The beach was not busy at all. As we climbed out of the trike, we were approached by a man selling trinkets and such; he was wearing a BYU t-shirt. Chris asked him where he got his shirt and the guy said he had just bought it.
The beach was a different texture than the sand beaches on the island. It was made of finely polished pieces of shell mixed in with sand. Most shells that we found were broken or fairly small. Chris and the girls were able to find some intact shells using their goggles and snorkel gear to search below the water's surface.
Our arrival at the beach was a little later than planned, so it didn't take long for us to begin to feel hungry. We checked out a few places and decided upon Tesebel's iHaw iHaw. She had a faucet outside the entrance that allowed us to wash the sand from our shoes and feet. Chris ordered a grilled snapper, some grilled chicken, and rice. Always rice. The girls were suitably freaked out when the snapper was served--whole--teeth, eyeballs, and all. We were also served calamansi, which is small lime-type fruit with a surprising amount of seeds, and the tiniest red peppers I had ever seen. Tiny equaled HOT. Chris demonstrated the proper way to use the peppers by adding vinegar and then squishing the peppers to release their flavor. The girls ate the fish, though they weren't big fans of it, especially the bones. Fortunately there was always rice.
We began to look for souvenirs for the girls. Kristen found a cute sundress at Puka Beach, but we hired a trike to take us to D'Talipapa, a shopping area in Station 3 that was less touristy and less expensive. We search the area twice over looking for a specific sun dress for Amy. She had to settle on a different color because she couldn't find exactly what she wanted, and we were all getting tired of following her around. Misha picked a t-shirt, and I found a hanging lantern. Chris picked out a new coin purse.
After leaving the market, we noticed the sun was setting and headed to the beach to watch. We only had our underwater camera, so the pictures weren't stellar. At one point, I was trying to take a picture of Chris with the sunset in the background when all of sudden these Japanese tourists swarmed around him and wanted to have pictures taken with him. I kept waiting for them to move out of the picture until I realized they wanted pics of the tall American.
We stopped at McDo's for dinner. We weren't terribly hungry, but we didn't want to walk back down from the hotel again. It was dark on our return trip. Hiring a trike wasn't an option since they struggled to carry us all up the hill to the hotel anyway. I found a small flashlight in Amy's backpack; we started off toward the algae-covered beach but soon realized that the tide was in and really, no one wanted to walk through the algae in the dark.
The girls and Chris swam while I showered. By this point, the girls were fairly tired and crabby. So much family togetherness was wearing thin. It didn't take long for us to fall asleep after climbing in to bed.