Kona Food & Night Snorkeling with Manta Rays! | Big Island Days 1 & 2

Aloha from the island of Hawaii, otherwise known as the Big Island. Hawaii is our favorite place to travel and although we've been here five times already, including a trip to Oahu last year that we vlogged, this is our first time on the Big Island and we are loving it. It is amazing. So we have six days total on the Big Island because as the name implies it's pretty big and there's a lot to see and do. It's actually so big that all the other islands can fit into it almost twice, which is crazy. The island is split into six areas. The Hamakua Coast, Kohala, Puna, Kau, and then Kona and Hilo, which are the two areas that we're staying in this week. We apologize in advance for any Hawaiian words that we mispronounce this trip. We are trying our hardest but some of them are a tad tricky. So yesterday was actually our first day on the island but we kind of decided to not film a vlog and just relax, which was much needed. We grabbed some Kona coffee at Kona Coffee and Tea and then went beach hopping. We checked out Kua Bay, Hapuna Beach, and then took a bumpy ride and long walk out to Makalauena Beach. It was a really fun day and we recommend checking out all three of those beaches. And today we'll be hanging out on the Kona side again. We're going to be eating some delicious Hawaiian treats, checking out the town, and doing something pretty unique tonight that we're really excited about. First up, acai bowls. Our first ones of the trip. So we came to a spot called Basic Cafe that's in the Kona area. It's this little stand you just walk up to the counter and you order. They have like maybe six acai options. Six or seven, yeah, different mixes. We got the Islander, which is more of a traditional one. Just acai with berries on top, coconut, all that fun stuff. This is the Kilauea. This one's slightly different. It has mango juice in it and papaya on top. There's orange ones there. Of course we got the largest size. Oh yeah. Go big or go home. And we're not ready to go home yet. All right, you're gonna have to feed me. Feed me. Try to get all the... so many goodies on top. Don't you spill. There's like no acai in the spoon. Oh no! You spilled. It's okay. There's like no acai. It's just fruit. Here, there's some of the... Fresh. Can't beat it. I have a confession to make. My eyes were bigger than my stomach. I thought I could eat that whole acai bowl, but it's deceiving because it's just fruit and some granola. Yeah, it's extremely filling. It was very large and very filling and your eyes were bigger than your stomach, but the acai... I had to finish hers and so the acai is coming out of my eyes now. We're full of acai. But the next stop on our Kona adventure is Magic Sands Beach, which is a small beach just a little bit south of where we got the acai bowls. Yeah, it's an interesting name. A cool name, Magic Sands. Sounds a little magical. No magicians here. Yeah, but the reason for that is because during the winter months especially, the waves and the surf come in and they take the sand from it and then it reveals the lava rock below it. So I guess that's why it gets his name. And luckily today though, it's not taking the sand away. There's plenty of sand. It's not a huge beach, but we got here pretty early so there's enough places to lay out. Plenty of room, yeah. But the water is so, so blue. It's like that extra blue right here and there's some people out there and the waves aren't too big, but they're they're nice and wavy. Time to go jump in. Okay, so we decided to take a quick break from the beach to get some poke. We're at the spot called De Poke Shack, which we hear is one of the best spots to get poke on the island. And if you guys watched our Oahu vlogs last year, you'll know that I do not like fish. I'm nervous. But last year I was brave and I promised Adam I would try poke, which scares me because it's raw fish. But I actually ended up really liking it, but I didn't have my own. I just took a bite and I was like, okay cool, maybe I'll have this again in the future. But I promised Adam that on this trip I would get my own poke to myself. So I got two different kinds. To be honest, I don't really know what fish they are, what kind they are. They were the two gluten-free options. One's a spicy garlic and one's just the Hawaiian, I think. And they got rice and seaweed salad. I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of nervous. I think I'm just as nervous as I was last year to try this, but knowing that I did like it last year helps ease my nerves a tiny bit. Okay, here we go. Super soft. It has a really good flavor. I honestly, if I close my eyes, no one told me where I was. They were like, what do you think you're eating right now? I don't know what I think it was, but I wouldn't think it's fish. So, awesome. So if you don't like poke and you really want to try it, come to this spot because if I like it, anyone will like it. I'm so glad that she likes it because I've been telling her for years, like, you're missing out, you're missing out on these world of flavors. I'm proud of myself. Hopefully she's waking up. Okay, so we both got bowls and you get to choose a white or brown rice side from the top and then two poke from the bottom. So I got white rice and they put like a special seasoning on top and then these are spicy clams. That's what I chose for my top one. And then I have no idea what kind of fish it is. I don't, does it tell you? It may. I just was overwhelmed by all the options. Yeah, there was a lot of options, but I got, this one has like, is like a spicy sauce with like avocado and then this one's called the wet Hawaiian. I don't know, they both look good. She said this one would go well with avocado, so that's what I got. It's fresh. It's perfect. I love, I love poke. So we came a little early. It's like, well, it's 11 now, but we got here like 10 30 ish because we heard that they can sell out pretty easy. We weren't sure if they would on a Monday, but if you're coming on the weekend, we would recommend coming early because if you go in there, there's the tins of the poke, they're pretty small. I don't know how many they have, but they might run out. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend coming like late afternoon. Definitely come like late morning, early afternoon if you want to have your pick, pick of the poke. And now we are walking around Kailua Kona and we stopped off to get a little coffee. A little pick me up. I also did not mention before, but we brought my parents with us to Hawaii. Parents are amazing. They're very, very fun. Almost too much fun at times. This man right here though, if you watched our van build, is the man, the myth, the legend, my dad. And he's rocking a Kona shirt today, a shirt with our dog Kona on it. So that's pretty awesome and very fitting. It wouldn't be a day in Hawaii without, you know, some shave ice. So we're at a place called Scandi's or Scandinavian Shave Ice and look at this monstrosity. Oh my gosh, it looks... It's tasty. So good. It's starting to melt because we've been letting it sit for a while and taking some photos so it's starting to melt. Then they gave us a straw, but oh my gosh there's this... They wrote aloha on the top and this coconut cream and then we obviously got the snow cap. That's our favorite. Oh yeah. We both got ice cream in it. What they did is they put some ice and then they put ice cream in. More ice. The ice cream's kind of in the middle instead of at the bottom like I think most places do. Never seen it that way. They mostly put it on the bottom. Yeah. This reminds me of our Italy Gelato experience. Everything's melting and smelling. But I think I got pineapple, passion fruit, and strawberry. I think that's what I got. And I got my go-to which is basically pina colada. So coconut and pineapple and I also get strawberry. So it's kind of like a lava flow which is one of my favorite drinks to get in Hawaii. The shave ice is like the actual ice's quality. It's nice and soft. It's so soft and I don't know if you can see in here, but I found ice cream. Get in there. I got macadamia nut ice cream. They had a lot of choices for ice cream. Some places just have one or two but a whole case. Yeah they had a bunch. I got the Kona Joy. It's like one of their specialty ones. It's vanilla ice cream with macadamia nut. I think some chocolate and another nut I think. I don't know. I haven't gotten to it. Oh coconut. I haven't gotten to it yet though. This is so good. Oh I love this. Quality. Top notch. So our big attraction of the day. Something that I've been most excited for on this trip is we are going night snorkeling with manta rays. We had so many people recommend that we do this and just from the photos and videos I've seen, it looks absolutely incredible. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait. So there are over 240 manta rays that call the Kona coast home and they've all been identified and named. So similar to how us as humans, we have fingerprints that identify us. They have these black and white markings underneath them that allow us to know which manta ray is which when we're out there. And they can grow up to 16 feet wide and 1,600 pounds. That's huge. They say it's the safest large animal encounter you can have because they don't have any stingers or anything that can actually harm you. That's good. We are doing our night snorkeling with manta ray dives of Hawaii and we rented a sick GoPro to get some underwater shots. Oh yeah. So we have a 30 minute ride out to a little cove called Garden Eel Cove and we got the sunset and we're... It's raining a bit. Going through a little rain. The water looks a bit rough and choppy. Should be really interesting. Never felt so cute. So we learned that the reason that you snorkel at night to see the manta rays is because they feed off of plankton. Is that right? They feed off of plankton and they're attracted to light. So you put lights in the water and now the plankton come up and then the manta rays are hungry and they come and eat them. We just got back to our Airbnb from our night snorkel with manta rays and oh my gosh that was the one of the most incredible things I have ever done in my life. I would call it manta crazy. It was awesome. Yeah there are no words. I'm gonna try my hardest. You'll have already seen all of our manta ray snorkeling clips but that was probably me trying my hardest to not throw in 20 minutes just of manta rays. It was just magical. Yeah they like they were telling us when we were on our way out there that they're going to get close to you and all this and you got to be careful not to touch them and they weren't joking. Like they'll like zoom up across your face like inches in front of your face. Their mouth open. With their mouth open. And you're like I thought I was gonna swallow the gopro sometimes. It touched you. Yeah one touched me like I was like you have you're hanging on to like a surfboard kind of deal with rails on it and so your arms are outstretched and one like grazed my my rib. It was crazy. Yeah none of them touched me but I thought they would but we will say so we wanted to film our reaction right after we finished like right on the boat but all of us felt kind of sick. I would say 75 percent of the boat felt sick. The water was extremely rough. Real choppy and rough. I've never one I've never been in the ocean at night so it was a little freaky but I've never been in water that rough before and it made us all feel just a tad nauseous. Yeah bring some medicine take some medicine even if you don't think it'll be bad it was just it did kind of make the experience a little rough towards the end but it was totally worth it. Oh it was a ton of fun like I don't know it I'm like speechless. Yeah everyone said this is a must-do thing and I agree. Yeah for sure. Absolutely incredible. I can't hear out of my ear right now but I don't even care because that was just no words. Yeah like the last the last like at one point we saw like six at one time and like I think he said the water was like 25 feet deep and you can see all the way to the bottom and so they're like swimming around the bottom and like the last round before we went back one was like swimming like loop-de-loop like in front of me. I don't know he was getting like so close it was. Yeah. Cool. So Manta Ray Dives of Hawaii they are awesome. The crew was incredible. They were so nice and funny. Met another van lifer who works on the boat so that was really yeah that was that was really neat so awesome. Sorry we're rambling we like we can't even process how cool of an experience that was so definitely do that. Can't recommend it enough yeah. We're gonna try to have an appetite now after feeling sick and make some dinner and go to bed because tomorrow we have a fun day of adventures and hopefully a special guest joining us. Also the people working there. Super nice. There's a fly on our camera right now. Get away.