Friday, A;pril 22

We wake up to another beautiful, cool morning, reminding us again that we are at 3000 feet. Almost need a sweater.View of the hills from our room :

After an excellent breakfast of Macademia Nut Pancakes, we venture forth to the beaches on the Kona Coast. We started out near Captain Cook's Memorial ( where he was killed over an altercation about a boat on his 4th visit to Hawaii). We were able to rent a Kayak and Kayak to this bay area for swimming and snorkeling. You can also get there by hiking ( 500 feet down- and then up afterwards)- we thought kayaking was a better deal. And it was lots of fun to kayak on the ocean, under the clifss, with white tailed tropic birds gliding overhead -- absoultely clear water, etc. - so here are a few photos of this neat experience:

so this is the memorial ( I don't know if this was worth getting murdered here for it )

We pulled up our kayak on the lava rock and then were able to snorkel -

 The snorkelling was great- saw all sorts of fish, coral, and even another sea turtle! After a while, we kayaked home, this time closer to the cliff wall-

 So, what else to do  but to move onto another beach. This time, to a recently reopened State Park just north of Kona. The road into the park/beach is a little dicey

 It took us 20 min to drive the 1.8 miles to the beach parking area--mostly totallly unpaved lava rubble-- kept getting singage of "Unimproved Road ahead" Ha!
Then a short walk to a truly beautiful beach, of which I thought I had taken more photos- but here is what I have. The swimming here was great- Deb did her lap swiming with her mask on- and we saw a few fishes, and also some more sea turtles. There were very few people here.

 Then, the walk back to the car-- with the inland hills in the background_

The habitat variety here is amazing- from the lush coast and beautiful water, to the lava flow path, then later up through the grasslands and then into the hills of Waimea where we are staying,- all  in about 12 miless.
We had a phenomenal dinner at a place called 'Merrimans' here in Waimea. It was really supeb. Our  appetizer was a wild pig quesedilla . Then I had a wonder leg of lamb  and N. had pork -both locally produced, and all of the vegies, etc were local and organically grown. It was, I think, our best meal here so far and will be hard to beat.
Neal has already gone off to bed- and now it is 'me too', too much sun and swimming. Tomorrow we are doing an evening expedition up Mona Koa for star gazing- so we may not get our entry in for tomorrow done 'on time'.  Stay tunned. Love, Deb and Neal