Love Shack

Rob and I had a rare opportunity to have a weekend escape. We went to Okuma up on the northern part of the island at an Air Force resort. First off, we hiked Hiji Falls. We can't actually get in the water because there is some crazy flesh eating fungus in the water, but it was certainly pretty. It's about a 40 minute easy hike in the jungle. We were on the lookout for some dreaded habu snakes, but we couldn't find any (they scare you half to death about all the habu's when you first get here and we have yet to see one outside a cage). Here we are crossing the sweet suspension bridge on the way up.

Little waterfall on the way up.

Hiji Falls


There were lots of sweet spiders on the way.

The thick jungle looking down from the suspension bridge.

We reserved a regular suite, but heard about a "love shack" that they have up at Okuma. When we inquired about it they said it was actually available (unheard of on a Friday during the summer) so we quickly snatched it up. Basically it's a secluded cabin on our own private beach with a golf cart to get around the resort. It was really fun to snorkel on our private beach and just enjoy the seclusion.

Our beach.

The golf cart next to the cabin.

Rob eating breakfast.

We actually went scuba diving and had a positive experience. I've been pretty wigged out about diving lately since I have had some bad experiences, but I really want to dive with whale sharks so I thought I'd give it a go again. I'm glad I had a good time because who wouldn't want to dive with the largest sharks in the ocean? Hopefully we can schedule it soon before I lose my nerve.

We spotted this giant spider by our cabin. It's about as big as Rob's hand span (which if anyone knows Rob knows he has pretty long fingers). If you click to enlarge it you can see another spider caught in this huge spiders' web. It just gives you an idea about how large this fellow was. I'm glad I'm not scared of spiders.

Rob has explored the northern part of the island on his bike quite a bit and was excited to show off some of the beauty. This is a lookout point near Hedo.

Check out that water! You can see the coral reef and then the drop off where the water gets really blue.

Rob at Hedo Point, the northern most part of Okinawa.

There were signs about these birds EVERYWHERE. I have no idea what kind of bird they are or why there was a sign cautioning us not to hit them with our car every 500 meters, but I figured he deserved some of my attention if the Japanese thought he was that important.

We also found a sweet beach that we snorkeled on. We had to walk WAY out, but headed toward some fishermen because we figured there would be fish by them (go figure). It did not disappoint. There was a sharp dropoff to about 80 feet. The water was soooooo blue and kinda creepy to snorkel in water that deep (we are used to doing it off the beach where there is a gradual increase in depth, but this was sudden from 2 feet to 80 feet like a cliff). The fish were very colorful and plentiful.

We had a fabulous time. Thank you Petrini's and Stinchfields for watching the monkeys while we played. We are going to get lucky because in September we're going to China kid-less too. Rob's sister Amy is coming out with her sweet baby Trent to watch the kids while we go play AGAIN. Wow, we are lucky.