The final day. Sadly, like all vacations, this one had to come to an end. Bae and I were to fly out on this night, but my parents were to fly out the following day. Father Freedom had planned to stay at a Marriott in Kona, and since he is a super rewards member thanks to his job, they got to check in early so that we could put our stuff down.
Therefore, the plan was to leave our airbnb early, explore some beaches on the coast, then end up at the hotel where we could drink MaiTais or snorkel at the hotel beach.
We did just that. First we went to this beach about 10 miles south of Kona. This is what it looked like:
The “novice” snorkeling area was busy, but the “intermediate-expert” level snorkeling area was not busy at all. We headed out there and saw all kinds of neat fish. We immediately saw a sea turtle, which we got great footage of in the video below. We also saw a lot of parrotfish here that we hadn’t seen at any of the other snorkeling sights.
I’m definitely not a snorkeling expert, but I’ll give you advice anyway. Do not go snorkeling an hour before low tide. The tidal changes here aren’t crazy, but if you go out and about, then the tide subsequently finishes going out, you might have a real hard time getting back in. We went out at almost exactly low tide, and there were many parts that were way too shallow. This meant we had to sort of zig zag our way around to get out and back. If we had left an hour before low tide, I can almost guarantee we would have become stuck. The rocks are full of sea urchins, so if you get stuck, you gonna literally get stuck.
Anyway, after about an hour snorkeling here or so, we decided to come back to shore and dry off. There was a nice food truck at the beach where we went to grab some shaved ice. Here’s another tip for you: when getting shaved ice of 3 different flavors, try to pick 3 different colors. We went for mango, pineapple, and pina colada, and the whole thing came out yellow. We had no idea wtf we were eating. Also, don’t eat it too fast if you are prone to ice cream headaches because you WILL get an ice cream headache.
After this expedition, we finished the drive to Kona to check in at the Marriott and start washing and drying out our snorkeling stuff. Bae and I were to leave this night, so we didn’t want to carry around salt water stuff in our suitcase. This Marriott has a pretty neat museum in it with some history of Hawaii. By the time we walked through this part, I had had a few too many drinks to read good, but it looked super interesting. They had a model of a giant outrigger canoe that the people would travel on, and also this record sailfish:
After we dropped our stuff off, we headed to Kona Brewing Co to get lunch. Now I should say that Father Freedom and I had been drinking a decent amount of beer these last few days. I had also been trying out some beer before our rendezvous in Honolulu. I tried several Hawaii beers throughout the trip, and nothing came close to the Kona beers. We mainly drank the Longboard (lager) and the Big Wave (golden ale) throughout the trip. They were top tier compared to all other beers we tried. Well, the brewery had even betterer beers. If you go to the Big Island, I highly recommend going to this place, especially if you like beer. You might like the baby microbrews because you’re a dumb hipster, or whatever, but the Kona beers are found in abundance on the Mainland for a reason. They are goddamn delicious. Go here. Do it. Now.
Bae also got some tasty Ahi Tuna TarTar here. So yummy.
After we had our big lunch, Father Freedom and I went to snorkel whilst Bae and Mother Martha Washington went in search of some coffee to bring back. Both parties were successful. FF and I saw a flounder eating a fish, or something. It’s in the video below. Hell, I’ll link it now. Enjoy.
After this, we showered and packed up our things to go to the airport. Security was surprisingly long, but we did make it in time, don’t worry.
One aside about airport flights. I’ve flown on like…666 planes in my lifetime. Only in the last 5 straight have I heard the following, “We have a severe peanut allergy onboard, so please refrain from eating peanuts or any nuts in general.” Now, there are two possible explanations: 1) People are feeling more and more comfortable about speaking out to make some spaces more safe. 2) The rise of the Gluten Intolerant/Vegan/Keto/My Mommy Said/You don’t know what will happen to be if I’ll eat ___, I’ll… movement has made it so more and more people want to feel special on their flights. I’ll let you decide which has all of a sudden made this announcement more common….but the answer is number 2). Prove me wrong. I went 661 flights without hearing any of this, then went 5 straight hearing it.
Anyway, flying is dumb and I should start an entirely new blog on all the stupid shit I notice on plane flights. The point is that we had a GREAT vacation. Hawaii was one of 3 states I had yet to visit, and it was awesome being able to experience it with the love of my life, Bae, and my parents (FF and MMW). We are very much looking forward to the next adventure, and I thank all of you for reading this. Please get out yourselves and let me know what you liked best! Also, huge shoutout to Joy for taking care of our house and cats while we were gone. If she wasn’t able to do that, I don’t think we would have been able to enjoy our vacation that much.
Some final thoughts from Bae: “Red-eye flights are exhausting.” There you have it folks, adios!