Thursday, August 18, 2016

Hawaii, Day 11 ~ Snorkeling and Beach Hopping

Our third day on Oahu, we decided to escape the heat and have another beach day.  I thought, "Why not rent snorkel gear while we're at it?"  Many of the beaches on our list were supposed to be good for snorkeling. Well, it ended up being EXTREMELY complicated.  On the Big Island, we walked into the first rental we found and had little trouble.  This time, every place we tried was either twice the price, didn't have a mask I could see with, or just plain did not clean their gear.  (Yuck!)  We finally rented at a quality establishment for twice the price.  They highly recommended we get a locker for valuables rather than leave anything in the car AND leave our keys with them, as theft is a huge problem.  That's something we didn't worry about when we snorkeled on the Big Island.  So we couldn't take anything to the beach, such as a camera.  No pics!  Parking is difficult.  We walked some distance to the beach nearby, Shark's Cove (No sharks there!), one of the highest rated beaches for snorkeling.  More challenges.  It was hard to get in, especially for me.  We spent time looking for the easiest way in and spent time getting in, only to discover . . . they forgot to fog proof our masks.  Mine was fogging up constantly.  Poor Greg had to walk all the way back to get defogging solution!  Finally, we were all in and had a good couple hours of snorkeling.

Next, we decided to find a good beach for swimming.  I had a list of highly rated beaches, and we drove around looking for them.  It was hard to know when we found them, as names were difficult to locate or didn't match or signs were faded or missing.  Lots of navigating, getting in and out of the car, trying to find a place to park, carrying stuff down to a beach only to discover there was something we didn't like about it (such as rocks hidden under the surface of the water when the beach itself looked deceptively sandy), and hauling stuff back to the car.  It was a somewhat frustrating day, and if we could do it over, we would go straight to the best beach we found, which was the last one we tried.  Woot!  By that time we found it, it was too late to swim.  Woot woot!




We ate lunch at another shrimp truck.


Healthy way to eat corn.  No butter or seasoning, but it was tasty.




I was in the mood for Italian, so we ate dinner at Spaghettini.  Not bad!



And that was day 11.

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