Kayaking and BBQ

Yesterday I got Lucia to go kayaking with me! We managed to get up and going early and down to Kaimana Beach by about 10am. By the time we found parking and got the kayak off the car and on the beach we were on the water by (+/- 15 mins) 11am.


First, we headed out towards Diamond Head (to the east) hoping to go around. The waves out there were bigger than I was expecting and after hearing Kim and Lyndles story of getting flipped,

I wasn't as excited about that as I could have been.

We picked up miscellaneous garbage floating in the water and consequently met a new friend - a baby squid (we took pics with Lucia's camera so I don't have the pics yet).

The water was amazingly clear and ridiculously blue, except in a couple of areas where it was kinda green and yucky looking.

We found an area with a bunch of live coral and wanted to jump off and snorkel, but that was when we found the squid and we got distracted trying to get him back into the water. We missed our opportunity and couldn't find the spot again.


We got back to the beach, and rested for a few hours before heading back out - this time towards town. We had a photo op. with Diamond Head and then rigged our leash to the boat and snorked around for a while until we got too close to shore and the visibility got crappy. We saw a number of fish, but I couldn't help thinking about how many more there must have been about 50 years ago.

We also saw a couple of turtles out there and found a lei we donated to the birthday party which was just getting going when we got back to the beach.


We got Carl to help us drag the kayak over then gave the go -ahead to play while we went and picked up my cupcakes and her bottle of Sake from Lucias and discovered the real extent of our sunburns - pretty bad on my back, and it looked like Lucia's whole body =) but luckily she's more bown than me and I'm sure she's not hurting like I am today.

The party was in full swing when we got back to the beach, and we ate lots of good food - especially the soba noodles!! yum.


The Japanese contingent found my head lamp especially amusing (more so when I told them it was also my reading lamp before bed) but it was very helpful getting dinner and again when Jorge and Shane whipped out travel scrabble.

We had played yesterday with Ele, and she again kicked our butts even though she had to play using that horrible American English....

We also lucked out and managed to get some strong boys to put the kayak back on the roof of the car before they all left - that made the end of the night much easier since we were all getting
tired quickly.


Overall, it was an awesome day. I had a ton of fun - just what I needed. I don't know if I've spent the whole day in the hot sun since school started. I was getting a little to pale for life on the islands - and we have visitors coming in 2 weeks - I have to fit the part, right? =)

More pics from yesterday are HERE!