First Day at the Beach

So, I arrived in Hawaii last Tuesday, Jan 12. It was a good trip, and I felt like I had arrived home when I got off the plane.

During the next few days I visited with some friends, ran some errands and just slowed down and enjoyed the warm weather.

Today was my first shift watching the turtles. For anyone new to my blog, I'm a Honu (turtle) Guardian. On the north shore there's a beach that the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles love to use for basking.

An entire group of people volunteer to keep watch over the turtles. Yeah, it's kind of like babysitting--only without whining, changing diapers or nap time. We stand on the beach making sure people don't sit on, move, feed, or, in any other way, harass the turtles.

The first time I visited this beach two years ago, my first response was, "well, I can see it's a tough job that someone has to do, so sign me up!" To be fair, I suppose it IS pretty uncomfortable in the middle of the summer, standing in the sun all afternoon, trying to keep one eyeball on the crowd while keeping the other on the tourist next to you asking questions, and all the while trying not to become dehydrated and fried by the extremely direct & hot summer sun.

However, in the winter, it's near perfect.

I always choose the sunset shift. Lovely.

The first two images are practically the same scene but I took my light reading off a different part of the subject.

This is the one and only turtle that graced the beach today, providing the tourists with their "turtle" fix.

And this is one group of tourists. I have as much fun watching them as the turtles.