la vie en rose

J's dad let us keep the rental car on Thursday, so we decided to go around the whole island. 1st stop, Hanauma Bay!


With our valuables stored safely in a locker (more on that in a minute) and our snorkel gear ready to go, we headed into the water. I had some trouble at the beginning - as an asthmatic, having been taught all my life to not breathe through my mouth, I just couldn't get used to now having to do so. I panicked a couple times and sucked in a bunch of water, but I finally got the hang of it.

The water was so clear (as you can tell)! I've heard it said before that swimming there is like swimming in an aquarium and they weren't kidding! Those dark areas in the picture above, those are the reefs, and all the fishies are swimming around and ducking in and out of the reef and you can swim into the little alcoves. We swam out past where most of the people were and ended up traversing pretty much the whole bay from one side to the other.

At one point J stopped swimming and motioned for me to look up. He had something in his hand - his cell phone! He hadn't checked all his pockets when we put our stuff in the locker, and now his cellie was fried. Or brined, as it were. Strike 1 for swimming with the wallet, strike 2 for the cell phone.

We were both so intent on what we were doing when all of the sudden I felt a pretty strong wave, and then another. I looked up and realized that we had completely left the main reef area and were way further out than I thought we were. We weren't in trouble or anything, but the thing with the reefs is that there are only a couple channels that you can swim through to get back to the beach and finding them is an adventure in itself. We started for the channel at the top of the bay, only to get stuck on the reef with a stronger current than we were used to. A couple waves crashed into me and I used my right leg to get better leverage. I knew I had been cut a couple times, but J had been, too. We decided to turn around and get back to the middle channel.


We got out onto the beach and I was standing there, fiddling with my goggles, when I noticed some people looking at me. I looked down at my leg and, because it was wet, it looked like blood was pouring out of my wounds. J was like, "Whoa, are you okay?" Once it all dried, they were just some nice scrapes, no major shark bait.

See, I'm fine!

We headed up the Leeward side of the island. J saw a sign for fresh iced coconuts, so he pulled the car over.


Coconut milk drunk straight from a coconut does not taste like the coconut we're used to on the mainland. Where's the sugar? Where's the propylene glycol? What about the sodium metabisulfite?

We stopped at the Valley of the Temples just outside Kailua to see the Byodo-In Temple. The Byodo-In Temple is a replica of a 1000 year old Buddhist temple in Kyoto. It was built in 1960 to commemorate 100 years of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii. It is a working temple. It is absolutely stunning.


Before you enter a Buddhist temple, you're supposed to ring the bell. Ringing the bell will purify the mind of evil spirits and temptation. It is said that ringing this bell will bring you happiness, blessings, and a long life.

You take off your shoes as a sign of respect before you enter the temple. The nine foot tall golden Lotus Buddha greets you upon entry.

We lit some incense at the base of the Buddha and made our way to the koi ponds.

I think they are accustomed to swarming around when people pull out their cameras.

Next stop was a different sort of temple - our church's temple in Laie. I remember seeing pictures of this temple when I was little and I was fascinated by how it looked different than all the other temples (I wish they still did that). Isn't it beautiful, especially the way the palm tree line up to frame it? This is the view from the road even!

In Laie we rented a boogie board and a surfboard. We spent the afternoon trying to master both, ending up sharing the boogie board. J said that surfing takes a lot of upper body strength, and even though he is an excellent skateboarder and snowboarder (which helped him in his surfing experiment considerably), it will take a couple more tries, I think. Maybe he can transfer to BYU-Hawaii and become an expert! We can dream, right?

Since we were so close, we had to stop at Matsumoto's again.

We stopped for some gas before we gave the car back to J's dad. Once we were back at the hotel there was some confusion as to where J's "wallet" was (he was using the camera case). We searched the backpack - nope. We retraced our steps back to the valet - nope. J went down to the garage to search the car - nope. J's dad was waiting for us (he had been trying to call all afternoon, but since the phone was busted, he was worried that we were in a car accident or something). I suggested that we go back to the gas station, but when J went back to the car the 2nd time he found it! Thank goodness!