day 6: beach day

up at 7, we were at Hanauma Bay (pronouced Ha-Now-Ma -- i learned that during the cheesy orientation video). Both ry and I had been here once before; for him when his sister was still in his mom's belly and for me a loss ass time ago. All i know is I swear I remember feeding the fish which is now banned and has been since 1990 and i don't remember having to watch an orientation video. what amazes me is that even though every person was required to sit through the video to learn about the history of the bay and how to protect it, we saw numerous visitors still doing everything they shouldn't while snorkeling like standing and sitting on the reef. even though we arrived just before 8am, the reserve had been open since 6am with videos every 15 minutes. you take a tram or walk down the service road and can rent snorkel gear, get info from the info booth and/or find your place on the beach.



the idea of renting snorkel gear that someone else has previously used was a bit more than ryan wanted to put in his mouth so we opted to buy a masks from our hotel ABC store and bring them with us. we did rent feetie fins for $4 each which were very helpful.

it took us three tries but we finally made it into the water comfortably and were able to check out the awesome reef fish and sealife. we took pics with an underwater camera which we'll have to develop and post.

we didn't really have a plan for the rest of the days so just hopped in the car and headed back towards waikiki. on the way back we stopped near hawaii kai and visited Christy at Kona Brewing Company for lunch. the koko marina was a pretty setting but the afternoon wind had really kicked up. some of our salad and chips were flying off our plates! friends of mine know I don't drink beer, but mia said that i had to try one of KBC's beers that guaranteed I would like. eager to prove her wrong, i tried the lilikoi beer and was surprised. i actually could see myself ordering and drinking this! ry said probably because it didn't taste at all like beer (which is why i loved it). it was light, sweet and didn't smell. =)



for dessert we made a second trip back to waiola shave ice. i picked a couple of shave ice syrups for lysh and we ordered an ice cream pina colada shave ice. mmm.mmm.good.

then it was more beach time. we found a place on waikiki beach near the sunset at the beach movie screen and laid out for a bit. it was vacation for us, but also a school holiday for local kids which made the beach PACKED with kids and families, especially too since the eva beach little league team was going to be honored with a parade down kalakaua ending at the movie site where we were laying down. the waves were pretty good with plenty of boogie boarders and tubers.

we walked back toward our hotel and camped out right across the street to wait for the parade to come by. all in all there were 7 championship teams for youth baseball teams. local marching bands, sponsor and family members also went by.



since we loved alan wong's restaurant, we wanted to also try the pineapple room by alan wong located in ala moana at macy's.