Hawai’i Day Six: Catching Joy

Starting every morning with coffee and waves is hard to beat. Today, after a papaya-and-yogurt breakfast, we got an early start (with a stop at Walmart for a waterproof pouch for the new phone) and headed back down the coast to spend more time underwater in our favorite spot at Honaunau Bay.

The water was crystal clear today, and you literally can’t run out of things to see on this reef, even if you’re just snorkeling and free-diving like we were today. We saw SO many different butterfly fish, huge and iridescent blue-and-green parrotfish, purple-spotted peacock groupers, pufferfish, yellow tangs by the score, surgeonfish and triggerfish and damselfish and filefish and cornetfish, a whole herd of goatfish—and my mother’s Moorish Idol. And, crowning joy, honu—a sea turtle, swimming along below us and then coming up for air beside us.

After nearly an hour of snorkeling we came up to warm ourselves in the sun, before going out a second time. Sitting there on the back of our Jeep, face turned up to the tropical sun, I could just feel myself radiating joy.

On the way back toward town we stopped at a roadside place called Super J’s, recommended to us by a Local, as a mother-daughter operation with three fabulous menu items. We can vouch for the fabulousness of the Lau Lau, which is about as authentic a Hawai’ian dish as there is. It’s pork wrapped in kalo (taro) leaves and steamed—served, of course, with rice and mac salad.“Broke da mout’, Auntie,” I said to the mom when she came around to our table—and if she was surprised to hear the Pidgin compliment from a haole tourist, she was graciousness itself in response.

We’ve been back to town now to rent scuba gear again, for tomorrow morning. And to tank up on some Kona coffee. Tonight we have a picnic spread of leftovers from yesterday’s seafood bounty… Did I say it already? Radiating joy!