Charles Palliser. I don't remember when or why I picked it up, but I've had it for years. I do remember SPM saying that his Quincunx is one of the best things he's ever read. I liked this just fine. I felt as enmeshed in an English cathedral town in the late Victorian period as I did in New York of the Belle Epoch in Winter's Tale, and I might have even shivered in the smothering fog if I had not been, you know, on a beach in the tropics.
Another full day on the beach, again with cabanas. The SPF 50 I'd acquired specifically for the boat had performed admirably and I especially wanted not to sit in a plane for nine hours with burned skin, and woohoo, I didn't. Coolboss said that, frankly, she was surprised, and Scarf said I had made the jump to full-fledged adulthood. More swimming. More reading. More swimming. More sunning. More swimming.
We pulled ourselves from the water with just enough time to shower and dress and eat before our evening flight. And that was that.
Perfect water, lovely snorkeling, challenging endurance swimming (I always breathed to landward, whole lengths of beach to one side or the other), great weather (despite the clouds obscuring the view down into Kalalau Velley), the ocean everywhere you looked, three books, waterfalls in lots of places you looked, tours by helicopter and catamaran, two good hikes, swimming every day, salt water and fresh, sleeping with the balcony door open to the sound of crashing surf, no sunburns, no flight delays, and lots of water. A good time.