Last night we went to the other Four Seasons Resort on the island, The Lodge at Koele, for dinner.  The food was much better, but still incredibly overpriced.  Still, we had a very lovely meal, and The Lodge is gorgeous.  It’s more country estate than Polynesian village, but it’s very grand.  I can’t wait to go up there during the daylight hours and look around – the Lodge has croquet (free) and an 18-hole putting course (free) and horseback riding ($) and archery ($) and skeet shooting ($).  Don’t know if we’ll actually do any of those things, but it’s fun to dream.

This morning we were up bright and early again, and Lis said “Let’s try to snorkel before breakfast.”  It was pretty windy, and I was dubious, but when it’s your birthday, you get to snorkel before breakfast if you want to.

Yesterday, when we were watching the dolphins, we saw that they are generally on the right side of the bay, but that they do a lot of moving around.  We also saw that people who went out in to the water near the right side of the bay and just hung there would eventually be surrounded by dolphins, as opposed to the people who actively swam after the dolphins, who mostly just scared them away (plus you’re not supposed to do that, assholes – who chases wildlife? – bastards – but I digress…).  So we thought that the next time the dolphins were around, we would try the pick-a-spot technique.

When we arrived, there were no dolphins, so we went to the left side of the bay where the fish are.  Visibility still wasn’t great, but it was good enough, and we found a better site with tons of fish – really good snorkeling.  There was a huge school of Convict Tangs that we followed for a while, and we saw a bunch of other fish, including the Hawaiian state fish, that I recognized from last time but couldn’t remember the name of until we saw it on a T-shirt in gift shop – Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (who-moo-who-moo-new-koo-new-koo-awp-oo-ah-ah).

We snorkeled about an hour, then headed back to our beach chairs.  We were going to rest for a bit, but we looked up and saw that the dolphins had arrived – time to implement our plan.  We swam out to a spot near where the dolphins were and waited, along with another woman doing the same thing.  We all spoke disapprovingly of the people who were swimming after the dolphins (bastards) and hung in our spot.

At first, it seemed like the dolphin chasers might have succeeded in running them off (dickwads), but eventually our plan paid off, and we were surrounded by dolphins – breaching, spinning, slapping their flukes on the water, blowing through their blowholes, swimming together under water (at one point directly under me – actually kind of scared me, they were so close) – it was one of the most awesome experiences I’ve ever had. 

dolphinsWe were very scrupulous about not trying to touch them or interact with them in any way, but it was not possible to avoid whooping with delight when a dolphin would leap out of the water and spin in the air just a few feet away.  The picture I’ve posted here is actually from a post card we bought in the gift shop, but it’s a good representation of just how close we were – we saw things that looked exactly like this.  As my Facebook friend Pinkie Toenail would say – FUCKING EPIC!!  It was really exciting – we hope to do it again and again.

We had to rush back to get to the breakfast buffet before it closed at 10am – otherwise we’d have to actually PAY FOR our overpriced breakfast.  After breakfast we went to the Spa Ladies’ locker room for our Poor Woman’s Spa Treatment (veteran readers of this blog – and there ARE some; HOLLAH!! – know that we love to stay at expensive hotels and then spend as little money as possible), which is using all the free amenities of the locker room.  We had a glorious steam and sauna, and then used the rain water showers – I practically had to be poured back to the room.

For lunch we went to the golf course club house – the food was much better (and bigger portions) – we really enjoyed it up there, and will probably lunch there a few more times.

After lunch we went back to our glorious double-lounger.  It was still really good, but not quite as glorious as yesterday – a bit hotter, not quite enough shade, not nearly as much attention from the attendants.  Still, we had a lovely time – and then it was Happy Hour!!

We went to the pool bar and got Lava Flows.  And, to show what a good couple days we’ve had and how relaxed we are feeling, we were able to sit at the bar with a bunch of drunk people in swimwear, and have a really good time (An aside: how come we have to cover our boobs and big bellies, but all these men don’t have to cover THEIR boobs and big bellies – we saw A LOT of man boobs).

For dinner tonight we went for pupus in the Hale Ahe Ahe Lounge.  It’s a very pleasant lounge, and we enjoyed the musicians, but the service was very slow and (as usual) the prices high and the portions small.   Tomorrow I’ll see if I can get my sweetie to try out the main dining room, which we haven’t tried for dinner yet.