We walked from her apartment after snacking on our assortment of tropical fruits and goodies we had collected from the day down to the beach across the street for a pre-sunset snorkel. The beach is well-known for being the starting point of the Iron Man competition, but on this particular evening, the only people there were locals.
On shore, after an active snorkel in the Kailua Bay (boasting some of the most pristine water I have ever seen), I climbed out of the ocean, placed my snorkel gear next to me, and dangled my legs over the seawall for one of my favorite activities: people watching.
A group of local boys played in the sand, burying one another and then running away from the one submerged friend. Groups of families argued back in forth exchanging plenty of colorful words. The crashing waves continued to hit my legs and I looked up at the ridge line toward the snow-capped volcano, Mauna Kea as the sky turned a hazy purple and pink.
My friend showed me some of the hula moves she had been learning in her classes, and we swayed our hips and swirled our hands to celebrate the sunset in the best way we knew how.
On the ocean, we watched Humpback Whales surface and knew that Sperm Whales were asleep just below the surface. Such an overwhelming sight for the senses, I was a bit taken aback. There were moments of the day that did not even feel real, yet as a great contradiction, I felt quite at home.
To feel stressed out in Kona seemed an impossibility. To me, that would just mean that quite frankly, one had missed the point of the aloha spirit.
