Hanauma Bay

We were able to go to Hanauma Bay today.  I didn't know how difficult it would be to get there.  We could only purchase tickets when they went on sale exactly two days prior at 7:00 a.m.  The tickets sold out within two minutes, so we had to be right on top of it.  Our first opportunity was on Wednesday when we were on board our flight to Hawaii and just before taking off.  We tried, but our phones were too slow.  The best we could do was one ticket for Friday, so we decided to try again Thursday morning.  At precisely 7:00 a.m. we all tried and Jeffrey was the quickest.  He was able to buy three tickets for 7:10 a.m. on Saturday.  We knew we had to be at the parking lot early, so we left the condo about 6:15 a.m. this morning, but we arrived at the gate just before it opened, so the parking attendant waved us to the end of the line of cars.  As soon as we were in line they opened the gate, and everyone showed up.  There must have been 60 vehicles that got in before we did.  We finally found a parking spot and checked in at the Visitor's Center.  After watching a video about the natural preserve we hauled our gear from the car to the shuttle bus that took us to the beach.  We finally set up our spot and started snorkeling.  There were some areas that were very difficult to swim through, but we did find some great observation areas, and we saw a lot of different and colorful fish.  There was a stiff breeze and the water was cold at first, but once we got started the time flew by.  We stayed about five hours.  After that we had lunch at a nearby restaurant called Teddy's Bigger Burgers.  We were pretty hungry.  We took a short drive along the coast to see the Halona Blowhole and the Makapu'u Lighthouse.  We didn't have the energy to hike the trail.  We stopped at Costco on our way back home and bought a couple of Hawaiian shirts and a stir fry dinner.  We relaxed the rest of the day.