Yesterday, was the whale watching trip.
Andrew was still not feeling well - but being the good sport that he is (read: being that we already paid for the tour) he came along.
We went with Captain Dan McSweeney's tour again and it was possibly even better then it's been the past two years. We saw two breeching whales! Even the crew was saying that was pretty rare. I didn't get a picture of the first one, it happened too quickly, but here's the second:
Dad, of course, got like four million awesome shots - but I'm pretty happy I got that one! For as big as those things are, they move pretty quickly and they usually forget to tell us ahead of time they're planning on doing something awesome. :) This is a crop of my original photo - I didn't have time to zoom in on the whale as it was breeching.
Here is my only other really decent whale picture:
We also saw about 75-100 spinner dolphins all traveling together, which was quite cool. Andrew and I saw maybe a few the first time we went, but nothing like this. I took a few videos of the dolphins - too hard to catch them in pictures - so head on over to facebook to see them :)
Other good pictures from yesterday:
After we got back from whale watching, we drove back up to Hawi to the Bamboo Restaurant to see John Keawe play. We'd gone to see him last year - if you remember. He's Doug's favorite Hawaiian musical artist. Beautiful day... it was raining and we crashed a wedding? :)
This year, it was actually raining too - but we were inside so it didn't matter so much. He also had his wife and two granddaughters along with him to dance the hula while he sang, which was a nice touch.
This year, it was actually raining too - but we were inside so it didn't matter so much. He also had his wife and two granddaughters along with him to dance the hula while he sang, which was a nice touch.
And, of course all good days end with crème brûlée:
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Today dawned bright and early-ish with breakfast at 7:30. We wanted to hit up a few places on our list of sites, so we left the hotel and headed past Kona to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau (The Place of Refuge). There are a few reconstructed buildings there which served as the area for the ali'i (royalty) as well as a place for those who broke kapu (taboo, the rules) to be absolved.
Found a few friends there too :)
After we were absolved our trespasses, we found a local BBQ place for a late lunch.
After lunch, we headed back into Kona to go to the Hulihe'e Palace, which was used by various monarchs and heads of state since 1838 - until, of course, we took away Hawai'i need for palaces by annexing them...
Can't take pictures inside of course, they just don't trust us at all! :)
So, now you're caught up. The non-Lorandos contingent went on to another state park after the palace, but Andrew wanted to take a nap and I was hoping to catch some rays. It's a bit windy here poolside at the moment, so that's not really working out... but at least I got to update the blog!
I'll let you know if anything else happens tonight. I think we're going to try to get to Hilo tomorrow - either that or veg out ocean side... both of which would be splendid...
Aloha `auinala!
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