A few random shots, then Kuki'o Beach and Makalawena Beach

Spectacularly gorgeous Waipi'o Valley. 

Coffee plantation in paradise!!! What a setting, huh??

Gregory and Grandpa Mark working on a sudoku puzzle one day while waiting for lunch to arrive.

Gregory had an assignment to write a journal entry for each of our days in Hawaii.  He usually did his work after breakfast, before we left for the day's outing.

Don't Touch!!  It is against the law to touch sea turtles, with a fine of $1000 to thoroughly discourage people from doing it anyway.  So we didn't touch the turtles at all - but we did spend a lot of time looking at them.  They like to come up and sun themselves on certain beaches, including Kuki'o Beach, which was one of the many perfectly perfect beaches we visited during our vacation.

Setting up to snorkel.  There was *A LOT* of snorkeling over the course of this vacation.  The kids only did a little here and a little there, but we grownups snorkeled every chance we got, and ended up seeing so much beautiful, interesting, and amazing stuff.

See?  The turtles love this beach for sunning themselves!

Here's Lily setting up to snorkel. 

At Kuki'o Beach, the kids spent an enormous amount of time and energy digging a hole almost deep enough to make it to China.  They were joined intermittently by other children on the beach.  Beach building/digging projects were non-verbally, but universally agreed upon to be communal property among any and all children who happened by.  Any group of kids building or digging would inevitably attract every other child who walked past.

THE PERFECT BEACH.  They were all "the perfect beach", but Makalawena was very high up on the list, making an excellent case for being called the actual best beach we went to.  Hapuna was awesome for boogie boarding and sand castle building, Mauna Kea was delightful for snorkeling and swimming, but Makalawena was just perfectly blissful.  Wonderful swimming, excellent snorkeling, fantastic fine sand for digging and building, non-crowded... just heavenly all around!!!

Remember how I said Makalawena was non-crowded?  This is why!!  There's a loooooooong walk over A'a lava to get to the beach!  All the kids were troopers, marching right out there, and right back out again without complaint, despite the distance, rough terrain, and quite warm day.  It is a long walk, but the beach is WELL worth it!

After a long time over the lava, the trail winds around under some trees and over roots and weathered lava rocks.

After that, you walk for quite some time through sand with these very brave plants growing thickly along the sides of the path.  There are lots of wild goats (yes, I said GOATS) that live along the trail. 

After all that walking (I think it was 40 minutes or something that we walked), you come up over a dune and see a beach more beautiful than you had dared to imagine!  The water was perfectly clear, the sand completely fine and clean, the water so intensely blue and aqua (like what you always see in advertisemsnts for the Caribbean).  Oh, my.  So very worth all the walking!!

All three Mears kids buried in the sand.  Lily is under that hat.

Gregory digging around the the sand with a postcart-perfect beach scene behind him.