Visitors from Tucson, Snorkeling at Kapoho, Hiking Pololu and World Cup....

This week our friends from Tucson Rick, Sage & Teal came to visit. I saw Rick about a month ago and talking over a couple of beers I told him they should come to visit. A week later he sent me an email saying he had gone online and bought tickets for him and the kids!....

They are staying with us at home. We took them swimming to Coconut Island the day they got here, we then went snorkeling to Kapoho (it was the first time snorkeling for Teal and Sage and they loved it!).
Then we went to hot pond with the idea of soaking in the warm water for a little while, however, the tide was so high that sea water was coming into the pool big time making the water in the pool COLD!!... It just felt wrong getting into the pool and finding cold water, so we ate our lunch and headed out to Lava Tree park.

On Saturday we were planning on going on a hike to the back end of Waipio (end of White Road) with the Chrysostomous', however, when we got there the weather was miserable and we decided to head over to the North End of the Island and check Pololu Valley out.

We got to Pololu and the weather was gorgeous so we decided to do the 1 mile hike (400ft drop in elevation) down to the valley.

Hana was going like the Energizer bunny, she got down to the valley a good 5 minutes ahead of everyone!

There were a couple of families there, not too many people, that is one of the advantages of hard to get to places, most tourists will just see if from the lookout and not go down there...

After eating our lunch down in the valley we went out exploring the forest, we crossed some fallen trees.....

a very cool thing about the valley is that there are lots of huge marine ropes that have washed out to the shore and people hang them from the trees to make all kind of fun swings!...

We then hiked to the end of the beach to look at a little cave that we could see...

But more than a cave it turned out to be a little puka in the wall...... still, good fun for all!

Rick, Teal, Hana and I at the mouth of the river, which was not running at the moment...

After the brutal climb out of the valley we stopped in Waimea for another first for Sage and Teal: Hawaiian Shave Ice!....hmmm......ONO!

WORLD CUP!

The Chrysostomous hosted a World Cup final party at their house, we gathered there at 08:00AM along with other people to watch the game. The concept was that people had to bring dishes to share from the countries playing the final (it was a huge relief for everyone when Spain defeated Germany in the semifinals, because a Dutch-German breakfast would have been terrible!).

We brought a tapas platter with Cantaloupe wrapped in Serrano Ham, Chorizo and Garlic Mushrooms....

And we also brought a Spanish Tortilla....Hmmm..... (Notice how the bell peppers make the Spanish flag)

Other people brought Paella and Flan. And some people brought some Dutch food....(Cheese, bread, butter and chocolate sprinkles, oh and some cold cuts....guess which food was the most popular!?)....
It was good fun, good food and good people!