Hanging Loose

What a fun day. We experienced some of the things that we really wanted to do here. We started out by being picked up in a Trolley and going to the Parasailing place. We rode on the High Flyer with 10 other people plus the 2 crew members. Everybody was a lot of fun. We were the 4th couple to go up. I had to sit on the deck first and got hooked up and then Aaron got next to me and got hooked up. We told the crew we wanted pictures taken for only $30. We got over 70 pictures of the experience. They are great. Almost the whole time I had a death grip on the ropes. I was having fun but my body was VERY tense. I couldn't even move my legs. I guess you could say I was scared stiff. They didn't drop the first couple in the water and I liked that; but they did drop the rest of us in the water for a little dip. I think it was more fun to have a little dip than to not. Aaron and I loved the view and had a wonderful experience. We will definately do this again some time.
We got back to the room and tried to quickly leave for Hanauma Bay. We decided to buy something to put our car keys in and hopefully they not get wet. (If our key gets wet it's a $125 charge) We finally got something at "ABC Store" and left for the bay. At this point I was frustrated that it was taking so long to get to the bay. I wanted as much time at the bay as we could have. We kept thinking that if we hadn't scheduled the photo shoot today then we'd have all the time we wanted.
On the way to Hanauma Bay we stopped and got lunch. I had to eat. I was worried we wouldn't eat until after the photo shoot. This just added to my stress. After we ate, all seemed to be so much better. We finally made it to Hanauma Bay where we had to watch a movie before going to the water. UGH!!! JUST LET ME GO SNORKELING!! But it's state law to watch the movie first.
After the movie we finally made it to the beach. We put everything in our snorkeling bag and hooked it on Aaron. We went into the water and had a great time. The first task was getting over the rocks. Oh my gosh! They seemed so close. We had big waves coming in too. I scrapped up my left knee pretty bad. OUCH! It was around the rocks that we finally started seeing fish. And then from NOWHERE, this Turtle appeared. It tried to piggy back me. Then a wave came along and flipped it over a little and we swam away. I couldn't believe how close I got to that turtle. It just happend. We saw another turtle later too. All the fish were great. There were times the waves really moved us. Aaron said we were "body surfing". On the way back to the shore I made sure my knees stayed up. We snorkeled for just under an hour. That was all the time we had. We had such a fun experience. We hope to go back sometime during this trip.
I had a headache on the way back to the hotel. I was really worried it was turning into a migraine. I drank a lot of water and that seemed to help somewhat.
We quickly got ready and went to the photo shoot. The photographer couldn't get my name right. She kept calling me Lori. She did a nice job with the pictures. She took at least 55 shots. It was fun. People would walk down the street and comment on what they saw. At one point we got into the water. (We weren't in our swim suits:)) We really enjoyed this time.
As we waited for the pictures to get ready we walked across the street to the International Market for dinner. On the way in I saw a man all in silver and trying to be a statue. I commented on him on the way in. We found dinner and then headed back to the photographer. When we passed the man in silver again, he jumped out at me and I jumped and grabbed Aaron. People around were laughing. It was funny except moving like that made my back twinge. I had to be extremely careful on the way back to the hotel after that.
At the International Market a lady grabbed us and wanted us to buy a jar of salt, a lotion, and then a stone. She wanted to charge us $160. We told her she was crazy. Plus I told her the smell was driving me nuts. We tried to explain that I don't do well with smelly stuff. She said to take 2 jars of salt then. Last I checked, salt doesn't cost that much.
We saw a Ferrari Store and had to take some pictures. We thought Tanner would love that.
When we went back to get our photo's we found out they wanted to charge us $1250.00 NOT!!! We had been told that we would get a free 8X10 and could buy a disk of all the pictures for $50. We were in SHOCK for what they wanted to charge. Just for a CD it would be $500. To say the least, we didn't get that much. We bought 1 8X10 and got a free 8X10 and that was it. I was dissappointed we didn't get the CD (because we had some fabulous pictures) but there was NO WAY we were going to pay that much. They'll be getting a hold of Expedia and telling them not to false advertise.
On our walk back to the hotel we took a few sunset pictures and then stopped off for some Hawaiian Shaved Ice. We had been told we had to have this. They were right. I couldn't believe how big one of them was. You had to choose 4 flavors. We chose Pineapple, Mango, Passion Fruit, and Guava. Those flavors mixed well. We just sat across from the ocean and watched the people and ate them. Then slowly walked back to the hotel so my back wouldn't flare up anymore.
We have some video of the snorkeling including a turtle with it. It will take 80 min. to download it so we'll have to show it when we get home or download it another time.
We are very proud of Tanner for being tall enough to ride the rides at the water park. Not just being tall enough but brave enough. We can just imagine how proud he is.