We decided to start the morning with a trip to a little crepe cafe in Kona. We were amazed at how beautiful the presentations were, and the tasted as good as they looked!
We then wandered around the little shops and local farmer’s market, just appreciating the scenery, art, and pace of Hawaii, until we decided that is was time for lunch. We hit up a spot we’ve been wanting to try, called Da Poke Shack (or as Paige says, “Daaa Pokiiii Shaaaaaacckkk!”) and had delicious poke bowls while sitting out on the porch.
After a pit stop for supplies to for dinner and our upcoming volcano trip, we headed back to relax at the condo and get ready for our snorkel with the manta rays at sunset.
When sunset approached, we headed out to the boat. We steeled ourselves for the long and treacherous journey to the manta rays…. all the way at the mouth of the harbor, at least 5 minutes from where we started! The crew then turned on our magic manta ray attracting lights (they may have explained that the lights work by attracting plankton for the manta’s to eat, but we prefer to believe that they are magic), and manta rays began to appear before we were even in the water. It was amazing how huge they were and how close they came. More than once I had to arch out of the way to avoid brushing them. The fed by doing barrel rolls directly under us, which helped Miles to catch some amazing videos of their underwater acrobatics. We swam with our new friends for an hour before being called us back to the boat. On the way home, the crew fed us hot chocolate and soup. And they didn’t even make us do barrel rolls for our food!
