Beach Hopping

After a late lunch, Bryan and I hopped into the Maui Cruiser and headed north to the sweet and small beach at Napili Bay.

Having a car has opened so many doors for me!  This was my first visit to Napili Bay, which is such a shame considering that it is close to home and such a great place to hang out!  Even though it wasn't as sunny as I had hoped and it was a little gustier than I had predicted, Napili Bay was a great hangout spot for the afternoon.

After we parked the car across the street from the beach access, we marched across the sand and parked our towels in front of this sign:

Next time I come here I'll have to give people a call and see if I show up on their computer screens!

The water was a little murky and choppy right where we set up, but Bryan and I charged in and enjoyed the water.  After swimming out a few yards we came across a young sea turtle.

After watching him swim past, there wasn't much more to see at our spot.  Bryan and I got out of the water.  Bryan decided to lay out and read, and I decided to walk to the northern side of the bay and get in by the cliff's edge to see if the snorkeling was any better.

The water was far calmer and clearer on the north side of the bay, and I swam with the fish for a little while.  As I swam over the reef along the rock wall, I noticed that there were two local guys sitting up out of the water in a small "bowl" in the lava rock.

It looked like maybe they were fishing.

I swam over to them, popped my head out of the water like an otter and asked them what they were up to.

The two guys, Chris and V, showed me their haul of black sea urchins they had collected from the bay.  Both men wore heavy duty gloves as they handled the urchins.  Chris used a knife to cut the hard bodies in two pieces while V scooped out their vivid orange insides and dumped the gelatinous remains into a tupperware.

As they were working, V offered me a bite after he found out that I had never tried sea urchin before.  "You've lived here for 2 years and you haven't tried all the seafood yet?" he asked me in mock horror.

I was in the middle of politely declining a sample when a woman walking along the condo path above the two fishermen gave a ringing endorsement.  She told me that sea urchin is delicious.  "You're not going to be able to try anything more fresh than what they have right there!"

She was absolutely right.  There was no way that I got pass up the opportunity.  I just hoped that my first sea urchin tasting wouldn't be followed by me tossing my cookies into the water around me.

I swam closer to the where the guys were working, found a good rock to stand on and watched as V scooped out the orange insides of a freshly opened sea urchin with a spoon.  "I'm going to scoop you up a nice big bite," he said.

Once it was ready, he passed me the spoonful of urchin.  The urchin insides were a day-glo orange, and they pooled in the center of the spoon like a melted pudding.

I decided not to think about it any more and just eat the damn thing.

So I put the spoon in my mouth and let the urchin slide over my tongue--I don't remember if I even chewed at all--and down my throat. 

It was slimy.

And tasteless...

...at first.

Then it tasted a little like mild cantaloupe.

I found a video on youtube that shows what Chris and V were doing (note--the sound is awful: don't bother cranking up the volume but you can see how Chris was cutting the urchins apart):

I chatted with Chris and V a little more after thanking them for the urchin sample.  "What do you think?" V asked me.  "You going to try some more?" 

Maybe some other time, I told him.  

I said goodbye and swam back over the reef to the shore and walked back on the beach to Bryan.

I was telling him about my sea urchin adventure when the already gloomy sky darkened above us as a large menacing cloud edged our way.

We decided to pack up our stuff and move on before it rain.  We had just begun walking down the beach towards the parking lot when it began to pour.

Holding our beach towels over our heads, we made it back to the car, hopped in and started heading south towards Lahaina.

And then we decided we weren't quite done beaching it, so we out drove the storm cloud and pulled in at Ka'anapali and laid out at Black Rock before finishing up with a cocktail at the Tiki Bar.

Not a bad way to spend the afternoon!

Minus that sea urchin.  I still don't know how I feel about that.

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