We’ve been having tons of fun here in Hawaii since our last update! We finished off the kayaking portion of our trip with an amazing day trip to a beautiful secluded waterfall where we swam in a refreshing swimming hole underneath the falls. After kayaking, we moved on to our two days of surfing lessons in Hanalei on Kauai. With the help and guidance of our awesome instructors, everyone was able to stand up and ride multiple waves! Everyone had a great time learning how to surf and cheering on the other members of the group. Henry, a seasoned surfer, loved having this opportunity to hone his surfing skills and had an awesome time doing it! We also spent some time shopping around in the lovely town of Hanalei and we even stumbled upon a super cute liter of puppies in town and got to play with them!
After our time surfing, we spent our last day in Kauai enjoying an amazing hike along the famous Na Pali coast. We hiked to a beach where the whole group, but especially Katherine and Kameron had an awesome time exploring and crawling through the crazy sea caves that line the coast. We also ran into a trail kitten that Dora and Brendan really loved playing with!
The next day, we packed up early in the morning and headed to the Big Island. Saying goodbye to Kauai was hard but everyone was really excited to begin the next phase of our expedition! After a short flight to Kona, we began our journey on the Big Island. We headed straight from the airport to Jack’s Diving Locker where we began our five days of SCUBA diving. Hank has spent the last four days enjoying recreational dives along the Kona coast, being able to see two sharks, an octopus, a sea turtle and some spotted eagle rays, while the rest of the group has worked hard in their PADI course with the help of their awesome instructors, Matt and Shannon. Yesterday, the group did their first dive in the ocean – a shore dive off the beach. Jenna was super excited because she got to see two eels during their dive today! Marina and Frank have been blown away by their newfound ability to breathe underwater and have really enjoyed the entire SCUBA experience thus far. Sylvana has been a star during the diving portion of our trip, mastering all of the underwater and above water skills and rocking the test and the classroom section of the PADI training. The whole group will be on the dive boat together today and we cannot wait to explore the Big Island’s vibrant coral reefs and all that they have to offer!
On Friday night, the group also embarked on a night time manta ray snorkel with Jack’s, where we got to have the most amazing experience snorkeling above ten rays! They flipped around right underneath us!
These past two weeks in Hawaii have been so great! The group has really bonded and come together and everyone is having an amazing time! We are all sad that it is starting to come to an end but we cannot wait to finish up our PADI certifications!
Aloha for now!
