Ho’okena Beach
Another day, a different beach, and more snorkeling. On the way to the ocean this morning we stopped in at a market which was just setting up and bought a pineapple and some tomatoes. The seller didn’t have a scale, but told us that the tomatoes were $3 a pound. We chose two medium sized tomatoes, and she said they would be a pound. I picked them up and said they couldn’t be more than half a pound, so she agreed to a price of $6.50 ($5 for the pineapple). I gave here $7, but she had no change, and neither did I, so the price came down to $6. We ate some of the pineapple tonight and it was delicions.
The highlight of today’s snorkel was swimming with dolphins (click to watch video). We had no idea that we should expect to find them at this beach, so when we arrived decided just to go snorkeling towards some obvious rocky areas where we expected to find reef. There is a good sandy spot which was quite easy to walk in, though there was a bit of surf, and we started swimming out from shore. We could see a number of people snorkeling quite a ways from shore, so headed towards them.
Spinner Dolphins
As we did so we saw a few fish, the usual Yellow Tang and Orange Band Surgeonfish. It was obvious that the bottom was very sandy, though the water was really clear. As we swam farther and farther out, it simply got deeper and all traces of coral reef were gone. The bottom was probably 10 to 20 metres below us, and clearly visible through that depth as the water was so clear. I had just about decided to turn around and go back since I didn’t expect to see any fish at this depth when I suddenly spotted a few dolphins. I called to Enid and she said she could see them to our left. We swam that way and suddenly a pod of five or six spinner dolphins swam right underneath us. We followed them as they swam slowly and surfaced right in front of us.
We’ve kayaked with dolphins before, but never been so close as we were to these as we swam right with them. After they had left the area we swam in towards shore and found a very nice coral reef which we swam around for almost an hour. As we sat on shore we saw the dolphins return, including jumping out of the water and spinning, the activity that gives them their name.
After lunch we went back out to snorkel. The tide was now in, so the rocks very close to shore were covered, and we saw a lot of fish. By three a large cloud had rolled in and so we had a shower (hot water from the pipe which we’d followed all the two miles down from the highway as it wound along the twisty road — a sign warned to be careful as the water was solar heated in this pipe), then headed back to Kona.