Perfect Day

Last week I had a perfect day. It all began when I woke up in Kailua-Kona (okay, basically the story could end right here). From out living room ocean view we were treated to a spinner dolphin show. (once again the story could end here but it doesn't). After breakfast, during which we hatched some plans for the day, the adventures began. First on tap was a swim into town. Our condo happened to be right by the Kona Ironman swim turn around buoy, maybe a couple of hundred metres further, so the idea of swim commuting was hatched. The boys watched Alison and I launch ourselves off the rocks in front of the condo. Launch might be a bit glamorous of a word for how I got myself into the ocean but since it is my blog I can make myself sound graceful. If you really want to know how I got into the water picture dropping a big boulder, a big splash and absolutely no technique! As soon as I hit the water I was shocked by how warm it was. I am pretty sure I stopped no less than a dozen times during the swim to exclaim how 'awesome' it was. Everything from how clear and blue the water was, how beautiful the fish were, how amazing it was that we were 'swimming to town', on and on and on I gushed. Luckily, my companion was loving it as much as I was and we weren't too worried about crushing it, we were focused on loving it. Turns out we pretty much had the entire swim course to ourselves. For some reason those triathletes in town to race didn't venture out past the first couple of buoys. Can't imagine what they were saving their energy for?

Making way to launch, barefoot on lava rock-I'm so bad ass;)

Step one, we are both in the water, this was my first stop to gush on how awesome it was- yup, I didn't get very far- I may have made it a bit further before my next stop

The boys caught us finishing our swim, we both decided we would love to swim commute all the time

After our swim we stopped at a farmers market and picked up some fresh produce. Super yummy papaya, pineapple and veggies for my salads all week. How could this day get any better? How about a trip up the island to one of the bestest beaches in the whole world. When I think of great beaches that I have been to this one is always in the top three. The sand is amazing, the water so clear and blue and it is so peaceful. We spent several hours at Hapuna beach. Bobbing in the water- which required bikini number two for the day, sitting in our little sheltered cove, having our picnic lunch and one of us did some serious napping-Me Hearty really was taking this vacation thing seriously!

The view from my towel

another view from my towel

sun for one, shade for one- Me Hearty was in heaven with his orange passion Hawaiian sun drink all week

After a few hours of reading, bobbing and napping we headed back to town to get ready for our next adventure of the day. We got back to the condo, cleaned up our stuff a bit, had a quick dinner on the lanai and then I put on my third bikini of the day and we headed out for our evening adventure. We had a sunset kayak from Keauhou Bay out to the night feeding grounds for the Manta Rays. We weren't holding out a ton of hope at seeing Manta Rays since our friends had gone on a boat trip two nights earlier and gotten skunked. Once we got out to the viewing spot we were given our dive lights and we were into the water. We had lucked out and were the only two people on this nights trip so we could pretty much dictate where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. It was great and right at the 30 minute mark of being in the water we got to see one of these magnificent creatures swim right under us and around. She really liked our light and there was an abundance of plankton in the water so she was having a feast. Right after that Me Hearty got a little sea sick, maybe a little more than he let on as he was pretty green the rest of the night and into the next day. For me the day couldn't have been better. In my rating system, 3 bikinis equals the Perfect Day.