Because we were staying so close to the Hilton and we'd heard of it's impressiveness, we decided to walk over and take a look around. It really is about a five minute walk from where we were staying.

And it's not like it's an all-inclusive place where you need wrist bands to walk around, so you can really just walk right in if you like. Everything is BIG. Huge. There's even a train that runs from one side of the complex to the other. A train. In a resort. Of course, we had to ride the train, just to say we did, so we rode it from the main entrance all the way to the far side of the resort.

The whole place stinks of money, all the way from the nice rooms to the art-lined open hallways. In the middle of a few of the circular buildings, there are gardens, but not just any gardens, no. Little ponds with islands in the middle, and on the islands are tropical birds.

Walking down through some of their gardens to the lagoon was pretty cool. There are a lot of paths to walk along and there are numerous bridges to get across the lagoon. It's obvious there are fish in the lagoon area because there were a bunch of snorkelers. But there were also paddleboarders, swimmers and boaters. We even saw a couple turtles swimming around and enjoying themselves. Over on the far side of the lagoon they even had a man-made cave type of thing that had a waterfall you could walk behind.

And then if you continued over, they had a dolphin pool with several dolphins you could go and swim with. Wow. There was one dolphin that even had sunscreen on his forehead because he apparently liked to stick his head out of the water so often he got sunburn. We kept walking from there, stopping to take a look out at the ocean where, once again, there were whales jumping around and splashing. Must be the perfect time to go whale watching.

The rest of the pools around the resort were beautiful and big as well with more waterfalls. They even had little enclosures that houses a few animals and birds, like a tiny zoo. Plus all the artwork and sculptures there were around every corner. Pretty impressive, I have to say. You almost wouldn't have to leave the resort. But I don't know if I'd enjoy that too much.

After walking back along the water to the condo, Zach decided that he wanted to go back to the body surfing beach (Hapuna) again to try since it had been one of his favourite activities. It was just my Mum, me and him that decided to go out to the beach. (Both Sue and my Dad had a outing up to the observatory planned) So, we packed up and headed out. At least it was a really sunny day this time. When we got there, they life guards were out patrolling with their boards. From what one of them told us, three people had already needed to be rescued because the undertow was extremely strong today.

We were told that it was probably best not to go too far above waist-deep water. That didn't concern Zach at all, though, and he was really excited because the waves seemed to be MUCH bigger than they were last time. The size of those waves really did make a difference. The pull towards them was so much stronger, but their size and lasting-power were far better than the first time. Which meant that we could go really far on one wave. All the way from way out right onto shore like you were beaching yourself. We all had such a blast. It was probably good that the waves were more tame the first time we went out because it might have been hard to learn how to body board with such big waves. Totally worth it though.