This morning was a dive day, with a two-tank shore dive from the beach at Makena Cove with Maui Diving. We have not done a shore dive since our initial certification, which involves piling all your gear, tanks, etc., into the back of the dive shop’s 8-passenger van and you get driven about 20 minutes to the site.

At the beach you gear up near the the van and walk into the surf fully loaded with gear into waist-deep water, where you finish the effect by putting mask and fins on.

When the beach looks this good there are absolutely no complaints…

These dives explore some of the small open caves and lava tubes along the shoreline, which involves some surface swimming to get to the sites and conserve air.

There are a few locals hanging out along the way.

Back on land the next day, we headed north to explore a bit and ended up passing through the small town of Paia (Mama’s Fish House) on the road to Hana and stopped at Ho’okipa Beach Park.

There are tons of surfers in the water as the big waves are breaking all over and consistently. We hung out for a while and watched as its was mesmerizing. There must be some sort of unspoken hierarchy as to who gets the wave and who gets to wait it out.

Beach time in the afternoon – it’s a walk across the road to Kamaole Beach Park, where the surf is not quite so aggressive but the sunset definitely is.