We Be Chillin’ (mostly)

We’ve been fairly successful at our goal of not doing too much, just chillin and practicing living here. We had a couple of days where we pretty much stayed close to home and just relaxed or did the things you would normally do at home – cleaning, cooking, laundry, car repair (the battery shorted out on my aunt’s car while we were out and about), etc.  Of course, we’ve gone down to the beach for swimming and snorkelling, but I picture that if/when we live in a place like this, we’ll be doing this in our everyday life anyways.  We managed to do the snorkel and gruelling hike to the Captain Cook monument again (I guess next time we’ll have to do it three times!!)

We did manage to squeeze in a couple firsts:

1. Rocky made it to an ariel yoga class.  I had my first experience on the hammock/silk not that long before leaving for Hawaii, but this was my first class, AND I ended up being the only one who showed, so I got a private class.  
2. This blows #1 out of the water (but #1 happened first).  We did our first night dive where we went diving with Manta Rays for the first time AND we came the closest we’ve ever been to humpback whales. 

We have been more than happy to be back here and know that we will be back again.  The big island rocks, the family we have here are awesome (open, generous, wonderful to be around, etc.) and it feels like one of our places.  Until next time big island . . . Mahalo!!

A few of our firsts:
– aeriel yoga . . . this is actually a pic of the first time I did it (not in Hawaii), but it looked pretty much the same especially since I was the only student

HIGHLIGHT of the trip . . . the manta ray dive

We went with Big Island Divers who are one of the oldest dive companies in Kona.  The crew was great, there weren’t too many of us on the boat and there were only 5 of us that went down diving (the rest were snorkelers)

On our way out to the dive site, the captain spotted some humpback whales.  He headed in that direction, and we ended up pretty much in the middle of a group of them.  When the crew is getting really excited, you know that it is something special.  We have never been that close before.  One came up beside the side of the boat, went underneath and then came up to breach on the other side.  Who knew we would get a whale watching tour on top of our dive.  To top it off, the sunset was spectacular. We didn’t get any pics (who wants to waste time on a camera in that moment), but B-Rod is pretty good at drawing a representation of where they were when we did finally reach the dive sight.

The main event . . . all we can say is WOW!!

This was our view of the first manta ray that showed up.  It took them a bit to come (the crew was actually getting nervous that they weren’t going to show), but when they did make an appearance, it was incredible.

This was how close B-Rod got.

This is one sneaking up on Rocky!

Other interesting things around the island.
The unmarked road that is in pretty shoddy condition leads to . . .

. . . a road which has this scenery on either side, and then . . . . 

. . . you get to the parking lot where you start to see it looking a little bit promising, so you walk a bit, and . . . .

Voila!!  You begin to faff (can you spot B-Rod swimming?)

There’s a few of these guys around

One lives in my aunt & uncle’s house and we probably saw him more than the cat we were “taking care of”

B-Rod using his skills and a suuuuper dull machete to open up a coconut for me.

B-Rod attempting to enjoy Spam Musubi again.

The view on the road to my cousin’s house

 At the bottom of the Captain Cook Monument trail.  The snorkelling here is awesome, and both times we came, there were dolphin sightings out in the bay. Thanks for the coconut rice lunch Jared! It was properly hot on the climb up today. It is a very exposed trail, and although 1400 feet doesn’t sound like much, that is almost half a kilometre climb! As we were going down, there was a very ‘generous’ family that were already looking pretty exhausted. We told them they were only half way there (hinted really), but as we were leaving, they were just arriving. We can’t imagine how tough the day was going to be for them. Going down is a cake-walk!

 One of the sunsets from my uncle & aunt’s house.  I’m going to miss these!