Hawaii Trip #1: Day 4

Despite going to bed the night before feeling like there was no way I could get up early again to go snorkeling, I found myself wide awake a full 30-40 minutes before George and Dad were leaving, so I decided I might as well go check it out.

We headed up to the North Shore of Oahu to a place called Shark Cove that was definitely a change from Hanauma Bay the previous morning. For starters there were actually waves coming in. Probably nothing too crazy but I was a little more leery than I'd been the morning before. To get out into the cove, you had to swim out through a rocky stretch where it seemed like every crevice had a sea urchin sitting in, so that was kind of stressful, too. Once you got past that stretch it was a lot easier to get around and it was pretty amazing to see huge schools of fish swimming all around, as well as many of the tropical fish we'd seen at Hanauma. Also, in contrast to Hanauma Bay, the water quickly got much deeper, so there wasn't anywhere I could just put my feet down and take a break when I got a little tense, which meant if I wanted to take a break, I had to swim back through the rocky area.

Anyway, let's just say it was a little more stressful than it had been the day before, but I still did enjoy seeing the fish and attempting to take some underwater photos with a camera Meili had given me. I dropped that camera off at Walmart for developing a week ago and it's still not back from wherever they send their photos out to. Film developing sure ain't what it used to be.

I was ready to be done snorkeling earlier than George and my dad, who ventured way out into the cove and even out of the cove into the open water. I wandered around some tide pools that were there and also spend some time looking through interesting rocks on the beach.


Shark Cove


The channel out to the cove is through the rocks on the left of this photo.

After we were finished, we headed back down to Kaneohe, picked up lunch at Subway and headed home to eat and hang out.

After lunch, during the little ones' nap time, George, Kimi, mom, Lucy, and I went for a short hike to a little waterfall not too far from their house. It was a short hike (maybe 20 minutes), but it was cool to be out in the jungle and see some of the cool trees there.


At the waterfall


On the way back down

That night we watched "Riding Giants", a documentary on big wave surfing that featured some of the beaches there in Oahu. The big waves come in the winter time, so we didn't really see much surfing during our time there.

More photos from Day 4.