After a luxurious night's sleep in our king size bed, we grabbed a bit of breakfast at the hotel buffet, and drove up to Honolua Bay for some snorkeling. The coral was sparse at first, but once we found the reef a bit further out we quickly discovered why this was considered such a great snorkeling spot. There were a ton of very colorful fish, some bigger than we saw in the Great Barrier Reef. Then - out of nowhere - a sea turtle was swimming right in front of us! Sea turtles are my 3rd favorite animal on the planet (behind sea otters and orangutans), so I may have freaked out a bit. We followed it for a while until it disappeared into the deep. Those few minutes were easily the highlight of the whole day. We spent the afternoon by the pool, cooling off with fruity drinks and dips in the pool. When we'd had enough sun, we went back up to the room for what was supposed to be a short nap, but I guess we were liking that bed a bit too much because we slept right through the alarm. What was supposed to be a 7pm dinner turned into 8:30pm. Oh well. Totally worth it.
We had dinner on the beach front patio at the Hula Grill (also in Whaler's Village.) The food wasn't anything special, sort of bar food with a tropical twist, but it really hit the spot. The live music was surprisingly good, and our fellow tourists were unsurprisingly annoying. (Apparently the patio at the Hula Grill is a hot spot for frat-type vacationers.)
After dinner we went back to the room for a lazy movie night. We watched Cyrus, which was pretty funny. John C Reilly can do no wrong and Marisa Tomei was great as the quirky oddball mom. But even days later I found I couldn't get the shots of Jonah Hill's creepy staring out of my head.
See? Creepy.
Day 8... even more snorkeling, sea turtles, and sun.