The Cleverest Blog Title Ever!

I just had to write a few words about how cool last weekend was (March 31^st and April 1^st). It’s funny, but in the 3 ½ months we’ve been here I haven’t had a whole day off to do some real snorkeling. So last Saturday they didn’t call me in to work so I decided to go all out. There’s a place about 30 minutes from home called La Peruse Bay. Pretty much you just start driving south and park where the road ends (thank goodness for the little Geo Metro or I wouldn’t have had a parking place at all). Then if you really want to see hoards of fish you hike about 45 minutes over a lava field. And the hike is no picnic. Some parts of the hike there’s no trail at all and you just have to jump over crevasses and boulder up mounds of rough lava. But after I got to what’s called “the aquarium” it was all worth it. Despite it being the middle of a Saturday morning, the place was virtually empty. There were maybe 3 families hanging out there and me. In fact I decided to head back a little early because eventually it was just me and one other group of 4 people, and I wanted people around in case I got eaten by a shark or tripped on the lava and hurt myself, so I headed home before they did.

The bay itself it beautiful to look at even though there’s no beach, but the real eye candy was after you put your face in the water. It reminds me of when Frodo falls into the dead marshes – it really doesn’t look that deep, but when he falls in the water there’s a whole world down there you can’t see from up top. Except there were fishes instead of dead guys. It was amazing! Huge schools of fish of all kinds. Crazy stretched-out trumpet fish. Huge parrot fish. It was just impossible to describe, really. I could have spent all day there.

It’d been a long time since I’d snorkeled or scuba’d, so I swallowed a lot of salt water that first half hour or so. After that, though, I was just one of the fishes. It was great.

The next day (Sunday morning), Christin had the day off too so we went to Po’olenalena Beach to hang out (pictured at the top). After lying on the beach for a while we decided to do some snorkeling there. I had been a little disappointed the day before because I didn’t see any turtles, but this totally made up for it. There were turtles all over the place. Most were pretty friggin big, but there were a couple that were snuggled at the bottom of the ocean in some corral. They looked like they were sleeping and they were bigger than me and Christin. (Sidenote: How long can turtles hold their breath? Were they really sleeping under there or were they dead?)

Then Sunday evening Christin and I went on a whale-watching trip. Chris and Steve had already been on one earlier in the year but the whale season is ending and I figured I’d better get out there before they leave. It was pretty cool. We didn't see any breaches where the whales jump totally out of the water. But we saw plenty of dorsal fins and tails. Any way you look at it it was a nice boat ride at the end of the day.

So yeah, that was last weekend. It's hard to believe, but this week is really my last week doing taxes. After that I've got some time to explore Kaui or the Big Island. That and I'll have some time to do some real blogging finally.