My Favorite Beach....Lanikai

I'm a little bit behind on the blog and will now be telling you about what we did on Monday. Today, we went to what is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It's my personal favorite here on Oahu as it is calm, has crystal clear water and powder white soft sand, a slight unusual feature for this island, whose beaches tend to be more rugged and natural. It was the perfect place for us to re-introduce Ellie to snorkeling.

We dropped my sister, Lisa, off at work at the Windward Community College. She's the director of the Upward Bound program here in Hawaii. She allowed us to use her car all day! We then shopped for a set of snorkel, mask and fins for Ellie. Also picked up some other beach gear; sand toys, a floating raft as a gift for Owen, and some floaties to keep my little one on top of the water.




We also headed over to this great store called Ross, where we found several other items we needed; sunglasses for Ellie, a purse for me and a few postcards.

Lanikai is in a very exclusive residential neighborhood with fabulously expensive beach homes that is a joy in itself just driving through! You park on a little side street near a beach access path, walk down the sandy lane and an unbelievable vision of blue and white appears before you at the end.


There are several coral heads not very far out in
the water so we promptly got all our gear on to
head out. And....Ellie promptly dropped her snorkel which apparently floated right to the bottom of the sea! I let her use my mask and snorkel and just swam along beside her. Not much in the way of fish and it was rather cloudy. That's OK, we didn't expect this to be outstanding
snorkeling, but did get her used to her swimming and breathing techniques.

She sat on the shore while I snorkeled a bit and the most exciting thing I saw...was her snorkel! It was about 10 feet down so I dove down and retrieved it off the ocean floor. We spent the rest of the afternoon frolicking in the wave breaks and rolling all around. We love doing that so much.

One oddity...a Japanese gal came bounding onto the sand, promptly grabbed a large, hairy piece of green seaweed and stuck it in the front of her bikini bottoms, letting it hang down her leg! She pranced all over the beach, having her family (and strangers) take pictures of her that way. Sorry, I decided it wasn't worth getting out of the water to get my camera for!

Came home, grilled hamburgers for everyone and as usual, went to bed early!