Hawaii, phase 2

Besides the front of our hotel, our favorite snorkel spot on Maui is Honolua Bay. You park and then walk this short little hike to a rocky beach with a marine preserve (which means people can't take anything out) Of course, more turtles - at one point, there were 4 in just one area. The cool part about seeing more than one around is they kind of have their own personalities - so one will just try to hide, the other will come towards you to kind of check you out, then another is swimming by but at a distance. It is also deeper here than out in front of the hotel, so you can dive down a little deeper and there are some really big fish! There were some giant tuna, barracuda, along with my favorite tropical fish - the yellow tang. Its just a fun place to snorkel because there are a lot of little underwater canyons you can follow and dive down around to find things. There were also some different kinds of coral, some larger brain corals, and some cool pinkish sponge corals.

Of course, we had to get back to the resort so the kids could do some more of this:

Robie, Brooke, Ashley and I went back to Honolua Bay another day for more snorkeling while Toby, Marianne, Jani, Lauren and Fox stayed at the hotel. Fox even sweet-talked grandpa into taking him back on the Sugar Cane Train! He loved that thing :)

The highlight of our trip (for me, anyway), though, was when we went over to snorkel Black Rock. This is a famous snorkeling spot, aptly named due to the giant black rock that forms the wall. You can see the rock itself jutting out way down there in this shot from our hotel room. The snorkeling is actually on the other side of the rock from our hotel, but it is only about 1/2 mile and a pretty walk down the beach to check it out. Snorkeling here is more of a "wall snorkel" meaning that you aren't floating over the top of the coral as much as you are floating on the side and watching the wall as you move around it. That works well, except for it was super busy, so it is hard to see much until you get out all the way around the first point. We moved around the first edge, and had to really fight the current to get to the second point. After a while, Robie took off to chase a turtle and I kind of just stopped, and floated with the current for a minute. Next thing you know, I'm just floating over the sand, probably 20 feet out from the wall. We had been hearing dolphin sounds (just like you hear on tv), but we had heard them at Honolua Bay, so I didn't think anything of it. All of a sudden, I see a dolphin come swimming right underneath me and realize it is actually a pod of like 15 of them. I can not express how freaked out/excited I was about this! After I saw the first one, I had pretty much ripped Ashley's arm off while yelling, "dolphin" through my snorkel at her.

I think I scared her to death - they are pretty big after all! Anyway, I was worried Robie hadn't seen them so I put my head up and we are looking for him, and he and Brooke yell out that the dolphins had gone right past them and one other lady. We just hung out in the same spot for like 2 more minutes and another pod comes swimming by. Barely over the excitement of that, we see another pod come by, this time with 3 or 4 little baby dolphins with them. Just when we thought it couldn't be any better - baby dolphins, come on! They swam by slowly, then surfaced right in front of us, then swim back down and swim on. Deifnitely one of the coolest things I've ever seen! Ashley was cracking me up when she said, "Mom, I've technically been swimming with dolphins." (I think she was meaning because we didn't pay a ton of money and get to stand there holding its fins and what not). Not technically, Ashley, just actually swimming with dolphins. Not even two more minutes and from the other direction come a mom and baby spotted eagle ray pair. so cool! We were pretty stoked about the whole experience. Robie went back the next day with his parents (they were on babysitting duty the first time) and although no dolphins, they saw a huge pod of the eagle rays that hung out swimming around them for a while. So I guess we like Black Rock for snorkeling now too!

This was the 4 dolphin watchers on our walk back from Black Rock - it's about 1/2 mile nice walk on the Kaanapali Beach Walk path.

We were enjoying the snorkeling so much that after a couple of days, we signed the girls up (thanks to some of Robie's connections from work) for the resort dive course. This means they did about an hour of instruction, an hour in the pool, and then a regular dive on the reef right out front. They were ridiculously excited about trying diving and it didn't disappoint. The only down side of diving is the realization that you can't immediately go again (for both cost and safety reasons).

 

Just a few more pics left...