Blue Lagoon

Today we went kayaking and snorkeling on Kealakekua Bay. What incredible beauty we saw!

First we rented some kayaks from a surfer dude.

Next we drove on a road that had a series of switchbacks to get to the bay 1,000 feet below. (If you look at the house at the very top of the mountain in the picture below, that's the elevation we were at when we rented the kayaks)

We put our kayaks in and took off.

We paddled about 40 minutes across the bay to get to the Captain Cook monument. It's the white obelisk on the other side of the bay in the pictures below. (It was here that Captain James Cook first arrived in Hawaii in November, 1778 and also where he met his tragic end in February 1779 during his second visit. )

The first picture is my shot of the bay. The second one I stole from the internet because it was so much better than mine.

Once we arrived at the Cook Monument we went snorkeling. It was unbelievably beautiful. The water was truly the deepest blue I have ever seen and perfectly clear. We saw all sorts of colorful fish. I did not take my camera on the kayak so I do not have any shots near the Cook Monument, nor any of the fish. So, once again, I stole some more pictures from the internet to show what we saw when we went snorkeling. This is exactly how it looked just below the surface. There were fish everywhere and we swam right along side them.

We snorkeled about an hour. The really amazing thing was that there were only 3 other people near us. We had the whole area to ourselves.

Tomorrow we're off to take an all day drive around the south part of the Big Island. I'll describe that the day after tomorrow.