We spent the last few days walking around the area where they start and end the Iron Man Triathlon.  The race was to start a few days after we left, but the town was full of racers getting acclimated to the conditions in Hawaii.

The following three pictures show where the swimmers start and finish.

It is an ideal location weather-wise, but is a terrible location traffic wise.  The local roads were full of racers trying to keep in shape, and they had to share the narrow roads with all the locals plus all the tourists.  I’m sorry to say that we saw one accident where a local utility truck clipped a racer.  The racer was in the front, or passing, a group of 5 or so other racers and when the truck clipped him he was tossed down in front of the pack and they all went down.  We had to move our car since we had the one open lane blocked so we didn’t stay until the ambulance got there but we learned later that the guy who was the most injured was staying in our condo complex.  They told us that as many as 20 are injured each year in similar incidents before the race even starts.

The race not only attracts racers from all over the world … it attracts many colorful individuals.

Other than watching the interesting events around us, we mostly enjoyed the weather and took life easy and continued to enjoy the colorful sky each and every day.

The following picture was taken as we were waiting to board our flight back to the mainland.  For those of you who might be planning such a trip … some words of warning.  Most of the resorts, etc. have check-out times in the morning and most of the flights to the mainland don’t leave until in the evening.  Plan your day’s activities for the period in between.  Don’t bother to go to the airport early.  There is nothing there (it’s a small airport) and doesn’t even open until evening.

Mahalo … Please visit the islands.  The few pictures in this last series of posts don’t do it justice.