A relaxing day, no need to go anywhere in a hurry and our last day on Kailua. Our first stop was at Agnes Portuguese Bakery for masalades, (we’re really loving these), only one flaw with our plan, they are closed on Monday. Luckily we had eaten breakfast so weren’t going to fade away, instead we headed next door and bought a couple of decorations for the Christmas Tree.

Then a short drive to Byodo-In Temple at Valley of the Temples. This is a non practising Buddhist temple and one I was quite keen to visit. It is a beautiful space, a massive Buddha and a gorgeous bell that you can ring before entering the temple. Doing so will cleanse your mind and allow for a more peaceful meditation.

We both had a ring of the bell, it was beautiful, so melodious, quite loud (depending on how hard you hit it!) and the sound just went on and on. We were having a lovely time, so peaceful and quiet….and then….the family from hell arrived. A million kids, okay, maybe half a dozen, it was hard to keep track of them all, ranging in age from possibly 2-10, and a mother that yelled at them constantly. Actually yelling is probably too gentle a description – BELLOWING….is probably more apt!

Everywhere we turned there was mum, at least two of the kids and bellow, bellow, don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t get too close to the edge…ooops too late the kid has fallen into the pond, that was the 10 year old!

Then the two older boys found the bell and rung it, and rung it, and rung it, and rung it, and….well you get the idea. Quentin and I had to have a wee word with them, all about how this was a place for quiet peace and contemplation and they were not helping with this so quit hitting the bell!

From here we left to visit Ho’omalhuia Botanical Gardens, which was a little disappointed as there wasn’t many flowers it was mainly trees. The gardens were huge and to get between each area you could actually drive, which we took advantage of as it was another very very hot day!

Later in the afternoon we headed to Lanikai Beach for a swim, just up from Kailua this beach is named one of the top beaches in the world. It certainly is a lovely spot, but not sure about the label of top. It is in a very quiet neighbourhood, no beach parking or anything, you just park in the side streets trying not to encroach on peoples driveways, apparently the area is chaotic come the weekend. Certainly a lovely area and great views.

When we stopped to take some photos we saw a gaggle (is that the right term!) of seqways coming down the hill. It was a group on a seqway tour of the area, very interesting way to see the sights!

A quiet evening, dinner from yummy Whole Foods again and getting the bags packed for moving out on Tuesday.

Nothing to report for Tue or Wed as we will be shopping, shopping, shopping, oh and flying home!

Our Saturday morning started with us hitting the road at 8am to get to a dive shop Q wanted to go to which was about 30 mins drive away. He was in hog heaven, got a new mask and some other boring dive things. From here we headed to Target to get some things we had seen on the big island but decided to wait until we were here to get.

Then it was back to Kailua, 30 minutes or so at home before we headed down to Executive Chef in the town. I had bought a few things there the night before and the sales person told us they were having a 25% off sale the following morning from 9-12. How could I say no. This is an amazing store with anything and everything one would need (other than the actual stove) to cook.. I could have spent a small fortune here but had to think about weight for our luggage!

We finished just in time to go and meet my friend Per’s mum and step dad Moses for lunch. They have been living here in Kailua for the last few months but have found the heat too much and are heading back to Christchurch in March. They are just a couple of blocks away from where we are staying. They live in the only high raise in Kailua. Kailua actually isn’t allowed to have high rises, nothing higher than a palm tree, four stories. However the developer just started building and kept building until at 18 stories he was told to stop!

It was so lovely to catch up with them both. Nicky (Per’s mum) is an absolute hoot and kept us very entertained. We ate at their favourite Mexican here in Kailua and it was actually really yummy, much better than what we had on the big island.

We then headed off to Waikele Outlet shops for a spot of retail therapy. First stop Lowes, a very big store like Bunnings or Mitre 10 Mega. I like Q to feel like he has some input in what we are doing

The first 4 or 5 purchases where actually made by my husband, I was beginning to think I would never buy anything. Then we hit the sketchers store and four pairs of shoes later we left, 1 for him and 3 for me. I also saw a Guess hand bag that I loved but wasn’t sure that I needed it was $75US so really well priced for Guess, it would have been well over $200 at home, just as we were ready to leave I decided to go back and get it only to find that it was 50% off so got it and the matching wallet for less than $50. A bargain!

The total by the end of the night was something like 4 pairs of jeans, handbag, wallet, 2 tee shirts, 1 pair dress shoes, 3 pairs of sneakers, 2 pairs crocs, 1 pair capris, some other things we cant remember now, and of course some chocolate!

We headed back to Kailua for dinner and then a rest and relax before our next day of shopping.

Sunday was our first sleep in, we didn’t wake up until after 7! No hurry to start our day as shops don’t open until 10. A relaxed morning and then we went to the local mall about 15 minutes drive away. Nothing two big only a couple of stories and with a movie theatre. We didn’t buy too much and in the midst of our shopping went to the movies at 12.45. The movies here have masses of previews before the actual movie, so finally the movie started at 1.15, didn’t finish until 3.45 and we had yet to have lunch! We went to see Prisoners with Hugh Jackman it was an okay movie.

today was the first day I actually wore a short sleeve lightweight cardy, the mall was cold as was the movie theatre! Not too much purchased today, a dress down from $99 to $17, a shirt for $7, some makeup and a new collar for our Sunny cat. Given we didn’t have lunch until after 4pm we had no need for dinner!

A lovely relaxed day.

As the photos show it was pretty congested getting in even at 9.30 in the morning!  Todays spot was the coolest water we have experienced, not freezing but certainly a bit of a “argh” as you jumped in.  Key reason being it was one of the deepest spots we have been to so far.  There was lots of fish, some amazing coral and he who needs to be kept happy was.

After a couple of hours we got out of the water (the same way you get in) and headed to the National Park which was right next door – Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Park.  It is a spot of national significance and also known as the Place of Refuge.  Built in the 1500’s there was a temple that commoners that had committed kabu (taboo) by doing something such as looking at someone in the royal family, could swim to to seek refuge.  Here they would be absolved by the priests and be able to live a normal life.  Well as normal as commoners could!  Only thing was they had to survive the swim, which wasn’t that easy, the channel to the refuge was shark invested with treacherous currents.  Really if you survived the swim you had every right to be forgiven!

From here we headed back towards our resort, stopping for lunch on the way.  Funnily enough as we were driving down to Two Step this morning what should I see on the way but Annies Burgers, the place we had been looking for yesterday.  What made this rather amusing (for want of a better word) is that it was right next to the Gelato shop that I had pointed out yesterday saying that I had heard they did really good Gelato!  They do because we stopped for one after we had a burger at Annies, which funnily enough was right next store!

Then home for a swim in the pool.  We couldn’t believe it, today we had to share with about 6 other people, it is the first time we have really seen others at “our” pool.  Still it didn’t take long for them to get out once we had gotten in.  Quentin thinks they may have needed to get their sunglasses so as not to be blinded by his white body!

After a little rest we took a walk around the Fairways complex given we had yet to do so and by 6pm it was starting to cool down.  If you can call 25ish cool!  On the walk it looked like there was going to be a stunning sunset so we got in the car and headed towards the access to the beach that we thought would give us the best views.  What we didn’t realise was it was about a mile walk from the car park to the beach and by the time we got there the sun had gone down!  Talk about false advertising, how can you say shoreline access and not actually tell you you have to walk for 20 minutes to get there.  Thank goodness we didn’t do it with all our dive gear.  Carole would not have been happy.  :-(

In saying that the walk was very interesting as it was through a historical park that had lava tubes, fish ponds etc and was a very pretty walk.

Quentin decided on Kahalu’u Beach Park which was about 50 minutes south.  Our snorkelling book told us to get there early in the morning or late in the afternoon as it is a very popular spot.  Popular because it has quite shallow access, so is really easy for all levels of snorkelling.

When we got there around 10.45am we had to wait a couple of minutes for a park, and once we got one headed to the beach.  There was people snorkelling everywhere, a few people on paddle boards, it was like peak hour traffic!

Once we got ourselves ready we hit the water, gingerly picking our way between all the bodies.  As much as it was busy it was actually a great spot for seeing lots of different types of fish, lots of lovely colourful ones even another turtle, although this one didn’t want to stay and play.

Most of the people stayed in closer to shore so we headed a little further out, which wasn’t so busy.  I did a fabulous job of pointing out all the interesting things to Quentin, funny little fish, colourful fish, interesting sea urchins, Christmas Tree worms.  He just wouldn’t have got by with out me!

As we were heading back in we came across one of the beach lifeguards, she was paddling around on her board and warning people that there was a fish that was biting in a certain area, luckily we didn’t come across that fish.

From there we decided we would head for lunch, only problem was we couldn’t find where we were going on the GPS.  Stupid GPS requires you to put in the city/town that it is in, and none of the ones I used from my Lonely Planet guide so we gave up and headed to Ultimate Burgers which we knew we could find, and I also knew had good write ups.  The burgers were nice, as were the chips, I had their home made lemonade which was really yummy but caused my husband to pull a most unattractive face when he tried it, must have been too sour for him!

On the drive we came across a store called Donkey’s Balls which I had read about, so mandatory stop.  They make all these yummy chocolate covered macadamia’s in ball from.  Apparently the story is when the macadamias are ripe they fall of the trees, wild boars run to the orchards to eat the nuts and the farmers chase them off yelling “if I catch you your balls are mine”.  When the farmer wins the harvest is usually followed by a barbie with …you guessed it….boars balls.  Luckily the balls we got were much nicer, one lot were macadamias covered with white and milk chocolate with an orange flavour, yummy, and the others were milk chocolate with toffee bits, also yummy.  Mmm…we may be passing that store again tomorrow!

Home and a little rest before we headed off for the 1.4 mile walk around the petroglyph trail that is here within the resort.  Even though we didn’t go until after 5pm it was still very hot on the walk!  It was just up the road from where we are staying at Beach Park.  After the walk we headed down to the beach to have a look and came across all these cats.  There are quite a lot of feral cats around the place, in fact over a dozen lying on the warm concrete on the walk up to the beach.  They aren’t aggressive at all, and seem in very good condition but we have stopped ourselves from patting them no matter how lovely they look.  Oh and if you are wondering Sunny is doing fine at her hotel and Maureen tells me she is a real character and they love her to bits.

A lovely dinner of steak and kale chips.  I had got some kale at the farmers market on Saturday as I had heard that kale chips were really good for you and very yummy.  They were very tasty.  Then dessert was donkey balls.

On our drive along the highway there are signs that tell you to be careful of the donkeys, so far we are yet to see any donkey’s but have seen plenty of wild goats along the road side, so not sure if they are just confused about what a donkey looks like or what!

As we headed back closer into shore there the turtles were, in the same spot as previously.  We spent quite a bit of time swimming around with them, they were just gorgeous.

 

By they time we were ready to go (about 11.30ish) the park was pretty well full.  It is a lovely wee beach area, a very shallow area that is perfect for family and kids, then a little walk along and there is a bit of a grassy area with trees for shade and then the beach that we enter the water at, it is a little deeper and no so many rocks.  It backs on to another resort but you see hardly anyone around.

Just like the resort that we are staying at, it is massive but you really don’t see anyone.  When we got back from the beach we hopped into the pool for a swim and we were it, no one else around.

After a couple of hours relaxing it was time to head back towards Kailua Kona to meet at Jacks Diving Locker for our Manta Ray dive.  We were really lucky, they have two boats that go out, one for divers and one for snorkelers, since there was only two divers we the snorkelers got to take the bigger boat out.  Even luckier still there was only 9 snorkelers (they can take up to about 20), so plenty of room, perfect.

The crew on the boat were great, even if they only looked like there were 12!  One; Jeremy was a young surfer dude, long blonde hair, knitted hat, shorts and tank, and looked like he was still at school , the other Peter was also quite young but both really really nice and then there was our Capt.

We left around 5.30ish to head to the dive site and on our way Jeremy thought he saw dolphins coming out of the water so we headed for a look.  It wasn’t dolphins it was one of those guys on those jet pack water things, so funny to watch.  The boat trip out was great, there was a wee ledge at the front to sit on and the views were great, it was also so warm.  Q and I also sat here when we headed home.

Beautiful sunset and then we arrived at the Manta Ray site with a million other boats, it is a very very popular activity!  Waiting until it was dark we saw a couple of Manta’s near the surface so it was looking promising.

Manta Rays feed on plankton and plankton is attracted to light so the premise is if there is enough light you will get plankton and it follows that you will also get Manta Rays (of course this doesn’t always work).  The light is achieved by divers that are on the bottom of the ocean (it is only about 10 meters) with strong lights looking up, and then all the snorkelers are on the top with lights looking down.  In most cases the lights are attached to a surf or paddle board and then the snorkelers just gather around the board and use that as their guide.

Within seconds of us getting into the water we had a manta ray doing somersaults so close that we could have reached out and touched it, we are talking about 10cms (4 inches) from us.  It was amazing.

As it got darker there was probably about 10 or more rays in the water, some small, some absolutely huge, there was also about a million snorkelers it he water, okay, okay, another exaggeration, but it was a madhouse, snorkelers everywhere, paddleboards everywhere, fins in your back, front and sides as everyone was floating around.  Crazy.  But then a manta ray would come close and all that was forgotten.

Jeremy and Peter had joined our two paddle boards together so we were travelling as one pack rather than two, how they managed to keep us all together was amazing, let alone following the rays and lights.  After a little while most of the others in the group decided they had had enough and went in, leaving just Q, me and Stefan from Sweden along with our guide Jeremy.  It was much easier once we got rid of the extra dead weight and we stayed in until we were told to get out!  The water was incredibly warm even though it was dark.  Just amazing.

Another once in a lifetime experience.  How lucky are we.  J