Hawaii Day 6 - Whales!! and exploring around Kona

After a heavy meal of roasted pig and poi (ew!) we got lots of sleep to get ready for our last super-early morning adventure: humpback whale watching. I found a charter in the guidebook that was supposed to be great, claiming that "National Geographic photographers go with Captain Dan McSweeny....so shouldn't you?" Unable to argue with the foolproof logic, we shelled out the steep ticket cost and boarded Captain Dan's boat.

Taylor was skeptical about going whale watching again, as we have gone in San Diego (to see the California grey whales) the last two years, and I'm always a bit disappointed. They grey whales are always "traveling," so they are swimming and breathing, and that's it. To me, they seem like they are in a hurry, and its not exciting to watch. I was hoping the humpbacks would be different, since the last time I saw them (off the coast of Boston) they were feeding and playing and being super entertaining!

The humpbacks come to the Hawaiian waters to breed and have their babies in the safe, warm, relatively shallow waters. All week we had been spotting quick glimpses of them (at least 10 whales from the car! and we saw 2 pairs briefly while on our way to dive sites), but I was really anxious to find them while in a boat and get close! Captain Dan aimed us north, and we hugged the coast in search of whales.

After about an hour of no whales (or dolphins...or marine mammals of any kind...) he began announcing that we were approaching the "hot zone" for whales, a shallow shelf in the ocean where the mom's like to bring the baby whales. We were watching for a long time and didn't see anything....until I saw what I thought was a spout. It was between the boat and the shore, and I pointed and asked Taylor to watch the spot with me. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a wave breaking on the rocks or something before I yelled to the Captain. Sure enough, I saw it again, so I yelled to the Captain.

Taylor was SUPER skeptical, and thought I was just seeing the breakers, but I was pretty sure it looked like a spout and then a tail - but I'm pretty blind these days and it was REALLY far away, so I was a little hesitant. The Captain navigated us to where I thought I saw the whale, and I turned on my camera, and we all sat and waited....and waited...and waited.....

All of a sudden, directly in front of, at 12 o'clock of the bow of the boat, a huge humpback whale LEPT OUT OF THE WATER AND BREACHED!!!! He got ALL THE WAY OUT of the water, from head to tail, and came crashing down with a GIGANTIC splash!!! He was only a couple hundred yards in front of the boat, and it was one of the MOST AWESOME things I have ever, ever seen. I was freaking giddy! I was punching Taylor, and jumping around in circles yelling "I told you so!" - but the absolute best part was that I actually got a picture of it! In focus, lens cap
off, high shutter speed, and everything!!! So lucky!!!!
We watched the whale surface, breathe, and dive a few times, when another whale surfaced behind the boat. They both disappeared under water for a while (10 minutes feels like forever when you are on a boat full of tourists whole are totally silent and you are staring at perfectly still ocean) so I asked the Captain to break out the underwater microphones I had seen advertised. Sure enough, one whale was SINGING! If you have never heard a humpback sing, its pretty neat. It gave me goosebumps to stand there on the boat and hear this whale singing to his buddies right underneath us! I even got a video of it :)

I was completely ecstatic and totally captivated by the whale songs, but Captain Dan decided to head back towards home "to see what else we could find." We never saw another whale, but we did run into a pod of spinner dolphins at the mouth of the harbor. Dan seemed hurried, and navigated the boat past them almost without stopping, so I tried to get a few pictures of them. The spinner dolphins are so much fun because they jump clear out of the water and do flips and spins, just for the fun of it!

I was annoyed that he didn't linger and let us watch the dolphins, but on the way into the boat slip we saw 2 giant sea turtles in the water, too :) We got off the boat, got into the car, and I drove to the point of land just outside the marina that overlooked the mouth of the harbor - you could see the dolphins from there!! I snapped what felt like 1,000 pictures of them playing and flipping and chasing fish before I thought Taylor would die of boredom in the car. But they were so cool!

We went back to the condo, had some leftover pizza from the day before, and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of our day.....we thought we were going to want to relax and take a nap after all the early mornings, but for some reason we decided to go explore. We found out that Hawaii's only chocolate farm was just across the highway from the resort, so after our quick lunch we headed out to find it! What's more motivating than a tour of a candy factory?!

We got a little turned around and had some difficulty finding the place, and ended up calling to figure out exactly where it was....we were in what seemed like a residential area. Sure enough, the very small factory was close, but it was only open on Wednesday and Friday mornings for tours, so we scheduled our tour for the very next morning. Left with no plan, we decided just to go on a scenic beach drive around the resort. We had barely explored the area around the condo since we arrived, and this was our last night in the place!
We drove down to the beach and strolled along a black sand cove - looking out into the water I immediately spotted 4 big sea turtles! They were lazily floating in the clear, shallow water and eating the algae of the rocks. They are so wise and old looking - and when they come up for air they definitely look you straight in the eye. I took a ton of pictures before Taylor finally dragged me away. I think he knew I wanted to go swim with them and probably didn't want to have to bail me out of a Federal prison for harassing endangered species ;)

We walked through a few beach parks and took in the scenery. It was a hot, beautiful day, and our last full day on the Kona (west) side of the island. We went back to the condo, packed up our things, and made a big dinner for our last night in the condo. We ate on the balcony and drank the wine we had picked up from the Volcano Winery! It was great with the teriyaki chicken Taylor grilled for us.

It was bittersweet to think about leaving the condo - I was excited to go to the other side of the island and explore, but it meant we were nearing the end of the trip :( But we had a great dinner, and a great day of fantastic whale watching, and dolphin and turtle encounters, and a relaxing afternoon. We got all our things together and went to sleep - and it definitely put a smile on my face knowing the only thing I had to get up for was chocolate tasting!

See all the pictures here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/5057?startIndex=100

Hawaii Day 5 – Diving and the lua’u!

Well, we survived the first epic day of diving…only to have to get up at 6am again for another day of it! We were definitely dragging a little, but the weather was so perfect and the water was so warm, that we had to go back for more. We got all our gear, wet back to the marina, and went back out on 2 more dives. They were nice, shallow, reef dives, and we had a good time. In retrospect 4 dives was probably enough, but it was cool to be out on the water and see a few more sites along the west coast of the island.

After the dives, we finally parted ways with our new dive buddies and went back to the condo for a brief relaxation session before our big evening: Luau time! We booked what the guidebook called the “best” and most authentic luau on the island (not to mention pricey…jeeze!). We had to drive about 40 minutes north, to an isolated resort on the water. It was a beautiful place, with tropical gardens surrounding a small, shallow body of water. On one side of the little pond/lake (about 30 feet across) was a stage, and on the other were tables lined up for dinner.

We were seated at a looong table with other families and given our complimentary mai tais. After a brief introduction to Hawaiian culture, a demonstration on how to make poi, and a few performances from ukulele bearing musicians, we were invited to visit the underground oven where they had our dinner roasting! We got to watch as the removed the layers of banana leaves and stones, and a full roasted pig emerges from the steaming, sandy pit! It looked and smelled delicious, and we were both anxious to get a plate!

The buffet was amazing: there were tropical fruits, TONS of fresh fish (sushi, poke, ceviche, loma loma, salmon, etc) island veggies, poi , salads, crab legs, and the roasted pig (and even some roasted turkey!). Between the two of us we tried to get some of everything, and we headed back to our table to try all the amazing looking food. Everything was great….except the poi. I really hoped to be cultured and culinarily adventurous, but that purple goo is NOT good.

After dinner and dessert we were treated to hula dancers, fire jugglers, and singers. It was a great show, a beautiful night, and a super tasty dinner. When the show was over, we put the top down in the car, enjoyed the warm, clear drive home, and went straight to bed! Had to rest up for our last early morning: whale watching!!

See all the pictures here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/

See the luau video here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/5055

Hawaii Day 4 – Diving, diving and more diving!

After my brief visit to the tropical waters of the Caribbean this Christmas, I knew I had to show Taylor how awesome it is to Scuba dive in water that’s warmer than San Diego! When we decided to make the trip to Hawaii, I instantly began looking for a good dive shop. After looking around at the millions of options, I chose a company called Dive Makai – they had good schedules, small boats, and free rental gear if you dove with them for 2 days in a row!

We wanted to do some daytime diving, and the guidebooks all said we HAD to do a night dive with the giant manta rays (that it was the most amazing thing, and you couldn’t miss it, etc, etc). I decided to throw in one more trip for fun, so overall we booked 6 dives: two on Tuesday morning, one evening dive, one night Manta ray dive, and two dives on Wednesday morning….. I may have been a little too excited and overly ambitious, but that was the plan!

We woke up bright and early again (this is not normally our specialty, but apparently on vacation I’m cool with getting up for fun stuff ;) and headed to the harbor. We found our boat, and set off with our captain, our dive guide and 5 other divers. The Hawaiian waters were actually under a small craft advisory, so there was more wind and swell than usual, so our captain took us to a sheltered dive site. We got our briefing, squeezed into our wetsuits (even thought the water was 75-80 degrees!) and jumped off of the back of the little dive boat.

We had a great couple of dives, and saw a lot of cool fish. The reefs in Hawaii aren’t that impressive on their own, and there aren’t a lot of colored corals or crazy anemones, but the fish were neat! And we saw eels, sea urchins, lots of butterfly fish, and cool underwater rock formations like lava arches. It was so relaxing to dive in clear, warm water, and we were both so amazed to be able to see the boat from 60-80 feet underwater. It’s so much fun to just float around under there! It’s like slowly swimming through a giant aquarium :)

We dove for 40 minutes, took an hour break and went to another spot, then dove again. Since we finished our morning session just before lunch we headed over to the Kona Brewing Company to refuel before our evening and night dives started at 3:30pm. We did a mini-beer tasting, had some yummy food, relaxed for a bit, then headed back to the harbor for round 2! We all climbed back into the boat and headed to the spot where the manta rays were supposed to appear later. The premise of this dive was to dive at the site during the daytime (so you know what’s in store), then wait for the sun to set, and dive again after dark when all the cool stuff comes out!

On the way to the dive site we saw 2 humpback whales and a HUGE pod of spinner dolphins. The whales we barely saw as the swam by, came up for air, and kept swimming…but the dolphins were playing all around us :) They were jumping out of the water, doing flips, and spinning in mid air, it was so awesome! I was so excited to get into the water while they were hanging around. By the time I finally “gracefully” wiggled into my wetsuit, they had all swam a good distance away, but I was hoping that once they knew we were underwater they would come check us out.

I went straight down and stayed close to the guide, hoping he would help us find cool stuff. He pointed out the garden eel, which buried themselves in the sand and retreat when they see you swimming closer. He found a huge eel which another dive scared away, so we got to see the eel swim in open water, which they never do because they are always hiding in some crevice in the dark. Finally, I heard a loud metallic tapping noise – it was our dive guide tapping a metal tool on his air tank, and he was pointing into the open water past the deep drop off: THERE WERE DOLPHINS CHECKING US OUT! I swam as fast as my little fins would go straight out into the open water – probably not the best idea- but I was so mesmerized! I saw a few mommies and babies slowly and elegantly glide past us in the water. They made it seem so effortless and there was no way that I was ever going to be able to get to them or have any chance of keeping up with the, so out of breath I floated and watched them until they disappeared back into the blue.

I could hear their squeaks and underwater whistles, and for the rest of the dive I kept looking around half-expecting them to come play. They stayed just out of sight, but it was such a great experience to even see them underwater that I was super happy. Just as we were turning back towards the boat to get out of the water, a GIANT manta ray swam over our heads. This guy must have been at least 14 feet across. He was gliding like a bird, and he never even flapped his fins or moved a muscle, he just floated over our heads and disappeared.

Once we got out of the water we were told that it was a really good sign that we already saw a giant manta ray, and that there would be plenty more after the sun went down. I was bouncing off the walls after seeing the dolphin, and was super excited to see what the night dive was going to be like. They explained that there would probably be 5 or 6 other dive boats in the exact same spot, so to stay close to the guides. We were supposed to sink to the bottom, and swim to an underwater “firepit,” which was made out of a circle of rocks arranged on the ocean floor. In the middle of the firepit would be a crate of flashlights pointing up. The lights attract the plankton, and the plankton attracts more mantas. We were also told not to touch/harass/ride/grab/assault/or bother the mantas in any way. Just sink, kneel, and point your light up! I can do this!

We watched the sun go down, and hung out for a little while as 5 more boats pulled alongside us.When it was dark enough we got BACK into our wetsuits, made sure all the lights were working, and headed towards the back of the boat to jump in. It was a pretty cool sight – even from the boat you could see the lights pointing up from the bottom, and if you watched long enough you could see the shadows of the giant mantas as they swam over the lights: they had arrived!

We got in, went straight to the bottom, and swam for the firepit. It was an amazing thing to behold: there were lights everywhere which made the ocean feel like a giant lit-up pool! On the surface, there were about 20 snorkelers with lights pointed down, but on the ocean floor there was a huge circle of divers, and in the middle of the circle, in a column, was a school of fish. Circling the fish with awe-inspiring and absolutely silent grace were the mantas. These things are 10-15 feet from wing tip to wing tip and can weigh upwards of ONE THOUSAND POUNDS! (The largest known specimen was more than 25 ft across, with a weight of about 5,100 lb). They are like giant, floating VW bugs….but much cooler!

Ok – so we are kneeling on the ocean floor, swaying with the waves, watching this giant, lit-up column of mantas. They were circling the divers and filtering the plankton out of the water with their giant funnel-like mouths. Every so often they would make a perfect vertical loop over and over again above our heads. They were so practiced and coordinated compared to us clumsy divers: they would head straight towards your face, mouths wide open, and at the very last minute before they were about to knock into you face first, they would pull up and glide effortlessly over your head, sometimes skimming the top :)

It was the absolute best night dive, I have ever done. Possibly just the best DIVE ever. The entire time I just sat there, holding onto a rock (trying to get videos – go watch the awesome video RIGHT NOW!) in utter awe. There were about 12 of them all together, and I could have sat there forever. They bumped me, and knocked me over a few times, and I was cold and tired, but it was JUST SO FANTASTICALLY AWESOME!

Eventually it was time to head back to the boat, and our guide took us over the reef to see what else had come out for the night. We saw several eels, slinking and prowling over the reef, hunting for dinner. We also saw a 7 foot long white-tipped reef shark! That was super cool, but the shape of that fish is just so scary. Even though white tips are “docile,” your heart sure starts pumping when you see that silhouette and pointed fin swimming along in the darkness.

Overall , it was an awesome day. I saw dolphins, whales, eels, fishies and GIANT manta rays. Taylor and I agreed, the manta dive alone was worth the cost of any plane ticket to Hawaii and back – another epic adventure in the books!

See the pictures here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/

And the night pictures are bad - but the videos are AWESOME!

Watch the videos here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/2978

Hawai'i Day 3 – Kayaking, Coffee, and The Place of Refuge

We woke up bright and early on Monday morning to go rent a kayak and get out on the water. We were told that in Kealakekua Bay (Kee-al-a-kay-coo-ah) dolphins visit routinely in the early morning, so we were out the door at 7am to go find them! We rented a double kayak (not the best decision), somehow strapped it to the top of our convertible, and drove 5 miles to the bay.

After a little struggling to get us AND the kayak into the water without tipping it (the dock was about 5 feet above the water….) we were on our way. Let me just say that neither Taylor nor I are going to be professional paddlers anytime in the near future ;) But after a little getting used to it, we made our way across the Bay. The Bay was surrounded by tall cliffs, and the depth ranged from 10 feet to over 300 feet in spots. The water was so clear and blue that we could almost always see the bottom.

We were aiming for the Captain Cook monument – according to Wikipedia: “Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was an English explorer, navigator and cartographer, ultimately rising to the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy. Cook was the first to map Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands as well as the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook died in Hawaii in a fight with Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779.”

The monument lies on the site where he was killed in a scuffle with the natives. It wasn’t too terribly impressive, but it was a beautiful day, and we had fun exploring the Bay. Sadly, this must have been the only day in ages that the silly dolphins didn’t show up, so after some snorkeling, a snack on the beach, and some wading in the clear, warm water, we packed up the kayak and headed back up the cliffs to see what else there was to explore.

We were told by some friends we had to go to the Coffee Shack for lunch. When we pulled up, it seemed like a pretty unassuming place: a few tables, a short menu, decent prices… but when we were led to our table the appeal was immediately revealed – a spectacular view of the Bay we had just paddled end to end!

We had a yummy lunch of sandwiches and pizza (and an iced Kona coffee!) and even indulged in passion fruit cheesecake. While we were leisurely eating, we made a few friends – bright green geckos kept slipping in through the cracked window and licking the condensation off our cool glasses :) They were so cute! And had the coolest colors!

After lunch we headed to a coffee farm – our guidebook recommended Greenwell Farms. We learned it was the oldest coffee farm on the Island and we really enjoyed our tour. We learned that the trees flower up to 6 times per season, and that getting coffee from the raw coffee cherry is a really long and complicated process. I’ll save you the details, but it’s pretty extensive! We did some tasting, graciously accepted their offer of free fresh avocados, bananas, and oranges from the trees on their property, and made our way to the last stop for the day.

The Place of Refuge (or Pu’uhonua o Honaunau…) was a fortified area on the coast. If you were being persecuted, had committed a crime, or were too old to fight in a war, you could be saved by making it to the Place of Refuge. The only catch was it was surrounded by 15 foot walls on 3 sides and ocean on the 4th side. I guess a lot of people swam in?

Anyway, today it is supposed to resemble an ancient Hawaiian village – there are huts, temples, boats, shrines, fishponds, etc. We did the “self-guided” tour (ie – read the pamphlet as you wander around in ridiculous circles) and even came across a sea turtle! It was cool to see the statues and the old walls: they still looked pretty formidable to me.

We made it back to the condo, watched the sun set over the ocean from the golf course, and headed to dinner. We went to this amazing Indonesian place and I had fantastic satay and Tay had a great shrimp and macadamia nut stir fry. We had to stop for the local favorite for dessert – shave ice. NOT shaved ice – just “shave”….the small was about the size of my head, and we sat by the water and enjoyed the light, fluffy sno-cone-like yummyness.

Oh I forgot something! Interestingly, we ran into a young doctor we met while we were working at the hospital last year. We saw him at Greenwell Farms – and then AGAIN at the restaurant we randomly picked for dinner. What a small world! I still can’t believe we picked the same island, the same coffee farm, and the same restaurant all at the exact same time – what are the odds?

Anyway, it was another great day in Hawai’i. It was cool to get out on the water and go snorkeling (a sneak preview of the awesome water for our dive tomorrow!), and after packing up all our Scuba gear we were off to bed.

See all the pictures here: http://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/