Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all! We've spent the past couple of days touring and swimming on the sunny side of the island. On Monday morning Anselm and parents got up before dawn to go south for a boat ride around the Na Pali coast. As we approached the western edge, the waves were getting too big (though very fun to ride over!) so we turned back, and spent the morning blatting around on the water looking for whales, snorkelling and whatnot. Lots of spout sightings and some up close action of diving, fins, backs, etc, less than the regulation 100 feet away, but no breaches. Even if not Na Pali, the scenery from the boat was fabulous-- one looks back over the whole island and its amazing weird weather system. We three did a "Titanic", riding the boat at full speed perched on the bow, with our feet dangling down.. wonderful. Mum and Dad made the Na Pali attempt today with no more luck-- except that they saw two sets of dolphins.

Both yesterday and today, we visited with Leela and Avi at the Hyatt. Anselm (yes, and his parents) loved the beautifully landscaped pools and we all spent a lot of time goofing around with Leela and Stan in the "river" and "lagoon". Anselm made more swim progress in one day than he has in the last year. Leela and Avi are true wassermeisters but Avi has not been himself in the last couple of days, so there was less all-kid splashing around than I think would normally have been the case. Eliot joined today for some lagoon swimming and as usual made some new friends and had a lovely time. Unfortunately I don't have photos of all the kids as swimming and photography turn out to be incompatible.

This afternoon we made a trip up Wailea Canyon. Wow! It's impossible to do it justice with (my)photography-- given that we were utterly taken by surprise despite the presumably professional photos in our guidebook. The "best view in the Pacific" turned out to be shrouded in cloud, but some of the next best views were still available.