Day 7 in Hawaii and up to this point, we had barely done stuff in the ocean yet. Sure, we went to the hot springs near Hilo on the first day, and were around the Ocean a lot (or under, if you count the submarine), but we hadn’t really swam properly yet in the full ocean.

We headed south of Kona to a place near the Captain Cook monument, rented some kayaks, and headed across a bay. Once there, we used a simple disposable underwater camera and went snorkelling.

This first photo of the monument is NOT, as you can tell, one of our photos — it’s one of our souvenir postcards. But it shows well the general view above the surface. We parked our kayaks over to the side, as did a lot of people.

As you can see from this next photo, the bay is a bit sheltered, but not completely. We kayaked from about where the sailboats are shown docked at the bottom.

Ah, the fine art of complex photography with water still on the cover.

But we did get some shots of some of the fish…

The bottom of the ocean wasn’t exactly alive with colour, not surprising given the depth and the fact that a LOT of people come snorkelling here. I had some problems with my snorkel, and ended up almost feeling like I was being pounded against the rocks by the shore. I was trying to fix it, and some passing tourist group was yelling at me to get off the rocks. I felt like telling them to “F*** off, I’m trying to drown myself”, but I didn’t. I wasn’t there by choice, that’s for sure.

Later that night, we went to a very tourist-friendly luau at a hotel on the beach in “downtown” Kona. Yeah, it was kitsch, but well, it was our honeymoon. It was a fixed price, with free cheap pineapple juice and rum drinks. You could probably have drank a bucketful and not felt any effect of the alcohol, but it was fun, and the buffet was good. Roasted pork from the pig-in-the-ground was the highlight, of course.

They put on a full show for the tourists, making it seem like they were honouring their ancestors, of course, as most locations do. As an aside, it’s a bit interesting that some of the performers that “lead” the show actually are training to be professional actors, and isn’t a whole lot different for employment than being a character at Disney. They do their “show”, which includes both interacting in character and the performance and then disappearing back to their regular life. The highlight of the night was the fireeater although I confess I liked the early hula dance training as they explained what the hand gestures represented (casting nets, catching fish, etc.).

I found the day a bit tough with the kayak and snorkel, but in the end, it was a good day. Pleasant music, and then a short stroll back to our hotel.