>Today I hiked in the rain forest again, this time it rained while we were in there so it was more humid and more cool and the colors just seemed so much brighter. I really like it. We went to Waihamia Bay and cliff jumped off of a 30 foot rock into the blueblue ocean. That was pretty much amazing- did it over and over. Then we body surfed on the biggest waves I have ever been in for about an hour. We’d wait for a big wave (which were frequent), run with it and free style swim just as it broke over us and it would sweep us I don’t know how dang many yards up the beach, giving sand abrasions along the way, then sucking us all the way back down to where we were swallowed by the next one. I learned that you have to get your feet under you as fast as you can between waves or else you will be sucked underneath the next one and whirled around in the sand and the salt and other bodies. When that happens, it feels like how the Little Mermaid looked when Ursula first gave her her legs deep under the water and she is fumbling trying to find which way is up and how the heck to get there. Happened to me twice- I was lost and upside down then sideways and sand swirls around me like a wet dust storm, actually, to make another disney comparison it is like Pocahontas when she is singing Colors of the Wind and the wind sweeps through her hair and it is everywhere around and above her head and in her face and full of dirt and leaves and small birds. Like that but I can’t sing underwater, especially salt water. At one point, the sand went through my nose and I spat it out of my mouth from the back of my throat, my hair was everywhere and sand is sure to be falling out of it for days, then there is the bathing suit situation- it would awkwardly fill with sand and with the tossing of the wave and my uncontrollable rolling, I couldn’t straighten it as soon as I would have liked. This was funny to watch happen to other people and then to sympathize with them laughingly afterward.
We= AmandaP Christi Brandon Blake Greg Stacey Laura Derek Emily. We road Harley motorcycles up there! EWWEEE! Honestly, I would have preferred to have been with my daddy, but the view was just beautiful. Driving the same roads int the little Tracker two days before was not even comparable. One moment will stand out in my memory for the rest of my life. Amanda was on Stacey’s soft tail and I was on Greg’s fatboy; we were on Highway 63 between two tunnels and after yelling and whooping through the tunnel with our arms spread wide like soaring birds we were launched out on the side of a lush green oddly shaped mountain over looking a dozen other ones like it and a deep valley with the blueblue ocean in the distance. The air was cool and misty on our faces and breathing never felt so good. It triggered all my senses but my taste buds. Selah.
