Five days in, we got our perfect beach day. :) This is what Greg and Kylen came for, and this is what ended up being my number one favorite experience in Hawaii.
Below, Greg fiddles with the body board while Kylen works on his laptop. All of our mornings were similar to this. We'd typically have cereal, and Greg and I would gather stuff for the road while Kylen worked on his laptop/ipad or read until it was time to go. It was relaxed, but we still managed to get out of the condo fairly early.
We ate a filling meal at a place called Quinn's Almost by the Sea. Nothing fancy, but large portions and decent food. Parking was a nightmare. Upon overhearing my cell phone conversation with Greg in which he told me to have nice meal without him, a server suggested a place to park. I handed the phone to her, and it wasn't long before he joined us.
My sweet boys.
The fried zucchini takes the star role in this picture, but the ribs were actually our favorite dish. Possibly the best sauce ever. These were appetizers we ordered while waiting for Greg. No pics of our main meal. I remember that Kylen and I were going to have two different kinds of fish to ensure we'd like at least one of them. We knew we liked mahi mahi. Our server encouraged us both to have ono, because it was fresh, and it's the best! Unfortunately, we followed her suggestion. None of us liked ono. It has the texture of chicken, and to us that's just wrong in a fish. Everywhere we went, people lifted up ono as the superior fish and treated mahi mahi as inferior. Give us the mahi mahi any day! From then on, when we saw ono on the menu, we said "Oh no!"
And this is the beach! THE beach! Our favorite the entire trip. The PERFECT beach. It's called Hapuna.
Perfect sand, perfect water. First time in over 15 years that I giggled like a little girl. I jumped in the waves and laughed and thanked God over and over. You find a sweet spot where you aren't so close to the beach that the waves thrash you, but you are deep enough that they can pick you up and carry you gently forward. Water up to the neck. You feel a big, soft wave hit you, and you jump. It lets you float like you're flying. You can kick your legs, throw out your arms, and feel like you're on a ride. You do it again and again, each time a wave hits. It was SO fun! When I was kid, I could spend hours swimming, even alone. Swimming was one of my favorite activities. My illness made swimming difficult, so I've barely swam at all in 15 years. Just before the trip, we prayed for the miracle of finding water shoes, which would make swimming at a beach far easier. We found the perfect pair at the first store we looked. Thank you, Lord, for this kindness. It meant a lot. We were in the water the rest of the day. It was incredible. I have no words for how much I enjoyed it. All I can say, is this experience is what Hawaii should be.
After swimming for hours, a woman about 6 feet away suddenly shouted she'd been stung by a jellyfish. She talked about being doomed and walked out. I was alarmed. A short time later, a lifeguard warned that several people had been stung and that if anyone was allergic they should consider getting out of the water for an hour. We got out for maybe 35 minutes. We never saw a jellyfish, but Greg did get stung twice by a mysterious critter. He thinks it was a black bug of some sort. It hurt worse than a bee sting, but the pain faded within 10 minutes. It swelled for a short time and then the swelling abated. It left a mark that isn't completely gone after two weeks.
Greg has fond memories of going to the beach as a kid, and not-quite-so-fond memories of doing math problems there with his dad. He and Kylen did several algebra equations in honor of those memories.
Somehow, I managed to miss getting a picture of what we saw from the water until after the sun was setting.
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