Snorkel Beach

The first few days here we have stayed pretty low key. As part of getting ready for the trip, we asked the boys to do some research on Hawaii and put together a report to give them some ideas on things they wanted to see and do. Nick wrote about a place called Snorkel Beach which is right near our hotel, so after some pool time we headed out to go there. At the airport, we had picked up a few “things to do” magazines and in one of them found an ad for snorkel gear rentals at a place called Boss Frog’s. At $9/week and a 2 for 1 offer it seemed reasonable, so we headed into town.

Now if you work in a store serving tourists, there can’t be a better sight than a pair of pasty white parents with three kids in tow coming your way. We ask about rental gear and the clerk shows us their basic set up for $20/week, something a bit sexier for $30/week, and just in case anyone needs corrective lenses, they have those too for $35/week.

“What happened to the $9/week in the ad?”, we ask.

“Ah, yes, that is for this set right here,” the clerk tells us, pointing to some WWII navy surplus gear. I consider for a moment trying to snorkel with what looks like a glass dinner plate strapped to my face with a thick rubber band, and just turn around and walk out, humbled by my lack of foresight in seeing the bait-and-switch coming. Since we are already in town, it is a short drive to the local Costco, where for about $30 each we pick up brand new sets that we’ll keep for our entire stay here and somehow try and jam into our luggage to use at the cabin.

We finally make it to the beach (which by Hawaii standards is pretty scrappy, but it is the Big Island so we’re not expecting wide swaths of powdery sand) and set the kids loose. They have all snorkeled a bit before in lakes and such, but this is really their first chance at seeing anything resembling a reef, and despite it being pretty beat up by waves of tourists, they are hooked. The visibility isn’t great, and its possible there are more Japanese legs under the water than fish, but to them, it is all amazing. And to its credit, there are more sea turtles at this beach than anywhere I have seen, and they swim so close you could touch them (or try to pick them up as one tool near us did).

After a couple of hours, we decide to head down the road a ways to another bay that supposedly has some great reefs. By the time we get there tough, the wind has picked up quite a bit and the waves hitting what is a very rocky beach make getting into the water pretty much impossible. We decide to try again in the morning and head back to the hotel, making a quick stop for some Donkey Balls (there’s a joke in there somewhere at Ang’s expense, but I’ll leave it be).

The rest of the evening the boys snorkel in the pool, with Nick and Sam working out a bunch of hand signals they plan on using to communicate under water.