That would be the last thing I proclaimed before passing out the previous night. The average person would probably say 'crack of DAWN' but I like mine better.
The point is, I was up at 6:15am. I had every intention of taking my camera outside and watching the sunrise, but as it turns out our lenai doesn't face that direction. I enjoyed my time anyway.
I think I was up for at least 2 hours before anyone joined me. Some people like to use vacation time to sleep in and relax as much as possible, which is ok, but I prefer to get up and experience as much as possible.
By the time everyone was ready to go I was pretty much starving to death. I am a bottomless pit of hunger, you know. I may have even resorted to eating the licorice I had in my bag and pretending it was breakfast.Being that it was day 1 and we arrived after dark the night before, we really had no idea where we were going. And then a beautiful thing happened. We found 'Lanikai juice' which may just be the greatest place ever. If we had these places at home I think I would eat there everyday for the rest of forever.
We had fresh juice, smoothie bowls and sandwiches. My choices were fresh cashew milk and a 'hula bowl.' It has guava, apple, pineapple, mango, banana and passionfruit and is topped with granola, banana, pineapple and honey. I don't think you could understand how delicious it is so I'm going to move on.
Kuilei Cliffs beach is quite a pretty place. It sits just behind Diamond Head and was never busy. The beach was nice, the water was great and we enjoyed watching the surfers.
Just for fun we decided to leave and go check out other beaches. We found Maunalua beach next but It didn't really appeal so we got back in the car.
This needs no explanation.
Since we, mostly I, really had no business being outside in Hawaii with no sunscreen we had to call it and head indoors for a bit.
Having rented a house instead of staying at a hotel, we wanted to make food in our kitchen instead of eating out for every meal. We decided that 1 large grocery shop would be good for a week. Everyone picked out something here or there, but mostly we agreed on the kinds of foods to eat. After spending entirely too much money we headed home to put it away and continue hiding from the sun for a bit.
For our first evening out we wanted to go to Waikiki beach. Obviously we have no idea how to get there so Weronika used the maps on her phone to navigate. This would lead to my first (of many) car tantrums. Waikiki is absolutely FULL of 1-way streets. I'm not used to that kind of driving so we ended up parking a million miles away at the mall parkade and walking down.
Tantrums aside, we eventually made it to the beach again. Grace isn't a big fan of salt water so she was the towel master on the sand, Alycia and Weronika came in the water for a bit, but it was windy so they eventually joined Grace. Rachel and I are all about the swimming. I brought my GoPro camera and made a few videos before it died.
At some point I decided that we should just keep swimming out, even though we really had no idea how deep the water was. After a bit I decided I should test it out and see about touching the bottom. I got nowhere close. That doesn't bother me at all though, I'm confident in my swimming abilities and really, we weren't that far from shore.
Now, picture this. Swimming out in the ocean, you know that it's quite deep. All of a sudden a huge dark shadow is right underneath you. As soon as I noticed it I did the obvious thing. Screamed, flailed about and kicked really hard while swimming away. I think I darn near had a heart attack too! Rachel was witness to all this and she looked about as terrified as I felt. ANYWAY, it wasn't a sea monster coming to eat me. Just a huge piece of coral that came up nearly to the surface out of nowhere. The coral monster did cut my foot though!
Needing a bit of a breather after that, we decided to just close our eyes, hold hands and float around for a bit. Its quite lovely actually. The ocean makes the strangest noise when you just lay in it, it kind of crackles.
Eventually we had to retire from the ocean and go in search of food. I promptly broke my sandal and had to walk down the streets of Waikiki in 1!!
We really wanted sushi but didn't find anything that appealed so we ended up back at the mall. Convenient, since I was in the market for new footwear.
Because I hadn't gotten my fill of heart attack for 1 day, we got pulled over while driving home.... Oops..
Apparently I didn't have my lights on. They are supposed to be automatic so I'm not really sure what happened. The cop was obviously a nice guy though because he just told me to put them on and then left me to it. Not going to lie, I was mildly terrified. I've never been pulled over before!!
With my lights now on, we headed in the direction of home. And then got lost. And then stayed lost for a while. This island has funny roads, I'm not a huge fan of them.
With the help of our map (Weronika) we go home somehow.
And because things "happen in 3's" we needed one more event to end out the day.
As we were all getting ready for bed the lights went out. We all ran to the living room to sit by the window and hangout together. A few of us may or may not be afraid of the dark...
Someone realized that we had battery operated candles around the apartment, but not a single one of them actually had a battery in it.
Our lovely landlord eventually came to bring us lights, and snacks too!! He also informed us that the power was out on the whole mountain and we would just have to ride it out.
The electricity gods came to save us at some point and we could finally go to bed.
Now that I'm thinking about it, that clearly makes no sense. Sit around waiting for the lights to come on so we can turn them right out again???
More adventures await us tomorrow!
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