We would love to stay and hang out at the villa, but we were starving. None of us have had our lunch yet, so we decided to walk to Echo Beach to get our lunch there. We hadn’t even left the house when the rain started to pour… And it poured hard. But just like any other beaches, the rain here comes and goes very quickly… So in about 5 minutes, the hard rain subsided, and off we went. Of course we brought umbrellas, just in case the rain started again before we’ve reached shelter.
The beach had black sand. I’ve always loved black-sand beaches. The sand was very soft and powdery. Too bad, the beach on this side was not kids-friendly. The waves were very strong and high… So high that there were so many people out with their surf boards. I think, there were only a handful of people swimming. The rest were surfing.
We had to cross a stream to get to the Echo Beach… And since it was raining earlier, the current was quite strong. So, even though it looked quite nice and tame in the picture, we had quite a challenge crossing it. I was kinda worried that Aina, who’s super light, would get swept away by the current…
As soon as we got to Echo Beach, the rain started to pour again. This time, not only did it rain really hard, it also came with the beach wind… We didn’t really have much time to look for a place to eat, so we just ran into the nearest restaurant, to avoid being completely soaked. They served huge portions of sandwiches and burgers. But I think Aina was starving, so she actually finished her whole sandwich along with the fries.
After we finished the late lunch, we walked around the beach a little bit. The rain had stopped, and people had started doing body boarding and surfing. And the beach dogs had come out and greeted us in a friendly manner.
The beach closer to our villa was very rocky, so it’s even less swimmable. But there were still a lot of people on the beach, sitting around and soaking themselves.
We went back to the Villa, and decided to try the swimming pool. Since we rented two villas, we ended up with 2 mirror-image swimming pools… We decided to use the left one.
The swimming pool had no shallow ends. The water was about neck high when i stood in the pool. The water was warm and comfortable. Since the rest of the family members had not arrived yet, it was only Aina and me occupying the pool.
That night, we didn’t go out to eat. Ari’s mom cooked, because we were supposed to have a big family dinner with Nia’s Family, Jessi and Shuta’s parents and siblings.
Unfortunately, there was a big flight delay. First, it was Nia and Bond’s plane from Auckland, New Zealand, for about two hours… They were supposed to land around 5, but ended up landing around 7-8PM. So they arrived almost at the same time as Jessi, Shuta and his family, who came in from Tokyo.
Bu the whole delay drama didn’t stop there. Those from Tokyo got a weird baggage delay for more than 2 hours. I have never heard of baggage delay, but it’s pretty much that the baggage never showed up at the collection point. After repeatedly complaining to the airport staff, they finally found the baggage 2 hours later. So, the Tokyo group, which consisted of Jessi, Shuta, Shuta’s parents, and two families of Shuta’s siblings with a 5-year-old, a toddler and a 3 months old baby, had to wait for 2 hours at the airport because the staff couldn’t find their baggage. They arrived at the villa at 11pm, with hungry and upset kids. Geez, I feel bad for them. I guess we were lucky that our baggage came out so quickly this morning.
But in any case, that night, the grandparents got too see all of their grandchildren. And even though it was very late, and everyone was exhausted, it was still full of smiles.
