Hawaii - Monday

Mirav and I had enough of the hotel. So we took a drive up north and found a hike to go on. It's called swinging bridges. It follows a stream that comes down from the volcano. It was about 3 miles round trip. Pretty flat. You have to cross the stream in four places. The first two have bridges, crazy bridges. The second two, you have to brave them alone. 

I started the day with a nutritious meal of Spam, eggs and rice...from McDonald's. They actually have this on their menu. The eggs were as bad as they appear to be in this picture. 

Mirav decided to cross the bonus stream at the beginning rather than stepping across the two foot gap at the top. She was feeling dangerous. 

Mirav crossing the first bridge. It was a little rickety and about 100 feet long. 

Mirav crossing the second bridge. This one was a bit higher. Mirav took video as she walked across, but decided to turn the video camera sideways to get a better angle. So it didn't make the video. 

Crossing the first stream. I lost one of my Crocs cliff jumping the day before, so I had to wear sneakers hiking. I took them off and crossed barefoot to keep them from getting wet. Not enjoyable. The rocks were mean to me. Shortly after this picture was taken, the stream stole my sunglasses.

This is the stream we had to cross. The water was a bit cold. 

This is the waterfall at the end. Some people from Washington struck up a conversation with us so we asked them to take a picture.

 

This is me swimming in the pool. When Mirav dove in, she popped up and said AHH!, it's cold! It was pretty cold. I had to swim around with the camera for a while to get some video. A journalist's work is never done. 

Jungle Mirav. She kept making Lost references. 

Me crossing back over the second bridge. 

You could just barely see the ocean through the trees on the way back out.

Hawaii - Sunday

Saturday proved to be too much togetherness for the family.

Family picture in the lobby before breakfast

 The beach next to Cheeseburger in Paradise, where we ate breakfast. After breakfast we spent the next 6 hours ignoring each other until it was time to take Jill and Avi to the airport.

While everyone was off being mad by themselves, I decided to go cliff jumping. Which turned out to be a cliff jump, singular. I went off black rock which is where everyone said to go.

View of the water from the top of the cliff. The water was clear and deep. I climbed down a little from here just to be safe. The jump was probably around 25 feet.

In retrospect, this was not my most brilliant plan. The jump was fun, but the swim back to the beach was more than I bargained for. I ended up losing a shoe.

Hawaii - Saturday

Saturday was a big day. We had a snorkel trip in the morning and the wedding in the afternoon. 

The harbor we sailed out of was very windy

Mirav says it's windy

On the boat, ready to go. 

This is Molokini Crater, our first stop. It's a tiny island a couple miles off the coast of Maui. Only part of it sticks up out of the water. On the side we snorkeled on it was only about 30 feet deep. The guide said the other side was 300ft straight down.

Mirav and Jill right after we jumped in. The water was a little chilly, but so clear. 

Fish! There was a bunch of fish and coral, nothing really cool. You aren't allowed to touch anything because it's a marine life sanctuary. The fish swim right up in your face. One lady started screaming when a bunch of little fish surrounded her. 

Me and Mirav underwater. This was taken shortly before I swallowed a couple gallons of sea water and got really sick. I spent the rest of the trip throwing up. 

 Me and Avi

This is the backside of the crater.

On the way to our second stop. The water was so blue.

Our second stop was Turtle Town. There was turtles everywhere. They sleep in the caves in the coral and come up for air a couple times an hour. Mirav took over the camera at Turtle Town. I was not feeling well.

You can't touch the turtles. Which was hard sometimes because they swim right at you. 

They said some of the turtles were 80 years old!

Ocean

Everyone was very tired

Grandpa and Bernice relaxing

Avi and Jill

 Jill jumped in the picture I was taking of the boat after we got off. Here you go Jill.

After our big snorkel adventure, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. This is the beach they got married on. I was in charge of taking video of the wedding, so I don't have any pictures.

Sunset on the beach

The reception was up the road at a very nice restaurant. The views at this resort were pretty awesome. View of the ocean from the reception location

View of the mountains from the reception

Hawaii - Friday

The weather cleared up Friday. Except for some light mist, the weather was nice all day. 

View of the sunrise from our balcony. We got a mountain view, but we had an ocean view once Jill and Avi left and we stole their room for the rest of the trip. 

We made our way to Front Street after breakfast. Front St is where they have all the tourist shops and restaurants. This is a picture of Andy and Mirav in front of the Banyan tree. It was a cool old tree that covered most of a square block. 

This is the beach on Front St. Not very good for swimming, but still very cool. 

 

After our fill of touristy shops, we went to a beach up the road. I found a weird little fish and snapped a picture with my underwater camera. It looked like an eel. 

Me, deep in thought. Contemplating the ocean, it's wonder and vastness, and how to get the sand out of my swim suit.

After the beach, we went back and got cleaned up for the pre-wedding party for Joe and Kelsy. Mirav and Jill, staring at each other awkwardly. I'm not sure what was happening here. 

 A few beers later...

Hawaii - Thursday

Aloha! and welcome to our Hawaii pictures. It's thanksgiving and I'm trying to ignore the noisy people above us stomping on our ceiling all day. Let's give thanks for digital cameras, which helped us take 800 pictures in 7 days. These posts should give you a taste of the trip without having to look through all of them. 

 

 We caught an early flight which was not easy to get up for. We took the light rail to the airport. Which wasn't too bad. Not really fast, but pretty convenient. 

They had this graphic on a big screen above us for 6 hours so we could watch ourselves inch towards paradise. 

We landed in the middle of a typhoon. We could barely see enough to get onto the rental car shuttle.

This is us trying to get out of the airport in our rental car. As a side note: Apparently Hertz decided that a Malibu was a full size car. Even though it's smaller than an Impala which is also a full size car. I had this discussion for a while with an angry looking Hawaiian woman before finally giving up and taking the Mailbu.

This is Hawaiian food. If you go to Hawaii, go some place that has "Lunch Plate" food. You pick  kind of meat and it's served with two scoops of rice and macaroni salad. I really enjoyed it.

There is only one main road and it goes around the outside of the whole island. On one side you see the ocean. The other side is awesome mountains like this. 

We stopped at a funny little fruit stand and got some pineapple. Avi got a passion fruit smoothie, or as he calls it in hebrew, Pasi Flora

There was perpetually a rainbow.

We went out to the beach the first night to get a picture. It was quite windy and rainy.