After accepting the fact that the weather during our two weeks here is going to be exceptionally bad, I decided to bake in an element of flexibility into my plan. That is if the weather happens to be good for any reason, drop everything and get to the beach.

On 3/8, that's what I did. The day started out very windy, but by 9:00 a.m., I noticed that there was less rain than normal and a little bit of the sun had come out.

Low tide was going to be 11:30 a.m. so I immediately gulped down some food invite over to Cape Maeda. I actually come here the day before to scout out the place. This viewpoint is known for the blue cave, which is a very deep and blue cave that people can snorkel to when the weather is good. But this point was closed off for every single day we were here because the waves were so strong. However, I still noticed troughs of people gearing up in wetsuits and heading to the beach to dive and snorkel. I spoke to the dive shop and they confirmed me that the beach area is ripe for snorkeling as long as you stay within the area where the waves break (white line).

I geared up, brought a change of clothes, stuffed everything into my girlfriend's Victoria's secret bag, and biked over.

Snorkeling was a lot of fun. I saw a lot of sea creatures and a ton of reefs. The fish was very colorful and ranged in size from babies to 10 inches long (at least). Everything was amazing until I saw a long slender creature with the infamous black and white stripes swimming around the reef ahead. Although I was not an expert, I was highly certain that it was a habu snake. These creatures are native to Okinawa and they're highly poisonous. I learned about them the first day I arrived and have been looking out for them since. My girlfriend had warned me about them when she went scuba diving a few days ago but I was still taken by surprise. While my curiosity told me to go closer to admire the creature in its fullness, my flight flight responds kicked in and I ran the other way.