We got off the bus right by the police station on the beach. Immediately we were approached by someone offering surfing lessons, but we weren't ready to try that. Instead we just went swimming. The water wasn't exactly warm like a heated pool, but it was definitely not cold. Nothing like swimming in the waters of the Pacific Northwest beaches. The bottom dropped off really quickly, which surprised me, but it made for some great waves crashing into the beach. We went out about 5 yards and the water was up to my waist. Ten yards and I could barely touch. Fifteen yards and we were swimming. It was gorgeous. Big swells would pick us up, or white foaming water would crash over and into us. We could swim out and back in or just float in place.
I know, I know - you're wondering at this point where the pictures are. Well, we didn't bring a camera, but have no fear, there are pictures coming up.
After maybe an hour we came in from the water and went wandering further down the beach. There are just bunches of beaches all connected together along in front of all the hotels or along Kalakaua Ave. We walked west along the beach, passing the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, the Outrigger Waikiki, the Sheraton Waikiki ... down almost to the Fort de Russy beach. About two hotels before that beach we turned and walked between the hotels to the street. We wandered our way back through the streets, looking at the various shops everywhere. Tons of shops. Why would you go shopping if you're next to that beautiful beach? Well, anyways, we ended up finding lunch in the international district back along Kalakaua. Gyros and a coconut smoothie. Coconuts don't "smooth" very well, but it left a nice residue in the bottom of the cup to munch on. Dan got a little worried as I enjoyed looking at the different stalls and shops we passed, but we made it safely back to the beach where we started.
We were a bit tired, so we hung out at the beach out of the sun for a half hour before we started our surfing lesson. That's right, we tried to surf. We got ourselves a couple of lessons at a group rate, and then we were the entire group! So the two of us headed out into the water with Junior after a brief land demonstration of "how to stand up on a surfboard".
We lay on our boards and paddled out into the water. Then we took turns riding the waves in towards the shore. Here come the pictures.
Dan, on his second or maybe third try. He claims he had to jump off at the end because he was going to run into someone.
On my fifth or sixth try:
While Dan was busy surfing:
I was busy falling. And feeling kind of foolish. Well, a lot foolish. But then, after lots of practice falling, on the seventh or eighth try, Tada! I surf!
But never fear, I managed to find other ways to feel foolish. Like this:
That's right - I took out a kid. A cute little kid. Not that I could see her at all because I was mostly facing the other way, but that's no excuse really. The only thing I can say for myself is that I'm glad she jumped before our boards collided. She was safely off in the water before I even knew there was a problem.
And how does it feel to surf? Our faces say it all:
Concentration, Fear, and Exhilaration!For those who only read this blog for the pictures, well, the pictures are over for this post. Sorry. But just in case I lost the piece of paper where I wrote everything down, I'm going to keep typing here.
After surfing we were ... not hungry. We'd probably tasted a little too much saltwater. So we headed the other direction down the beach and passed some girls playing two-on-two volleyball, a stage that was evidently for later that night, a really calm beach due to the big old breakwater wall build out in the water, a pier where kids were jumping off into the waves and one guy was snorkeling, down to Kapiolani Park and the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial. Where were changed back into street clothes and turned around. We checked out a quilt shop, but it was more of a "quilted knick knack" shop. We stopped at Haagen Dazs and had some cookie dough and cheesecake (two flavors) ice cream. By 7:30 it was clearly getting darker and time to head home. We wandered around to find a bus stop, since Kalakaua was a one way street down by the beach. We found a B Bus heading back into town and took it. However, the bus went back on a parallel street a few blocks over, so we were lost. The bus driver told us to get off at Punchbowl, and we did. Then we walked a couple blocks and found a bus stop where I asked one lady if she knew how to find the 55 going circle island. She was really nice and told us to go back to the previous corner and turn right, walk down the hill, and stop where there's a bus stop with a bunch of people at it. She was right! We caught the bus and headed back north. We rode home through the dark, proud of our day's adventuring.
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