended up parking in a lot where the road ended. It was very strange. Imagine a big gravel parking lot, and then imagine that gravel is lava rock. See, strange. We walked up the road there to find the trailhead to get to the snorkeling spot known as the Aquarium. Mike had already been to this spot before I got here, and he told me it was a pretty flat trail with only a little bit of climbing over boulders or big rocks. The boy was apparently on some really good drugs when he went the first time or something because that hike was horrible. In what the guides say should take no more than 30 minutes, took us 90 minutes. Why so long, you wonder? Mike couldn't remember how to get there. And so we seemed to be off trail most of the time and we were doing nothing but climbing and dealing with lava rocks and whatnot. After awhile I was so tired and my legs were so wobbly, it was just getting scary to continue. So, of course I started to cry like a ninny. My legs were shaking, I was scratched in a few places from the lava rock and the weather was kinda crap. Despite my whining and crying, we managed to make it there, and I'm so glad we did. This was, by far, the best snorkeling I've ever done to date. Insane. It was the first time I truly felt like I was intruding on their turf. It was just gorgeous. The water was freezing.. FREEZING... and the wind was blowing hard, but it was awesome. At one point, Mike got my attention and started pointed behind me and there was this HUMONGOLOID green sea turtle. It just glided by us like it didn't have a care in the world. It had some weird barnacle looking things on him. Later we found out they were a type of tumors. Poor guy. We managed to find a bit of an actual trail on the way back so it was a lot faster leaving.

We drove back to Napili, grabbed a tasty MickyD's beverage. On our way back to the condo, we decided to tour a local neighborhood called Kahana Ridge. We saw a house for sale in the area and grabbed a flyer to see how much. An awesome looking house 1900ish sq ft... yours for only $918,000. Yeeow.

Back to condo. I had managed to snag some trial size hair conditioner, and I showered and conditioned my hair 3 times. This was the first time since I'd been in Hawaii. My hair felt like straw. Oh, it was so refreshing to have my hair feel so nice again.

We went and had dinner on Front Street in Lahaina at a pizza joint called BJ's Chicago Pizzeria. Excellent deep dish pizza. Yum. We walked around down there a bit, and wandered into an art gallery called Diamond Head Art Gallery. Random, yes, but it ended up being really cool. We saw this one artist's work that I just fell in love with -- Leohone. The ones I saw were all of Hawaiians and their ancestors sort of like spirits around them. There was this one of a really tired guy that can't paddle his boat, and you see the ancestors helping him. It was just gorgeous.

I don't have any pictures of this day because we used the disposible camera. Once we get them scanned in, I'll put some up.

NOTE: I just found out today that the area where we snorkeled - La Perouse Bay - has been closed as of August 1, 2008 for 2 years. They are worried about preserving the area. It's crazy! We just made it before it got closed. I feel so lucky. Here are some news stories about it.