the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

Our main activity today was to go snorkeling ! We had found two places to go to on the east side of the island that supposedly were good beaches for snorkeling : Kailua and Lanikai. We ended up trying Kailua first, but we had gotten there a bit late so the waves were big and the reefs still felt far (I can only swim via the breaststroke form, so swimming is tiring for me). We then tried going nearby to Lanikai.

We swam for a bit, maybe 30-40 ish feet out and saw some coral, but then I got a little scared because it felt scary seeing the coral like 5-6 feet under me. The waves were also getting bigger so we swam back to shore and I was feeling discouraged. I was wanting to try to come back to this beach earlier in the day the next day with a boogie board so I could swim better.

But something in me told me to keep walking along the shore to see if there was any coral closer to the shore, and there was ! We eventually just snorkeled a teeny bit there, noticing various kinds of fish around the coral. I even got to see some sea turtles in the distance as well !

Ideally, I would have loved to go to Hanauma bay to snorkel. I went there as a child and the water is more calm and shallow. However, that area was not open on Tuesdays (or Mondays) and we had planned not to go because I thought that area didn’t have snorkel rentals (which I was wrong about). Maybe next time !

Since I planned on snorkeling/swimming, I didn’t bring my camera. But here is where we ended up finding fish:

We then headed back to the city for a late lunch:

I decided to get more masaladas (this is a coconut one):

In the evening, we walked around the shopping area on the big Waikiki street our second to last time. We got some snacks and souvenirs :

For our last day, there were some last shopping errands we wanted to run on the big street, such as getting postage stamps, finding airplane snacks, and getting our last POG drinks at Junbi:

And that’s pretty much our Hawaii trip! Here are some of the last photos around town and at the airport:

Thanks for reading !