Ben's birthday

August 31

Today is Ben’s birthday!  After a leisurely breakfast and coffees we hopped on our mountain bikes to go to a beach for a short snorkel.  Couple of miles of pavement leads to old jeep trails that are part hard packed red dirt, part lava rock, part deep ruts and sideways tracks drivable, sort of, (very slowly in most places), for jacked up 4 wheel drive trucks/jeeps only.  Couple of miles of riding leads to an offshoot road that takes you to Maki Horse for some fairly decent snorkeling.

                                        Maki Horse.  There is a straight up black cliff to the left of this shot which allows you to see this beach from anywhere with a view on the West end. Sandy beaches for good lounging and rocks for good snorkeling.

We saw schools of convict tangs, butterfly fish, parrot fish, reef trigger fish, coral, sea urchins, etc… Water was warm, and blue.

On the way out we saw a monk seal.  They are rare sightings here so this was really neat.  I wouldn’t have noticed it at all had it not been making it’s way up the rocky beach.

                            You may have to enlarge the top photo, it's the "find the seal" shot

                                                               Checking us out

I made a beeline home because it’s mid-afternoon and Hot and Ben stops off at Skip and Dian’s who picked up some groceries for us today.  It’s a nice community here where rather than loaning you a car after someone comes back from town, if they are there they’ll just do your shopping for you.

Birthday dinner is a little scrappy, we were counting on some venison from local Axis deer but that isn't coming through so we'll use our Molokai purple sweet potatoes for our local piece tonight.

Hope we can share this with you.