First Day in Hawai’i: Working Toward “Vacation Gear”

Morning. We were on a mission once the dive shops opened—looking for a short-sleeve rash guard for Jon (because we couldn’t find his at home) and a waterproof pouch for Jeep keys (because we forgot ours at home). And beach towels. And sunscreen. We got some warm-weather walking in, for sure—making the rounds of several snorkel and dive shops, and then came back home to get into our swimsuits and hit the water. There’s a good entry just to the side of our hotel, so we walked out there with our snorkel gear in hand, got ourselves out into the surf and snorkel gear pulled on, then holding hands to keep together, took off at an angle for an area we’d been scouting from our balcony above. It turned out to be too much rough surf-on-rocks, so we ended up circling back around to our entry point. My iPhone camera (which, by the way, I don’t use with any waterproof case–because it’s that good by itself) never made it out of its safe tuck-away inside my swimsuit–at least, not till I was back on shore. Not this time–we’ll get the fish-pictures in another go. We rinsed ourselves off and sat by the pool—and got in the pool, which is remarkably warm, and sat in beach chairs facing the seawall till we were half-dry before going upstairs to change again. Now we’re waiting for my phone to charge, because I was so wiped out last night I never plugged it in. Jon-the-cook is taking pictures of recipes in Hawaiian cookbooks left in our condo, and we’ve been checking out all the listed dive and snorkel entries along the shore to the south of us. Surf report has a high swell to the north, which is great for the surfers but less so for us, so we’re looking southward.

Afternoon. I think we both recognized the sort of frenetic first-day-of-vacation energy going on—where it’s hard to settle down and hard to just chill because your brain is still going too fast. I always need at least a full day to get into vacation mode. On a first day we do vacation-y things, but not so much at a vacation-y pace. Case in point: We walked 3 ½ miles today in very warm temperatures (warm enough, anyway, to be working up a sweat walking) doing all the shopping-errands we could think of. All the people to whom we had promised to bring something back—we took care of that already. It’s actually a perfect first-day activity, something to focus your mind until you can let it drift out of focus a little…

We ate our designated “meal out” at a little grill we’d spotted this morning—the Ono Loa Grill. The best fish tacos I have ever put in my mouth. (And down both arms, with the sauce running out—I needed a pile of napkins and a lime hand-wash afterward!) And then we worked off some of what we’d just eaten with some more walking-and-shopping. Okay, we were both relieved enough to get back to our car, and back “home” to our condo for some lie-down time, Jon with word puzzles and me with a book, while we rest before tackling a manta ray snorkel cruise this evening!

Lots of dive experiences you can get on your own on the Big Island, because there are so many places where you can just walk into the water—but manta diving (or snorkeling) is unique and requires lights to draw them in. Thirty years ago when I was going to school here, there was a hotel that shone big spotlights into the water, and we would just slip into the water from the beach and swim out to where the mantas were swimming through. That hotel went under long ago, so now the manta cruises bring their own lights, and the cruises are the only good way to see them. I’m probably going to be 0-for-2 on underwater pictures in our first two snorkels—it’ll be too dark for the camera, I think. As my mother used to say when I fussed about not having my camera: “Take a mind picture!” I will take a mind picture, and try to paint a word-picture.