Turtles and Freedom

On Saturday we all went to a town called Haleiwa. Mike had gone there before and said there were turtles RIGHT ON THE BEACH!

Well, we had to see for ourselves.

Before we got to the beach we walked around the town a bit to get some lunch and snacks. Some of you were even on facebook/twitter at the right time and saw us in the coffee shop via their streaming camera.

As we worked our way back to the car we passed this brightly colored house with hand-painted surf boards all over the yard. Actually, everything around and in the house was hand-painted. A kind teen-aged girl welcomed us into the house…it was filled with musical instruments and more family members. Their house was an open air studio. “So, you guys just play here?” one of us asked. “Let me check with my father to see when our next show is!” she runs off and quickly returns “We’re going to play RIGHT NOW!”

The father walked in the door and the children started taking their places: drums; bongos, electric guitar; bass; dad on keys. All this as three smaller children start digging through a bin of comedysportz-equivalent props before they begin their background dancing/maraca shaking.

It was a little more than we were prepared for on a walk to the beach. We stayed for a song, but that song seamlessly went into another song and we weren’t ready for a full concert so we kindly went on our way.

You can find out more about the family at http://ronartis.com/.

So we make it to the beach!

It isn’t really a good beach for snorkeling because it is only about two feet deep all the way out until the break. But, there are large turtles just swimming around. At least ten.

Since I couldn’t get underwater I had to just put my camera under and hope I was aiming right. I took a LOT of photos and ended up with some that you can see here.

After all that effort to get them on film, around 2:00pm they started coming out of the water to sun themselves making photos easy as pie…although I’ve never made a pie.