day 12: North Shore

Day 12
Every morning at our hotel there's a large buffet you can choose from hot meals, cereal, pastries, yogurt, sushi (yes!) and various beverages. This was a great for us because we could stuff our complementary cooler bags full of goodies for our daily outings.  We grabbed our snorkel, beach towels, and munchies, and headed to North Shore to explore a part of the Island we hadn't seen on our honeymoon.

We snorkeled at Kailua Beach Park. Jay practically ran into a turtle and with him screeching in his snorkel, I thought it was a shark. Bout gave me a heart attack!
There's "Flat Island" from Kailua Beach

Then we took the public access walkway in residential area to get the famous Lanikai Beach. We put on all our snorkel gear, and headed out, only to find the Portuguese Man of War. We quickly got out of the water apparently just in the nick of time. Soon after an older man came out shaking and his back was burning. I had to use his towel to remove the tentacles; poor guy. We learned that up to a week after a full moon the jellyfish have a strong presence in the oceans of Hawaii. It had just been a full moon early October. At Lanikai Beach we also met a friendly couple Keith and his girlfriend from San Diego. Keith had just purchased a ukulele, so Jay got to teach him a few things. Keith owns a wine bar restaurant in Old Town San Diego and talked about starting up a ukulele night. Since this trip, we noticed he DID in fact start up what appears to be a successful ukulele night. Jay and I still hope to go visit.
Lanikai Beach

scenic drive

found this beautiful bay which made us think we were in Washington