Big Island Day 5 Snorkeling

Adam set his alarm for 6am to check out beach gear from the front desk. Then he couldn't get back to sleep, so by the time I got up,  he had reserved snorkel gear. We were going snorkeling in the rain! 

We were doing all our site seeing before Wednesday because we were expecting rain toward the end of the week.  It came Thursday.  Adam figured it didn't matter if it is raining if we are in the water already. (It was much colder.)

The girls were super excited when we went to pick up the snorkel gear!

We went to Kahaluu Keahou beach first because it was a nice shallow beach with lots of coral. Everyone jumped in right away,  but I was super dizzy from not taking my meds, so I had to sit in the rain and wait it out. Then I decided to go for it,  but had to psych myself out to get into the cold water! Fortunately,  it was only cold on the top layer.

Denali brought a waterproof  case for her phone and took videos under water.

When we finished swimming (got too tired), we went to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park. It was very interesting.  The Royal Grounds is where 23 chiefs or ali'i were buried and is a very spiritual place.  The Pu'uhonua or Place of Refuge was a fascinating story. If someone broke the law or kapu, the punishment was death.  The only chance to survive is to escape your punishers and make their way to the coast where they would swim to the Pu'uhonua. It was very dangerous and many didn't make it.  Sometimes it took days to swim there,  and many died due to the sharp lava rocks and sharks etc. If they made it to the place of refuge, they were accepted and healed. Physically and spiritually. Then they were absolved by the priest and could return home with no questions asked. 

The wind was blowing pretty good with the rain showers off and on and the girls kept hearing coconuts falling from the trees so they decided to try to get one.  They tried really hard to knock some down by throwing rocks, etc but couldn't get them. They went around picking them up off the ground and shaking them to see if there was any milk inside. 

Just around the rocky point of the Pu'uhonua, was a beach called Two Step Beach. This describes the entrance to getting in and out of the water. As we got in and started swimming out, I noticed something falling and realized it was Denali's phone. It fell about 25 feet and it took 3-4 tries for Denali and Brin to equalize their ears to get down to it. After that, the girls had a really fun underwater photo shoot.

Denali was so impressive! All those years swimming with a mermaid tail as a kid, and a few instructions on holding her breath by dad,  and she became a literal mermaid! She hardly used her snorkel at all! Someone wrote ALOHA on the bottom with cinderblocks and rocks. She, Adam,  and Brin all took turns diving down to touch it. 

I didn't last very long this time because the water was sooo cold I had to get out! It was raining pretty hard now, so we headed back. When we got back to the condo, it had stopped raining there so we went straight to the hot tub. It was nice and hot and felt great.  There was a gorgeous sunset, of course, but before the sun went down it shined on the palm trees and were so pretty! There was also a rainbow!

We went back and made mongolian again, then dropped into bed exhausted!