A Day at Kona

  There wasn't much that Justin and I paid a lot of money to do, but one thing we agreed would be worth the money was a guided kayaking and stand up paddle tour.  We had both tried stand up paddling before and were able to get up pretty easy, so figured it would be awesome to do this in Hawaii.
  With the help of Lonely Planet, I found a company called Kona Boys.  They did all kinds of tours and lessons from kayaking, to stand up paddling, snorkeling and bike rentals.  They had a package called "Day at the Beach" where you kayaked out, snorkeled for a while, and then had access to the stand up paddles after lunch.

   We did this on Monday (day 2) because we figured our bodies would still be getting up pretty early without help from an alarm clock.  Turns out we were the only people signed up that day, so we had our tour guide all to ourselves.  He had a lot of great stories about the island and great suggestions of things to do while we were there.
   Where we put our kayaks in the water was actually right by the starting line for the IRONMAN Triathlon that was taking place a couple of weeks after we left.  Talk about intense! About 2000 people enter the race each year for a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then finish off with running a full marathon.  Kill me!  We would see people running and biking all over the place...some looked ironman...others not so much.  It kind of turned into a game during our drives---"Is he ironman?", "Oh, he's definitely not ironman!".  Our guide was telling us that they shut the finish line down at midnight and there are people crawling across the line just minutes before determined to finish!

 Ok enough about insane exercising...since Justin and I had experience kayaking, our guide took us out to an area that had better snorkeling.  Although this is not one of my favorite activities, I put on my mask and got out there.  This snorkeling was by far the best we had done though! Our guide was able to free dive and swim through lava tubes that were deep under water.  We tried to go down just 6-8 feet at one point to get a closer look and we both felt like our ears would explode.  Apparently, you have to train your body to be able to go down deep because of all the pressure from the water.

 As we were kayaking back, he mentioned that most people get really sea sick kayaking around the island...we didn't have a problem--I guess growing up near the beach helped.  After lunch, we tried out the stand up paddling.  Back at home, I had no problem getting up on the board, but this was hard!  We were able to get up and paddle out, but with the waves, boat wake, and trying to avoid rocks, it was really challenging.

After we were done at Kona Boys, we decided to spend the rest of the day walking around Kona.  The area was awesome and the people are so laid back.  There is a brewery--Kona Brewery--right down the street, so we stopped in there for some samples of the local brew! You can actually get a lot of their beers in North Carolina!

All in all our day at Kona was definitely a highlight of our trip! I would highly recommend Kona Boys to anyone making the trip to the Big Island!