Tour Guide for a day

Right now we have visitors from Canada, and yesterday I was lucky enough to take the day off work to play tour guide around the island for their first full day in Okinawa. Luckily, we had the most perfect weather!

The first plan for the day was to go snorkelling at Cape Maeda, but for some reason (I have no idea why - maybe a bad rip or something) it was closed. Not letting that deter us, we headed down to Maeda Beach to try snorkelling there. I think everyone else who had wanted to snorkel at the Cape was also there, but we didn't care. The water was super clear, and the snorkelling was actually great. We saw heaps of amazing fish, then came back up to the beach to rest. Over to the right side of the beach was a little rocky alcove that was empty of people (amazing, considering the rest of the water was teeming with snorkelling groups), so we perched ourselves in the little secluded slice of paradise.
I think this is my new favourite beach spot.

Even though Maeda Beach was crowded, we found this little private slice of paradise.

These little fish had a nibble on my feet!

After lots of morning beach time, we headed to Cafe Doka Doka (mostly to show my visitors the amazing view) and had taco rice and mango juice for lunch.

Taco Rice lunch at Doka Doka

After lunch we headed for our second beach of the day, Sun Marina. By this stage the sun was super hot, and I was really paranoid about getting burnt, so we didn't stay in the water too long, and I kept a towel wrapped around my shoulders while we walked over the sea wall and bridges. Alas, I still ended up with the worst sunburn I think i've had in about 20 years!

Sun Marina Beach

Finally, we ended the day at Onna no Eki for the tropical shaved ice dessert I had in my last post.
It was basically my idea of the perfect Okinawa day, and i'm so glad that I got to share it with some first-time visitors.

That's right. That's around $50 for two big mangoes!