Adventures with KG!: Hawaii Day 9

DAY 9

We go kayaking in Kailua!

Before we can begin, we must rent the kayaks and transport them to the beach. Tarynn's friend, Tyler, is our guide on today's adventure, and thankfully he has a truck and some muscles to assist us!

Two funny things happen as we were unloading and taking the kayaks down to the water:

1. A car stops and asks me for directions (I must have looked like a local?!) to which I respond flatly "I'm not from around here...".

Somehow, Tyler and Tarynn find my response to be pretty entertaining!

2. As we make our way to the beach, a lady runs towards us and shouts angrily at me and Tarynn: "DON'T DRAG THOSE!! You'll put a hole in the bottom." to which I respond snottily "They have wheels...".

You would have thought this lady was the kayak police, but then again if she was so familiar with kayaks she also should have known we had the kind that were designed to be dragged by one end while the other end rolled along the ground.

We finally make it to the water and start paddling.

Oh yeah, keep in mind that my kayaking experience is limited to the smooth freshwater of Michigan, where you paddle once and then glide along peacefully. I am not used to this wavy, rough ride of the ocean. Tarynn and Tyler tell me it is a calm day on the ocean, but I am not seeing this "calmness"!

Each time I think I might want to take a rest and stop paddling, I realize that the waves are pushing me back to shore, and then I just have to paddle even more to make up for it.

So where the heck are we headed?

Mokulua Island, which is pictured in the background of the photo below. It's pretty far away, and we are in the middle of the ocean. I finally needed a rest...

Take note that Tyler is on his paddleboard, and he did this entire trip standing up!! I would have fallen over within the first 60 seconds!!

Here's the same photo opp, only Tarynn and I are showing off the beach we just left.

It's a good distance...

2 pretty paddlers

Once we got to the island, I was exhausted.

But there was no rest period lounging around on the sand.

We decided to climb over some black craggy rocks to get to a secret cove on the other side of the island!

We are rewarded with our secret cove! Tarynn is snorkeling!

I swam to the other side for a great photo!

This makes me look like a real outdoors woman!

(Check out the type of rock behind me that we were climbing over to get here.)

Soon it was time to leave since the tide was coming in, and we didn't want to get trapped on this side of the island!

I took a quick dip on the beach side of the island and fretted about our tough kayak trip back.

(See the land behind me, that's where we are headed... It's far.)

Tarynn and Tyler assured me that kayaking back to O'ahu was much easier than leaving it since you are going with the waves this time. It was still quite a work out for me. My shoulders felt knotted and my arms burned from all that exercise!

All of that activity really helped me work up on appetite!!

After the kayaks were cleaned and returned, we had earned ourselves some "Fat Boy" for lunch!

I love that restaurant name and would have eaten pretty much anything at that point, but to my surprise, they had one of my Japanese favorites: chicken katsu.

I slathered my chicken with the barbeque-style sauce in those little cups, and it brought back plenty of taste bud memories!

Tomorrow's the last day of my Hawaii trip, so I thought I'd share a few extra special Hawaiian tidbits before we reach the end.

I learned plenty of new words on this trip! So many things in Hawaiian that I was clueless about before I got there, and even some new nuggets of information on the basics. For example, did you know:

"Aloha" means 'hello', 'goodbye', and 'love'?

"Mahalo" means 'thank you' and 'until we meet again'?

So many meanings... it can get confusing!

But my favorite is "humuhumunukunukuapua'a", which means 'state fish of Hawaii'.

(See below for the explanation!)

I practiced all week and finally have it down. It's officially the longest word I know since it is 16 syllables!!