David snorkeling and diving
Enid snorkeling
Yesterday we snorkeled north of Kona at Waialea Bay (which is where we plan to go back to tomorrow before we fly out at night). It was very windy, but the wind was mostly from the east, so in the morning it was quite calm off shore.
I love my new mask. It doesn’t leak a bit and makes snorkeling so much more pleasant. Enid tried it some as well, and so we stopped at the dive shop on the way home and bought her one too.
Today we drove to Kealakekua Bay at Napoopoo (across from the Captain Cook monument). We thought we would snorkel here, but it was rough with large swells, and the water was churned up and muddy. Instead we drove to Honaunau Bay along the road that cuts across a mostly desolate old lava flow where they pasture cattle. It was very busy, and we got the next to last parking spot. There was a large group here, seemed to be a class of students, that were diving. As well there were a number of tour boats with snorkelers in the morning.
White tipped reef shark
We swam for a couple of hours in the morning, saw many, many beautiful fish, a turtle which Enid swam very close to, and two white tipped reef sharks. After lunch we went out again looking for dolphins, but didn’t find any, so we swam back along the shore reef. Enid decided to stop, but I stayed out and took a lot more pictures. I was thinking of coming back in when suddenly someone touched me and I turned around to find that it was Enid.
Spinner dolphins
“There are dolphins over there,” she said and pointed about 100 metres farther out in the water. She’d been watching them from shore, noticed that I hadn’t seen them, so came out to let me know. We joined the others that were there watching, and got some very nice views of a large pod, perhaps about twenty Hawaiian spinner dolphins.
It is our last night in Hawaii, as we fly out late tomorrow night overnight to Vancouver, and should be in Saskatoon by mid-afternoon if we make all our connections.