Nude Beach!

Calm down, I wasn't on it. :) Apparently there is one on the island though. I'll come back to that. 

So today was the Sunday morning swim. A bunch of people get together and swim a few miles along the south shore. I can swim, but obviously I don't have a whole lot of experience with ocean swimming, so I was in a kayak. Sandy always takes her kayak out and escorts the swimmers and watches for boats and whatnot, so she borrowed her friend's kayak for me today. It was actually pretty easy to use once I got in and got the feel for it. Here is me on the kayak, soaking up the sun.  

The swimmers go to a place called the point, where the rocks come out farther and separate the beaches. Sandy and I went past the point, because she wanted to show me Little Beach. Little Beach is right next to Big Beach, separated by a small cliff/rock pile, and clothing is optional. O_O So basically it is a bunch of old dudes playing frisbee or whatever it is you do on a nude beach. So we had a good laugh about that, then we paddled back and met up with the swimmers on the way back to the beach where we started. 

When we got close, I got out of my kayak and put some goggles on to look around. It is crazy how clear that water was. From up on my kayak, I could see the bottom when it was 30 or 40 feet deep! Then with goggles under the water you can see everything! I swam around over some coral, and Janet, one of the swimmers, pointed out the state fish of Hawaii. It's called the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa. They call it the humuhumu for short. I also saw some pencil urchins and some black urchins that apparently you never want to touch. According to Janet, their spines break off in your skin and you can't get them out until they dissolve. Painful stuff. So I kept my distance from those. After we made it back to the shore, we were standing in the water and someone yelled something, so we all put our goggles on and there was a sea turtle! It swam no more than ten feet from us. So I got a little closer and watched it for a while. It was surprisingly speedy. You are not allowed to touch them, so everyone made sure that it had plenty of room to get where it was going. That was a pretty exciting few minutes. Here are a couple of underwater pictures that Cole took. 

After the kayaks were loaded, we drove into a town, Kihei, I think, and got shave ice. Not shaved ice. They call it shave ice here. They also put ice cream on the bottom and cream on top. Super delicious. I got strawberry and pineapple flavored with coconut ice cream. It's was excellent. 

We sat down by a little open-air market with a bunch of shops to eat them. That is where I saw this sweatshirt and I thought of Laura. :) 

Never gets old. :) 

Now I am back at the house, pretty exhausted from all of that swimming and paddling, and the cat is being pretty cuddly, so I think I am going to hang out with her and relax.