Day 4

On day 4, May 15th, we celebrated our 5 year dating anniversary! Wow, it is crazy for me to think that we have been together that long...Graham would argue that we've dated for even longer than that but my rebuttal to his claim is this: I don't think one can call it dating if the girl doesn't even know she is being dated. We have endless discussions around this topic and have yet to agree...

Anyway, we woke up early on Friday morning and heading for the west side of the island where we embarked on a catamaran tour up the Napali Coast (the north shore). Thankfully when we signed up for the boat trip, the lady asked if we had any medical conditions. Graham told her that I was about 24 weeks pregnant and she said it was a good thing we told her because only one boat company would take pregnant women and only up until 26 weeks...phew! Just made it! But then I got to thinking, "What on earth happens on these boat trips that make it unsafe for pregnant women?" Thankfully, I think it was just their own liability they were concerned about because the trip itself was pretty tame.

This trip up the Napali Coast was definitely one of the highlights of the trip! It was a gorgeous day and the water couldn't have been calmer or clearer (we could see the coral reefs below us as we sped along). Our crew told us that they only get 10 days like this a year so we felt quite please with ourselves to have picked such a good one.

Along the way, we encountered multiple schools of Spinner Dolphins. They swam along with our boat and we even saw a baby one following it's mom (it was the size of a football!)They are called Spinner Dolphins because they jump out of the water and do sideways rotations (like a corkscrew) for no apparent reason. Graham caught one in action:

Doesn't this look like Seaworld with the color of the water?!

The coast itself was made up of gorgeous green cliffs dropping down into the teal blue water. There were waterfalls along the cliffs and many beautiful beaches that can only be accessed via boat or a very tough hike.

I had a couple different people on the boat ask me when I was due and at first I totally confused and couldn't figure out what they were talking about. (I had been worrying that people would just think I was a fat lady in a swimsuit and so assumed people wouldn't know I was pregnant). But these comments confirmed that I must really have a true "baby bump" now (not a beer belly!)

The boat stopped part way along the coast for snorkeling. Although the water was super clear, the crew wouldn't let us leave the deep water because they didn't want us touching the coral reef so there weren't actually that many fish. We did get to swim with a couple of turtles though which was exciting!

That evening, we had dinner reservations at this really popular restaurant called the Beach House (locals make reservations months in advance for the sunset hour because it's a great place to watch the sun go down). We of course couldn't get in until close to 8 PM but still enjoyed a lovely meal right on the ocean. We had crab cakes, a green salad with red onions, watermelon, blue cheese and nuts (AMAZING) and macadamia crusted mahi mahi. We enjoyed our delicious dinner as we reminisced about our "first date" five years ago.