Lary's cold turned nasty and stayed with him our whole two week holiday, but as it was warm and humid he coped pretty well and we managed to see and do a lot.
First on the list of fabulous was the whale watching cruise we did with Capt. Dan McSweeney to see humpback whales, and did we ever. The beginning of the trip we motored up the west side of the island for an hour or so, past the lava rock fields of Kona airport, there were 2 female crew and Dan driving the boat. He has an excellent reputation as a photographer, for National Geographic and Discovery Channel, etc, and has spent countless tens of thousands of hours studying whales, his boat is 40 feet long, and carries 36 passengers or so. It is a 3 hour trip and worth every penny. First thing we saw was tail slapping, quite impressive when you realize the whales are 80,000 pounds or so. 50 - 60 feet in length. $99 per person for a 3 hour cruise.
Then we began to see a whale breaching, and the grand finale was 2 whales breaching at the same time, beside each other. They winter in Hawaii between December or March /April or so, and the mothers bear their calves in the warm Hawaiian waters. They don't eat while on their Hawaiian winter holiday, they eat while they are in Alaska during our North American summer. At the end of the trip we all got a souvenir whale photo taken by Dan of a whale breeching, it was grand. We were given juice and water to drink, and fruit snacks, so that was very enjoyable.
Another day we decided to walk over to Kahalu'u Bay, about 10-15 houses away from Chip's place, and go snorkeling using the masks and snorkels at Chip's house. We saw the most beautiful reef fish, Hawaii has gorgeous crystal clear water there, and the colours of the fish are brilliant, many bright yellow ones, some variegated colored ones nearly irridescent, and others with beautiful stripes, dots and others with long tendrils on top of their heads. Others nearly black with bright orange marking near their tail fins. I saw at least 2 schools of fish, reminding me of a fishy curtain, and the coral reef itself was very varied and fascinating.
We were in pretty shallow water, without fins to propel us, just masks and snorkels, and the wind blew and the surf crested and pushed us around quite a bit. Di saw a yellow turtle just poking about underwater, munching away on the yellow weed covering the lava / coral at the edge of the sea. The clarity and warmth of the water was captivating, seemed more than 100 feet visibility, though the swell of the waves was a bit disconceting as we didn't want to touch or bump the coral, or anything else. The fish seem very used to people, they aren't fed so don't pay much attention to the snorkelers, just get on with their life on the coral reef where they live.
By the deeper reef a bit further out in the same bay there were lots of surfers as there was quite a bit of wave action, nearly our whole 2 weeks. It's a very popular place to surf, and one day while I was sitting on our porch (lanai) a lifeguard appeared standing on our lava wall, he was looking out to sea as there was what appeared to be an unattended surfboard. Another lifeguard swam out to it, and there was somebody near the board, perhaps snorkeling, I am not sure what the score was exactly.
It must be quite challenging lifeguarding on that beach, there were 2 lifeguard stations, and each station seemed to have 2 lifeguards in it. They came right out of their enclosure when somebody fell on the slippery rocks to help her up and make sure she was OK. Perhaps one lifeguard station watched the snorkelers, and the other station watched the surfers farther out, I am not sure how they worked it. The footing was quite challenging as it was very rocky with coral outcropping everywhere, and no clear path to the water through it all. Seaweed covered rocks too made it slick to walk on, and underwater coral made it easy to trip.
For another interesting experience we went out another day in the Marian, a glass bottom boat that also seemed to hold about 24 - 30 people. It had 6 kind of wooden frames with plexiglass bottoms, like windows, that you looked down into to see the reef below us. We cruised slowly above the reef below us, and it was like watching the reef through a window. It was again quite windy so the boat rocked and blew around a bit, the view was incredible, colourful reef fish and coral lovely to watch, we felt fine while on the boat, though once back on land after our hour cruise, we felt kind of ill for another hour or so. Weird feeling though lovely trip. $40. per person.
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