Aloha from Kona

We woke up pretty early (May 7th, 2019) and got ready for a snorkeling adventure at one of the best places on the island or so the internet says. It was called Two Step. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of the snorkeling because neither Hunter nor I have waterproof phones, so we just enjoyed it together without phones. Below is a chart of some of the fishes we saw and here is a link to some of the specific fish (hawaii-fish-guide) and here is a link to the Google maps location (https://www.google.com/maps) that has tons of photos from other people. Take a look!

We saw tons of fish, coral, plants and I had a turtle swim right by my face! Some of the specific things we saw are angle fish, parrot fish, tangs, damselfish, rare turtles, sea urchins, crabs with strips, weird trumpet fish, and lionfish. Apparently, there were also barracudas far out some people were talking about, but we stayed close to the shore. It was such an awesome experience and I enjoyed seeing all of the coral too! I also want to mention when we were getting into the ocean, I saw some yellow things under water and thought it was dead leaves, but it was a bunch of yellow tangs.

I should also note before going out Hunter made sure to lather me up in sunscreen to prevent any burns. It was quite funny. I also made sure to bring a long sleeve light shirt I luckily packed so that after we snorkeled I could avoid further sun while we explored the lava rock beach.

After snorkeling, we decided to head further south to a black sand beach called Punalu'U Beach. To get there we drove up into the clouds where it started to rain. We thankfully passed a store along the way and bought some water as we were running low. We next passed the southernmost point and then found a food truck for lunch. We actually saw the food truck mentioned on one of the AirBnB locations we were looking at. It was a seafood truck and had delicious shrimp. Across from the food truck was a sweet bun bakery called Punalu'U Bake Shop and they had these awesome cream puff sweet buns.

We drove back down the slopes of Honua'ula to the coast and beach. It was much more humid on this side. When we got to the black sand beach we walked around and came across a green sea turtle eating in the rocks. It was very big and super cool to see. It poked its head out for some air a few times but was very focused on eating things in the rocks. We also saw some little crabs. We continued walking around and saw some interesting ducks. Two of which decided to have fun, if ya know what I mean. We found this little path to an old bridge and along the way I saw this weird egg that must of been from one of the ducks.

We decided to head back towards our AirBnB in hopes the weather would improve and we could go snorkeling again, however it stayed rainy and the conditions were not in our favor. Instead, we went back to Costco for some macadamia nuts Hunter wanted and then back to our room. I worked on my research stuff for a couple hours and then Hunter and I went to dinner at a placed called Quinn's Almost by the Sea. It was a delicious restaurant that had lots of seafood options. Hunter had a snow crab sandwich on sourdough and I had fish (tuna) tacos. After dinner we drive along the waterfront and the headed back to the room where I finished my previous blog post and shortly went to sleep from our busy day.

Date: May 7, 2019