captain cooks grave, and almost ours too.....

so we never saw this, I took it from somewhere else, but we hiked down to this area and snorkled around the corner from this. I kinda wished we had hiked to see this, but there was only so much time. ( and energy )

At the trailhead we saw a man with two labs, and he said, have you ever hked this trail before, and something about the look he gave us* and the way he said it was troubling. But I thought, how bad can it be if this guy takes his dogs down here a couple of times a week.

Indeed.

The trail was very long, and rather scenic to see the ocean and lava in the distance as we hiked down. when we got to the bottom, i said, well that was a hard hike but look what a great private beach we get for ourselves. hahahahah. I did notice some kayaks in the distance, headed our way, and that was a bit worrisome.

I told Jhumpi, we have to be very careful on entering the water, and went to demonstrate the proper technique, when my feet contacted algae and slipped right out from me and I fell on my butt. Luckily my head, a fatty and largely useless appendage, took the brunt of the impact.

I took the first snorkel, and spied many great fish, tang and Humuhumunukunukuapua'a *and coronet fish, wrasse and parrot fish and one very great octopus. while i was snorkeling the kayakers showed up and they just kept coming. There were piles of kayaks on our private beach. Jhumpi was sitting on the beach feeding birds our precious food.

We took turns snorkelling and enjoying the private, shady spot we had secured by being the first people there. We started to get tired, and to run low on food and water so we decided to climb back up. It was a lot hotter, and steeper on the way up. It was frankly rather unpleasant to the point of being miserable. toward the top, I didn't know how long we had left to climb, and we were almost out of water, and I was worryed. This whole thing had been my stupid idea, and what a lousy tour guide I was turning out to be. We took some rests, and then we saw some people chatting, and they chatted with us, and then they offered us some food and water. They were our angles. It would have been very miserable if we hadn't found them. So amid great rejoycing on our parts we finally made it to the top, and the jeep was still there, and then we went to get ice cream. YAY