Hawaii for Spring Break, Day 4

Today begins General Conference, and though we are away from home, we managed to watch quite a bit.  Because of the time difference, conference started at 6:00am, but we were up about then, and so we watched the whole Saturday morning session, having a bit of breakfast and getting ready for the beach part of our day.  As soon as it was over, we all piled in Brent and Brenda's car and drove over to Makapu'u again.  Below the Lighthouse Trail is another trail that goes over to the shoreline.  Although the area there is rocky, there is a fantastic place just under Pele's Throne where you can do cliff jumping.  It's not really a cliff, more just a volcanic rock shore, where someone stuck a thick plank of wood you can leap off of into a beautiful clear pool.  It isn't any higher than the cliff jump at the rec center, and because of this, we were able to get the kids to jump off.  The water is so clear, not too cold, and the jump just high enough to be exhilarating without being dangerous.  We all jumped off several times.  It was so, so fun!  If we lived in Hawaii, I think we'd come here every week, just for a quick, thrilling dip.

Pele's Throne

A rocky outcropping that pokes up, making it look like a throne.

Pele has a glorious view out to the ocean.

  

 

  

 

 

 

  

  

  

 

 

  

 

  

  

 

We spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon at Sea Life Park, a marine mammal park, bird sanctuary, and aquarium not far from Brenda's house.  In fact, it is just past Makapu'u.  It's a small park, but we saw really interesting things, the park wasn't too crowded, and the two shows we saw were fun.  The kids loved it.  There was a large shark tank as we walked in where we saw hammerhead sharks.  We went to a sea lion show and learned about the differences between sea lions and seals.  We saw sea turtles mating (Hey, hey! Kids! Cover your eyes!), fed yellow tangs and petted a baby sea turtle, watched a dolphin show, had a close encounter with a penguin named Almond Joy (AJ for short), and learned all about the resident monk seal Lamb Chop.  We got to feed small, colorful birds that ate Kent's hat and sat on Brandt's head, and waited so, so long for lunch.  It was all super fun!  Look at all these pictures that prove it.

 

Fake shark--real octopus.

 

Hubba! Hubba! Spring is in the air.

Sea Life Park is active in turtle conservation, releasing hundreds of adolescent green sea turtles

 into the wild that were hatched and raised at the park.

We got to touch one of those adolescent turtles.

Yellow tangs eat lettuce.

 

 

Trying to feed the birds seed when they are much more interested in eating Kent's hat.

 

 

 

Waiting for the dolphin show to start.

The view out to the ocean wasn't too shabby.

Blythe was super interested in this Humboldt penguin Almond Joy.

She's a penguin lover.

 

Shaka!

 After getting back from our Sea Life adventure, we had a bit of a rest while Brenda took Brent to the airport.  He was flying out Washington, DC tonight, and we will miss him the rest of our trip.  The kids were happy to have a bit of down time and played with Legos they had pulled out this morning while we listened to conference.

Brenda suggested that Kent and I go into Waikiki and have dinner and a romantic stroll along the beach.  Brent works at Fort DeRussy which is almost directly across the street from the Hilton, and she gave us his parking pass so we could park there and walk along the beach.  We took her up on her kind offer.  She stayed home with the kids who had a great time swimming at the pool, watching a movie, and eating popcorn.  How great of an aunt is Brenda?  A number one primo good!

Kent and I went to dinner at Nico's Pier 38, a fish restaurant on the pier where fresh fish is brought in every morning.  Our dinner was quite tasty.  We had deep fried fish cheeks with a spicy aioli sauce, then I had peppercorn swordfish, and Kent had tilapia in a creamy sauce.  So nice to eat fresh, well-prepared fish.  The carrots and green beans on the side were really yummy, too.  We managed to navigate downtown to Brent's office and find the beach for our romantic walk, and talked quietly together.  We sat down on a bench to listen to the ocean, but the moment was somewhat ruined by the ridiculous conversation of three young women behind us, one of whom loudly declared she had to pee super badly and raced into the ocean in front of us to take care of her personal needs.  Lovely.  Way to kill the mood for us.  Ah, well!  Even in paradise things aren't perfect.