Days 6-7

20.6 mi / 10.6 mph / 1772 ft. climbing
Home: Jolee House AirBNB

Our fourth and final snorkeling adventure in Hawaii’s west-side waters required much more pre-adventure than our previous dives. Well, it didn’t require it. In fact, the vast majority of people who swim at the secluded Captain Cook National Monument (aka Kealakekua Bay) pay a tour company to take them there via boat. But here at the home of the Ironman, we figured we were badass enough to do our own Hawaii triathlon today: a 10 mile bike ride taking us from sea-level up to 1300 feet, a 2 mile hike down the volcanic slope back to the water, and then a swim amongst some of the most-spectacular ocean life Hawaii has to offer. And then, the return hike back up and the bike ride back to Kona, additional phases that even the Ironman doesn’t have! We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but if you’re an early-retiree, spending hundreds of dollars on boat rides two days in a row isn’t easy either!

Previous bike-tourer journals we’d read reported that the road from Kona to Captain Cook was a dangerous traffic nightmare, the worst section on the island. But luckily for us, those journals were written before the Mamalahoa Bypass Road was completed in 2016! So rather than climbing inland and taking the main highway out of Kona, we stayed down on the coastal, familiar Ali’i Drive which eventually opened up into a wide-shouldered low-traffic swath of concrete. The downside was that the 300-foot 12% climb at the end more than doubled the steepness of the main highway’s more-gradual slope, but that was a fair trade.

We locked our bikes to a big road sign amongst the half-dozen cars parked at the trailhead’s impromptu parking area, and got our gear-filled backpacks strapped to our backs as part of the slowest triathlon-transition ever. The hike back down the hill had a lot more vegetation than I’d been expecting (at least to start), but there was little shade from the hot sun until we entered a wild-goat-filled forest at the bottom.

A stone obelisk surrounded by cannons marks the spot where famed explorer James Cook (who also has links to New Zealand) was killed by native Hawaiians in 1779. Erected by his British countrymen a century later, it feels almost as much like a foreign intrusion on Hawaiian land as Cook’s arrival itself must have felt to the natives: clinging to the rocky shore, Hawaii provides no roads or even a boat dock by which to access it, and no markers besides the obelisk itself explain it.

A few tour boats were out in the bay, and dozens of their passengers were joyfully snorkeling in the bright blue water. On land, we saw several other parties of independent adventurers like us, some climbing up the wall of the monument to exit the bay, some relaxing under the shade trees before beginning their arduous hike back up. We spent a few moments observing the challenging entry/exit into the water, accepted some words of advice (“wait for a wave to come in to make the water deeper before you jump”), and then leaped.

Immediately there were amazing colorful fish filling our view like an IMAX presentation, with coral below. We swam after a particularly enticing one who had grabbed our attention. It led us back toward the sharp rocks and coral just under the water near the shoreline, so we turned back toward deeper water. Or, we tried to. But instead, that’s when disaster struck and this Hawaiian island taught us a lesson nearly as violent as the one that brought Captain Cook’s demise.

An incoming wave pushed us back helplessly into the island’s underwater teeth, our suddenly-soft bodies being tumbled, crashed, and dragged across abrading rock and coral. Sputtering for breath and grasping for stability, the wave’s outflow that dragged us in reverse was nearly as bad as the flood that pushed us in. And it only took us out far enough in order for the next incoming wave to propel us back into the flesh-grater with even more momentum than the first time. We clung to each other, not knowing if that was the right thing to do (maybe I’m preventing her from making it back out the safety of deeper water?!), but it was the least-frightening option during these moments of terror and pain. We mutually and wordlessly chose to fight against the waves trying to drag us back out and instead ride the ones pushing us in as best we could. But it still took several more sweeps back and forth before we achieved even a second of stability.

A pilot out on one of the boats saw our struggles and shouted some advice about timing the subsequent waves. With an uncomfortable mix of patience and panic, we made it stepwise onto higher and safer ground, finally cutting right across the chains of Captain Cook’s monument to return to a place where we could breathe and assess.

While we were both banged up, Rett caught the worst of it by far. Something had ripped a hole not just through the top of her water shoe, but through her big toenail below it. Her whole left thigh was abraded, and the spot above her left hip took one of the heaviest blows, exposing layers of her flesh that should never be visible. A wide irregular gash ran down the side of her right palm.

My only visible wound was on my lower back, and minimally bleeding. But my hands were covered in black splinters. Apparently between blindly grabbing at sharp lava rocks and skin-flaying coral, I had also plunged my hands into multiple sea urchins! Their spikes also seemed to be embedded in some of Rett’s wounds. I had a few where I could see both the entry and exit point, with apparently half-an-inch of the spine hidden beneath my skin.

Luckily we were smart enough to carry a first-aid kit in our backpacks, and several of the other parties down on the shore came to offer their supplies as well. We tried the best we could in this rough camp amongst the trees to dig out the most-obvious urchin spines (they’re soft and don’t pull out in one piece like a wooden splinter), and clean and bandage up the rest of Rett’s wounds.

And then there was no other option left than completing the final two stages of our triathlon, in far more pain than we had expected going in. But Rett fought through that pain like a true Ironman, with her damaged toe waiting to fell her at any moment on the two miles up the mountain. Not only did it make each step hurt, but stubbing it on a rock could have brought the end. We remembered the couple who had capsized and gotten similarly banged-up when we did a kayak tour to Donut Island in New Zealand, and attempted to emulate their stoicism as they had completed the tour in both blood and good spirits. Today was just our turn to be the unlucky ones. Near the top I charged ahead to get to a gas station near our bikes for some cold drinks that might help sustain us for the ride home.

The big cut on Rett’s shifting hand made the final segment a challenge, but at least the return to our AirBNB was (mostly) downhill. We made it to our room, did more cleaning and patching, and settled in to start the recovery process.

What the fuck happened?! How did our last big adventure in Kona end so badly, so violently, so dangerously? I think our previous successful snorkeling excursions had filled us with unearned pride, and the ocean was determined to remind us that as beautiful as it is, it is an unceasingly deadly place, and can smack us down with nearly-unlimited power. With hindsight, paying hundreds of dollars for the boat tour would have been the better choice. And not even for the transportation, but simply because the guide would have presumably told everyone “stay 20 yards away from the shore”. It’s a case where seven words of (fairly obvious!) advice would have been worth hundreds of dollars. Because even as we were being sliced and stabbed, there were inexperienced kids blissfully swimming back and forth, oblivious to any of the life-threatening chaos happening right behind them. There were just likely told the safe place to swim in this particular bay.

The worst thing was, the 30 seconds of snorkeling we experienced appeared to be the best we’d ever seen. All that effort to get ourselves independently to this magical bay, and most of our memories will be not of its beauty, but of the fear and pain that it delivered unto us. But it’s clearly a reminder that we needed, so hopefully what didn’t kill us makes us less-stupid going forward.