Hawaii Day Seven

Although we had driven by it several times we still hadn’t made the trip out to Tropical Farms. It’s one of the Osborne’s favorite tourist spots and a must-see on their list!

Much to our dismay they were filming a TV show called “Last Resort” that day and it was closed… :o( 

But that left us time to stop at the little fruit stand down the road and buy a fresh coconut to drink… and a banana. A fresh banana! And coconut water from a coconut that has been sitting in a cooler of ice water on the side of the road and was hacked open by a large man wielding a marginally clean machete tastes WAY better than the stuff in a box from the store!!! ;o)

It also gave us time to stop at the cemetery.  Yes, I said the cemetery. There is a cemetery very near the Osbornes’ house that made it in our travel book. We decided we might as well check it out…

Most of it was just a nice place where people are buried…

very interesting Japanese gravestones

Then we came upon the Byodo-In Temple…

The brass bell is 5 feet high and weighs 3 tons!

This was a very pretty place with all the water features and such…

It was also a reminder to pray for people who are living in darkness without Christ…

There were also LOTS of giant carp!

Since we got back so early there was still time to take the kayaks out to the Moks; two islands off the beach at Lanikai. We went to the island on the left…

One of the first things we saw was a turtle joining us for a bit…The waves weren’t too bad until we got close to the island and the tides from both sides met to make for some pretty killer ones! But we used our mad kayaking skills to make it to shore without getting dumped!!!

We climbed the rocks around the edge of the island and made it to a jumping off place that Karen had heard about…

It was a narrow place where the tide came in from both sides of a huge rock and crashed right in the middle! You had to wait for just the right moment to jump: when the water wasn’t crashing onto the rocks and wasn’t too low either. Chris was so brave! He jumped twice!!! Karen and I just watched and cheered him on…

   We also watched a young kid dive for seashells right in the place where the water entered in (behind Chris in the picture above). He had nothing but a mask, snorkel and fins for diving 40 feet down!!!

Then we did a little bit of exploring on the other side of the island before heading back…

Getting off the island was much tougher than getting onto the island. We didn’t make it off without getting dumped… and I got quite the bruise on my thigh when I hit a large rock under the water! But we did make it and had a nice row back to the beach.

By the time we got back we were just in time to see the sun set right in front of the house…

The sky looked like it was on fire!!!

For dinner, Shawn and Karen took us to their favorite sushi place! Yum! Sushi…