Monday, November 3rd
The good thing about being on Texas time is that our usually late sleeping selves were up by 6-7am every morning letting us get an early start without being so exhausted. I told DAvid that we should just stay on Texas time so we can be out the hotel by 7 am early morning. First thing after we got ready, I told David we had to take a photo with our leis on that we got the night before at check-in. We stepped outside our room onto the grass (which overlooks the ocean if you look out enough) and I set up my camera with the self-timer.
Monday was a relaxed day of getting settled and getting our bearings straight. We splurged and had breakfast at the hotel buffet. It was amazing. The view looking out of the Swon Court consisted of a waterfall with swans swimming below, as well as ocean in the distance. Again with the insides of buildings really being outside…we enjoyed the birds flying around trying to pick up scraps of food on people’s plates after they had left. The buffet was delicious.
My lovely iPhone photo of breakfast. The Hawaiian juice was delish!
Everything in Hawaii costs more than we are used to. So after breakfast we went to Walmart and bought some necessities: water, drinks, a few snacks, etc. We also both bought snorkel gear since that’s something we knew we wanted to do more than one day. It’s about $20/day to rent snorkel gear and we were able to buy ours at Walmart for $30. On our way back from Walmart we actually got to enjoy the drive along the coast to our hotel. It was gorgeous. We could drive that drive every day and not get tired of it. Ocean on one side and mountains on the other. Something we get nothing of in Houston. After we got back, David was dying to try out the snorkel gear, so we grabbed our stuff and walked down to the beach just outside our resort.
The beach outside our resort wasn’t exactly what I expected. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just different. There’s not a lot of “beach” before it meets ocean. Maybe 10 feet of sand and then you’re at the water. I was also amazed at how shallow the water was by us. There was a ton of live rock and when we snorkeled we saw lots of tangs and triggers. Sidenote: David’s saltwater fish aquarium hobby really helped me know what I was looking at. I’m sure three years ago I would just look at these fish and be all, “oh, those are pretty fish,” but knowing the names of fish and information about each fish made it more enjoyable for me. We saw lots of fish and coral there, but the water was a bit too rough for my liking. It was constantly stirring up the sand which made it difficult to really enjoy what we were looking at (for me, anyway. David loves anything and everything fish).
After snorkeling we went inside, showered and grabbed us some dinner. I’m pretty sure I was exhausted by 9pm (again, I don’t think I ever adjusted off of Texas time so to me, it felt like 1am) and we went to bed.
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