This is my I’ve-been-in-the-water-all-morning smile:

The swell is still up pretty high, so a lot of the little spots we checked out (Manini Beach, Kealakekua Bay, Ke’ei, City of Refuge picnic areas) were too surfy for good snorkeling, but we hit the jackpot at Honaunau, just protected enough that it’s not a matter of getting in and out through crashing and sky-blowing surf. And (although there was some surge causing turbidity in the water—meaning it wasn’t as crystal-clear as it might have been) there was still a good 20 feet of visibility. We weren’t just chasing comfortable entries, though that’s no small thing—there’s also the matter of what you’re able to see once you get IN the water. If it’s all surf and surge, there’s not much visibility. Case in point: On the afternoon of our arrival, we could look out of our fourth-floor balcony and see the yellow fish down below, when a wave would lift up a little and the sun shine through it. By the next morning when we tried to snorkel in the same spot with the swell up, there wasn’t a fish to be seen the whole time we were in the water. They were there—but we couldn’t see them.

Anyway, we got in at Two-Step (a volcanic step formation that makes for a great entry-point, even when there’s enough surge to suck you right off the step like today) and cruised around for forty minutes or so, holding hands so we could stay together without having to keep looking around for one another—all our attention on the fish and coral and urchins below.

When my mom came out to visit me here thirty years ago, she fell in love with a fish called the Moorish Idol—and when Jon and I first came to Hawai’i together, I pointed it out to him as “my mom’s fish.” Now I can recognize the words “Your mom’s fish!” when those words are spoken through a snorkel!

We got out, had a snack, sunned ourselves, kicked around the tidepools a bit—and got back in for another half-hour or so of snorkeling. Absolutely lovely to be IN the water. Now I really feel as though I’m here. I’ve gotten a picture of my mom’s fish.

(I shake my head over the expense of my first underwater camera—and the crappy photo quality I got out of it—when I think that now I just take my PHONE in the water, without even a case. How things have changed in three decades!)

Honaunau Bay is adjacent to the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau, or City of Refuge, which was built a good four hundred years ago and is considered one of the most sacred spots on the islands. The spiritual power of chiefs, their Mana, was considered to be in their bones, and this temple was the mausoleum for the bones of 23 chiefs, so the place itself is steeped in Mana.

The carved figures are ki’i (what popular culture would have as “tiki”—I think from the Tahitian version of the same word). They are representations (also 400 years old—not kitschy tourist carvings) of the god Lono in his various aspects.

We’ve just rented tanks and gear to go diving tomorrow, and enjoyed some seafood nachos (ahi poke—raw tuna) for our dinner-out at Huggo’s On the Rocks. Now it’s back to the condo to lie back and digest, and watch the surfers from our window, as the sun goes down behind them. There will be some die-hards out there until after that crimson disc dips below the horizon.