Email diary:
May 12, 2012: The Aloha Diaries, Part 2
Hey Everyone!
So here are some more pics for you from this week…we’ve had an amazing time so far on the Big Island – a bit rainy, but still packed with sites and fun. So we’ve been in a place called Kona for the past 3 days and we’re staying in a condo complex with a nice golfcourse/oceanview. I think this condo is bigger than our own in TO – who knows what to do with all this space! Thursday we went snorkeling in the morning to an area that has sea turtles and had amazing fish of all colours, shapes, and sizes – we even got to swim for a bit with one of the turtles. We snorkeled til my lips turned blue and I had to get out of the water…and yesterday morning we went back for more. This time when we got out of the water, this turtle in the pics was beached near our towels in the sand. He sat there for about 30 min before he launched himself back in to the water. So cool!
Yesterday afternoon we took a bus tour up the highest volcano on the island called Mauna Kea – its peak is at 13,000 feet. Who knew I would come to Hawaii to throw on a parka, mitts, and freeze my digits? We had hot choco just off the peak. The bus ride itself was pretty long with a couple of stops along the way, including one at an observatory where a post-doc came out and talked to us about their work. Then we continued to the top to watch the sunset above the clouds – very awesome. We were lucky that we weren’t too impacted by the altitude. On the way down we stopped and our guides set up their telescopes and we had an amazing star show – we saw Venus, Mars, Saturn, and a number of constellations – the sky was littered with stars. And today we are off again – hoping to stop at a coffee plantation or 2 along the way to our next stop which is Volcano Village just outside Volcano National Park. Til the next email!
xoxo
dpr and d2
