Day Off!

This Thursday I had the day off from any sort of 'classwork' if that's what you want to call it. The group of us woke up pretty earlier, dropped one of us off at class in Kona and the rest of us headed to the beach! Several of our instructors had been telling us about Makalawena being one of the best beaches on the big island. It was a little adventure getting there but SOOOO worth it once we got there. To get to this beach, we first had to get to Kekaha Kai State Park which consisted of a 1.5 mile drive over a lava field. the road was terrible. I'm glad K'hol (our minivan) made it.

The lava field we are driving over.

Doesn't this look cool?!

This sign is about half way in. I thought it was kind of pointless - lol - thanks for the warning.

Once we made it to the parking lot, we had a mile hike to the beach. We passed two beaches on the way (which was nice because other people would stop at those beaches so we had Makalawena all to ourselves.)

This is the first beach that we passed.

This is the second beach that we passed.

And our walk over the lava continued.

We're getting there.

This is the first part of Makalawena...so we kept walking.

This is the good part of Makalawena!

The 5 of us had the ENTIRE beach to ourselves for quite a while.

Absolutely beautiful!

Wade decided to practice yoga.

If you look on the horizon, just the the left of the middle, you will see a blow hole from a humpback. Not long after this picture, he came up out of the water and made a huge splash (too bad I didn't get a picture of it!)

I got so sunburned - ugh! I even applied SPF 50 twice in the 2-3 hours we were there :-( Once we finished at the beach we went back into Kona to drop off/pick up people from class. Then while we were waiting so Nick to finish his class, we went to another beach - the name is escaping me right now. This beach was no where near as awesome as Makalawena.

Before picking up Nick from his class, we stopped and had Hawaiian Ice (which was awesome and nothing like shaved ice), and then went home. 

~Ashley