Touristas!

What a fun day! Today I took the day off to spend with Annette and we played Touristas! 

It was fantastic. The day started with an early morning hike up Diamond Head Volcano - hot, up, but beautiful at the top. We then had lunch at Dukes on Waikiki, followed by some swimming, some bodyboarding, some being literally "launched" out of the ocean onto the beach by some overly large waves we decided to tackle (this lead to both of us in hysterics on the beach quite literally covered head to toe in sand and lucky not to have lost our bathing suits and heads for that matter) and then a walk up to Makapuu lighthouse. The end of the day saw dinner at home, a Mai Tai or two and a movie. A fantastically relaxing day! 

From the top of Diamond Head volcano. This is an interesting hike, touted as "strenuous" by the books, yet really not. It was hot even that early in the morning, and there are a lot of stairs, but it was pretty easy, steady going, lots of stopping vistas and we were up there in ~30 minutes. So if you go, don't be put off by the books, this is a great hike for all, just bring water, hat and sunscreen. We saw a few groups of young kids hiking up there! 

Annette enjoying a virgin Volcano at Dukes. We had a prime table, right on the beach front! 

When we got to the top of the Makapuu trail we watched these paragliders for a long while, they looked so serene and calm up there, so much fun. Must look and see if they do double jumps out there, would love to try it sometime. All those out (5 we saw) were just singles, and we even had a few waves as they went overhead. 

Us at the top. Though you can't tell, at this point I had half a gallon of sand still in my ears, and a good gallon in my undies! Exfoliating....:0)

On our tourista day today we saw Ladder 5 out and about. I love that they are yellow. But most of all I love that they have a surf board on the side. Brings visions of firemen fully kitted out in firefighting gear running onto the beach with their surf boards.......