Hawaii 2011 -- Day 8 (page 8 of 10)

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No pictures today. Greta and I were both in the water surfing, and forgot the camera at home later today when we were driving around. Sorry!

Blog by Greta:

Day 8: We were rudely awakened by the alarm going off @ 6 am - yesterday I THOUGHT I'd turned it off while in the light, but obviously did not. Today I wasn't going to attempt it @ 6 am in the dark, so I just unplugged the darn thing. It's vacation and we had no where to be bright & early.

Mike booked us surfing lessons @ noon, as a guy had told him according to the tide tables, that was the time to go. It's handy that the lessons are given right on the beach here at the resort, so we just hung out this morning, and read. WHenever I have the chance - I sit out and read on our lanai - it rained a bit, but you hear it more than feel it right there.

We headed down to the beach for the lessons. 10 minutes on land with basic instructions, then about an hour with an instructor in the water and then an hour on your own. THere are only 4 people to a class and we were taking a class with two Wisconsin brothers - one 13, one 14. Once you are told how to get up and practice it on land a couple times, you head out into the water. You paddle your board out to the instructor, and he holds on to the board until the right wave comes along. Then he lets you know to be ready, and pushes your board out, and you try to pop up. I actually did it on the FIRST try, amazingly enough. Everyone got up soon, although the two teenagers quickly put Mike & I to shame. We all coasted into the shore a couple times, although I never EVER had a graceful dismount. But hey - I have problems walking down the street half the time, so I was happy.

I will no lie - it is REALLY HARD work. I actually had a horrible time trying to float on the board on my belly - I kept tipping this way and that, and not remembering how far up on the board I should be. When I would pop up (and stay up) on the board, I felt a LOT more comfortable - how weird is that?

Then the guide left us on our own and HOLY COW is it hard then. I never even caught the wave right at that point. They were CONSTANTLY coming in (it was quite windy that day) and now that we didn't have have someone to steady the board, say "GO" and push us off, I know that I felt a bit lost. Plus I was really tired. REALLY tired. But it was a good day all around, and I'm glad I did it. Mike also did very well, but agreed it was tough work!

We walked back to our room & just collapsed. That was easily over 90 minutes of constant activity and balancing. After a quick rest & shower (which revealed WAY more sand had been brought back in my suit than I thought would be possible - Ick) we headed out to Bubba's Burgers whose logo is "We cheat tourists, drunks & attorneys" for terriyaki burgers, malts, & onion rings. Not cheap (we've found that NOTHING is here) but after all that time on the ocean, I needed that style of comfort food!

Back to our patio for a bit more recovery time, then we headed out to the Hanapepe Art Walk. I guess this island isnt' big on night life, but this little ocean town opens up all its galleries for people to go see every Friday night. We went through it pretty quickly - the only things we knew FOR SURE were made there were the paintings/scuptures/etc, and we were looking more for wooden carvings of a chicken (evil jungle prince) which are all over the place here. Not finding anything, we drove back and walked through "Old Koloa" town, which is a little main street with a bunch of touristy shops. I found a ceramic turtle (I collect them) that was raku fired. That means while it's molten hot, it's placed in a kiln with banana leaves & coconut husks which burst into flame, and give the piece an irridescent look. It's really cool - while not specifically from Kauai, it is made here in Hawaii, and I wanted to at least say that I had bought a turtle here. Then we headed to Poipu Shoping Village to browse some more stores. The only wooden chickens we found were made in Indonesia. We REALLY want one from here, and they had the one that is decorating our condo, so if we can't find a locally made one, we'll pick this up before heading out the airport. Then back to Old Koloa town as I was hungry, and we wanted a bit to eat w/o stopping @ a $30/plate place. We got a shrimp pizza which was decent. Here, all the pizzas seem to run around $20 or so - even the frozen one we saw at a general store was $12. But it fit the bill for food.

Then back to the condo for some much needed rest. I discovered, I didn't just get sunburned on my face - the back of my legs (which were covered with SPF30) got a bit pink, and I have a nice red oval on my back, which is the space that DIDN'T get sunblocked because I was wearing a rash guard shirt (like a t-shirt) but it kept rolling up on me so I burned the little patch on my back above my swimsuit bottom, and below where the shirt would roll up.

Oh well - it's not too bad, and hey - it's vacation.

No pics today - we were both in the water for our surf lesson, so we didn't have a photographer. We forgot the camera when we headed out to the little shopping areas, but really wouldn't have had anything to take a picture of anyway.

Tomorrow, the search for the wooden chicken continues and then on to the North Shore.

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