I haven't blogged for a while - there's not much to blog about here. What do can you talk about when all you've been doing is laying around on the beach?

Ok, so maybe we've done a little bit more than that. We went into Kona yesterday - that counts for sometihing. Kona is the standard American tourist beach town. Lots of little shops selling everything a working-class beachgoer could ever want - at reasonable prices, too.

We had to park in a metered lot - similar to the NY train station lots, every space has a number and you pay for your space at a machine on the edge of the lot. When we got there, there was an older blond woman standing at the machine. She looked at us and said a few words indicating that she didn't get how to use the machine. Then she pressed a few buttons, complained about the price of parking and said she'd rather get a ticket and walked away.

So I went up to the machine and, like an idiot, proceeded to pay $5 for her parking space. She hadn't cancelled the transaction, and it hadn't occurred to me to do so. I only realized that I hadn't entered my space number after completing everything else. Of course, she was nowhere to be seen. I was quite pissed. We called the office that managed the lot, they told us to call back if we got a ticket and they would void it. Good enough, but I left the ticket receipt and a little note explaining the situation on the dashboard, anyway.

We wandered around in town for a while. We were both feeling a little hungry, so we stopped for lunch at a place called "Island Lava Java". After waiting at least 15 minutes for our food, it arrived but they had screwed up my order. I'd asked for the garden-burger, they came out with a normal hamburger. Great way to anger a hungry vegetarian. I told Jenny to go ahead and start eating, ten minutes later I got my garden-burger. I have to say, it was really good. If you find yourself in Kona and you can wait a little bit, I highly recommend the place.

We also had some shave ice at this little shop - "shave ice" is a very Hawaiian thing that Jenny had been wanting to try ever since we got to the islands. It's basically a snow-cone. I didn't see what the big deal was, but after waiting in line for ages for it, I figured I might as well order one for myself, too.

What I find interesting is that some places are designated as having "good" shave ice - how do you screw up a snow-cone?? Jenny got frozen yogurt with hers, which I guess makes it more interesting. You can get them with ice-cream, too.

On the way back to the car, somebody tried to sell me drugs (or buy them from me, not sure if he said "want any" or "got any"). Good to see the entrepreneurial spirit is still alive and well in America!

We didn't get a ticket.

Other than this, as I said, we've spent a lot of time on the beach. This really is a beautiful beach. Lots of soft, white sand between two outcroppings of black rock.

The resort has a bar on the beach. I'm not much of a drinker these days but I had a yearning to order a Long Island Iced Tea and drink it out on the beach. The bartender mixed it for me at the other side of the circular bar, much to the amazement of some curious onlookers - "whoa, five shots? What is that? Are you gonna drink that? Good luck!". Rookies.

With a really good LIIT you can hardly taste the alcohol. This wasn't in that league, but it was good enough that I could have sucked it down much faster than would have been advisable. I paced myself. About an hour later, as I wandered along the beach thinking introspective thoughts, it occurred to me that my negative opinions about alcohol have been unreasonably harsh. After all, is it really any accident that some of the worlds greatest writers have been alcoholics?

The wind last night was extremely harsh - I feared that we would sustain damage on the lanai. Surprisingly, this morning the ocean was very calm - calmer than any day since we've been here. I saw people out snorkeling, so I rented a snorkel and fins.

I swam out to the rocks at the northern edge of the beach, and was surprised to find a really nice coral reef out there. Lots of cool coral, fish, and sea urchins. Some of the sea urchins were the size of basketballs. I was making my way around the vast, coral covered lava boulders when I saw something strange - it was big, and not moving like a fish. I thought it might have been a manta-ray, but as I approached it I realized that it was a sea turtle! I was in awe, never having seen one out in the wild before. Another one followed a few yards behind. Both of them were about 30 inches long. These creatures are very graceful in the water, they will stay under for long periods of time before poking their heads above the surface.

After exploring this area for a while, I crossed the long stretch of barren sand bottom of the middle of the bay to check out the rocks on the other side. There was more reef there, as well. And one or two more turtles! I'm not sure if there were two separate ones or I just saw the same one in two different places. The last of them was playing in the surf, shallow above the reefs. I watched as well as I could, but the turtle was much better than me at navigating this terrain.

We have some nice pictures to show for the past few days:

Fields of black rock in the surrounding areas

View of the bay from the north side.

Waves crashing against the rocks on the north side of the bay

The Mauna Kea resort.

Jenny befriends an old Sailor in Kona