Kailua-Kona highlights

Seen and heard and done in Kona:

- A line-up of at least 10 police cars and SUV into the Kona McDonald's for drive-in breakfast at 7h50 am. A 2 lane drive-in at that...We were most likely in the safest area of town at that time of the day!

- Meeting GF from British Columbia on the boat dive day, and realizing that S and him had previously fought on E-Bay for the same camera. That was funny :) GF buddied up with us on the dolphin dive day off Honohokau Bay.

Entry of the shore dive at Honohokau Bay. Yes, we walked all that way into the water with our dive gear.

- A tumbling exit at the Kona Paradise shore dive onto a black pebble beach. We didn't realize that the pebbles were in such a slant that if we tried climbing back onto the beach from the surf, there were avalanches... so we all got stuck trying to climb out rolling pebbles with full dive gear! Yikes!

Black pebble beach at Kona Paradise

- An evening busy traumatized (S more than me) by a giant coackroach who had made its way into the apartment. Thank God for the can of Raid!!! It is true that the thing was at least 2 inches long, not counting the antennae, and it almost got into S's luggage before I eliminated it successfully with squeak-punctuated puffs of Raid.

- Being woken up the first night in our nice condo by what was most likely a rat! It woke me up by scurrying around and jumping off my bed at 4 am and then of course I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went to check e-mail. It was a good omen, since G had e-mailed me to meet them at the crazy hour of 6h15 am to go diving. So the mysterious rat was dubbed 'Dive Buddy' ; then he was never seen again and avoided all the rat traps in spite of the delicious bacon. Dive Buddy is definitely not a figment of my imagination even though everybody else seems to think so :)

- An interesting dive at Honaunau - Place of Refuge after our 'crepuscular' dive there. It had been a great dive, where the 'Aloha' written with cement blocks underwater was home to many sleeping pufferfish. But then when we walked back to our car we encountered a strange paranoid local. He kept on asking if we were with a group, who was our 'commando leader', and that we were not to disturb the sacred marine life at this time of the day. After we told him that we were on our own and I asked him 'What seems to be the problem, sir' more assertively, he calmed down and left with a 'Welcome to Hawai'i'. Creepy-o!

- Being freaked scared after a shore night dive on our own (2 girls) off Mile 4 beach. We had seen dodgy locals drinking at 7 am there and there were two people watching us load back our gear into our car trunk - a little dodgy. After a while we realized that they were a couple just hanging out at the beach and calmed down.

- Expensive boat diving where the divemasters want to sell you a 'crepuscular dive'. It's just an expensive way of saying sunset dive. Geeeez!

- Kailua-Kona, the only place in the world where I've done a surface interval in my wetsuit and booties shopping for ice-cream sandwiches for the group at Wal Mart!

- Speaking of which, Wal Mart!!!! Land of McD's ie safe food for S, cheap dive gear dohicky's like net bags, tankbangers, gloves, carabiners, dry bags, and cheap bikinis etc etc... We must have gone at least 4 times to Wal-Mart in Hawai'i!

- Delicious sushi at Kenichi's lost in the boonies in a shopping center. The delightful Uni was from... California. And yet when I was in California the delightful Uni was from... British Columbia. I don't get it.

Yummmm...sushi!

- Po'ke! and more Po'ke for breakfast! Po'ke is a sashimi tuna salad with sesame oil, spices and soy sauce... yum yum... Hawai'ian fare at its best. (much better than loco moco, which is ground beef on rice covered with a fried egg).

- Sunset at Hapuna Beach in the South Kohala Coast