Day 3: Waterfalls hike, snorkeling

Today we woke up to a beautiful (if cloudy) sunrise. It gets dark fairly early here (like 7:30) and so we keep falling asleep at like 8:30 and rising with the sun (and the 20 chickens outside our door). Here is the view from the front yard of the house this morning:

After sunrise, we popped open a locally grown papaya and had ourselves a granola, yogurt, and papaya parfait for breakfast on the patio. Christie and I flipped through the book looking for an adventure for the day.

We set out to do another hike, but we hoped to make it a bit easier one this time. We chose a hike to a couple of waterfalls on the eastern side of the island. It was a nice hike through a very dense forest, and we got to see 2 falls, both beautiful. For me, the highlight of the trip was the walk through the forest. It was both similar to dense forests back home, and yet totally and completely different.

The vegetation was so lush, with massive vines growing up every tree. The entire forest floor was covered in plants, instead of just sticks and leaves like the midwest. Overall, it was a really nice morning.

Lunch found us in the town of Kapa'a at a pizza stand where Christie had an "artichoke eddie" pizza and I had a meat raffle bonanza. Well, I don't remember what it was called, but it was definitely a protein bomb. We then tried our first shave ice, which is like a snow cone times a thousand, with macadamia nut ice cream underneath the shave ice and totally awesome flavoring over the top. I don't generally go for sweets and I loved it.

For the afternoon we decided to rent some decent snorkel gear and head to the beach. The snorkel renter dude told us about Tunnels beach, which has a reef so large its visible from space. No kidding, this reef is massive! Christie and I snorkeled around, and honestly there were literally hundreds of fish teeming all around us. I was able to get inches away from countless varieties of tropical fish. After Christie went back to lay out in the sun, I returned to the reef to venture out on my own. My adventuresome spirit was richly rewarded with a swim alongside two sea turtles lazily swimming about some deep coral. It was really surreal to swim next to them and see them from about 2 feet away.

After the beach, we headed back to the house for a hot tub and a margarita. For dinner, we put the top back down on the jeep and drove over to the Kiluaea fish market and had some wraps. Christie got tofu, and I had an ahi tuna (super rare of course). We snagged a couple of beers to bring in (its a BYOB place), and had a wonderful dinner. It was too cloudy to see the sun set, but we got a glimpse of the moon as we drove home to crash for the night.

Slideshow of the hike pictures: