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2. Kāʻanapali Beach

Hawaii 2021

Day 2

I slept well, even though I woke up a couple of times, hearing the soothing waves. I finally got up at 6am (9am San Diego time), which is one of the longest nights I’ve slept.

We had breakfast at the Lanai restaurant sitting on chairs in the inside pool with our feet in the water. 

I did some research on good snorkel spots and wrote down a few: Moluaka Beach at Turtle Town, Molokini Crater, Black Rock and Honolua Bay. Today we didn’t want to drive anywhere so Black Rock was the obvious choice as it is only a 15 minute stroll along the beach. Before we left, I told Kate about Molokini Crater: that it’s a half submerged crescent shaped crater with lots of sea life and 100 feet visibility, with reported 200 ft sometimes…!

“There are lots of fish, octopuses, and sometimes a particular type of fish. Its name sounds more scary than it really is.” I told her.

“Hmmm, that doesn’t sound so good.”

“They can be about the length of our balcony” (30 feet). “They are very cute and you can pet them.”

She laughed and said “Okay, so you’re saying they are giant and adorable.”

“Exactly! They are called whale sharks. But don’t worry, they are slow and only eat plankton.”

“Yeah, I’m still not sure I want to meet one”, looking at me with suspicious eyes. 

Time to head for Black Rock Beach. Apparently people like to jump off this rock. Depending on the tide the height varies between 12 and 18 feet. But we were here to test our new snorkel gear and see some fishes. There were no fish in the sandy part but when we got closer to the rock the bottom also became more rocky and saw some yellow tangs, black durgons, and humuhumu-nukunuku-apua’a’s. But not many.

A humuhumu-nukunuku-apua’a.

We took a break on the beach. Kate liked to be carried around on my back in the water and I was exhausted. Marie asked if it was my toughest workout since we trained for the Carlsbad half marathon. It sure felt so.

Noon was approaching and we headed back to the beach in front of our hotel. Turned out, there was a reef right there too with even more fishes. Marie was tired and wanted to take a nap. She headed back to the room while Kate and I swam around a bit longer. Kate and I ordered food at the bar and also headed back up. We ate our lunch on the balcony while enjoying the view. 

As we were sticking to our plan to not go very far today, we headed back to the pool. Marie and Kate went swimming whereas I laid down on a beach chair and kept reading Joe Hill’s “Full Throttle”. I started that book in the plane. I enjoyed very much reading his honest description of his journey to becoming a writer. I continued with the next chapter. It was very hot though sitting in the direct sun even though I was wearing my awesome Anza-Borrego safari hat (both my wife and mom disagree with me on that point) and had put a towel over my legs.

When Marie and Kate came back we decided to relax at the Lanai, have some cocktails (Kate a “POG”, a pineapple-orange-guava juice drink) and play some shuffleboard. When we sat down, Marie and Kate read and I wrote down my description of our first day on my iPad. We also had a simple dinner (we were still quite full from our lunches) and headed back to our room. I sat down on the balcony and started writing about this day. 

Read about the next day here

Read about the day before here