Dive Makai

Dad and I were signed up for a dive trip this morning. We had to get up at 6:30 this morning. Man that’s early on vacation. We headed out hoping to miss the majority of the rush hour traffic. We did pretty well. Its quite a hike to get to the other side of the hotel where our car is parked. So after getting up at 6:30 we had made it across the hotel, and the 20 mile drive to the marina by 7:00 AM. We met up with our crew from Dive Makai. They came in about 7:10 with the boat in tow.

With the boat in the water, we headed out to sea. The weather was nice hovering in around 80 degrees. It was a quick jaunt out to the dive area.

Our crew consisted of the owner of the company Mike, and one of his employees Mark. I only have a picture of Mark. They were both very nice guys, and fun to dive with.

All of our gear was supplied for us. Which was nice. That included the BCD (which is the jacket thing you wear that not only holds the tank on your back, but also can be filled with air to help control your buoyancy while under water.), the Tank of air, the octopus (what you breath through, and also has monitoring devices showing your depth, air pressure left, and a dive computer helping you make sure your not staying down too long, or going deeper than your previous dives.), and of course a mask and fins.

Diving was awesome. The visibility was incredible. We could see at least 100 feet, probably more, the water was so clear. Before each dive Mark and Mike would do a little pre-dive talk. Showing us pictures of the things we would possibly see under water. On our first dive we descended to about 95 feet along the way we saw two octopus. The second one was moving around a little bit, and changing color to blend into its surroundings. Very cool. We also saw a couple eel. We ended up seeing three different types of eel between the two dives. The two we saw on the first dive were pretty much hanging out in the cracks of the coral, not showing themselves too much. Of course we also saw tons of really colorful fish and really cool coral formations.
The second dive we moved to a different area, not too far from our first dive. In this dive we were able to hear whales talking.  Its really amazing to listen to them knowing they aren’t too far away.  We saw a couple more eel, one of which was swimming out in the open, around a rock. He was ginormous at over 3 feet long. We came across a 7-11 crab back in the coral. I guess they call them that because they have 11 spots on them, but you are only able to see 7 of them at any one time. We also came across a local skin diver. This is where they dive down pretty deep, but they don’t have a tank of air with them. In fact this particular skin diver was equipped with only fins, mask, snorkel, and thong. Apparently she is out skin diving topless most days, and likes to dive down and wave to the divers. This was a bit of a surprise as they didn’t mention her at all in the pre dive. The only down side to the day was witnessing a snorkeler from another boat swim down and pull an octopus out of the coral and drag it up to the surface to show his friends. Pretty much a rule of thumb is to never come into physical contact with the marine life if at all possible. The ride back was nice. We went along the shore watching the waves crash up against the lava rock.

After the dive we walked around down town Kona for a little bit. Looking at the different shops on the main street. After we tired of this we headed back to the hotel where we tied into our stash pineapple and papaya. Laura requested a picture of me with a pineapple, so here it is. I also threw in a photo of what papaya looks like before you eat it. (you don’t eat the black seeds)

Tonight we are going to a Luau for dinner. I’m crazy hungry right now, so I’m really looking forward to going. I’ll try to get some pictures for you. Hope everyone is having a good week.

Kona, Hawaii

Well, I’ve been in the tropics for a couple days now.  The weather is warm, and the sun stays up longer than 4 hours at a time. The last couple days have been spend laying by the pool, and reading.  I am trying to be careful not to get burned.  It happens all to easy with my arctic tan.

The surroundings are nice.  There are palm trees and of course the ocean.  You’d think I’d have more stories after being here for this long, but really I have just been relaxing.

 

The hotel has a salt water swimming area that full of ocean fish, and even sea turtles.  Here is a picture I shot of a sea turtle swimming by the stairs along the edge of the pool.  You can snorkel in amongst these animals without venturing out into the ocean.

Last night Dad and I went to a little get together for the Alaska Telephone Association.  They had finger food, and free drinks down by the water.  This all took place as the sun was setting.

There were also whales breaching in the distance.  A couple of times they were 3/4 out of the water.  I wasn’t able to get a picture, of them, but here is what it looks like where they were jumping  😉

We are scheduled to go diving tomorrow morning early.  It will be a two tank dive, which means we do one dive, move to a different area, and do another dive.  Each dive we use one tank until we run out of air.  We were going to try to get on a Manta Ray dive this evening, but they were all booked up.  That would have been a night dive.  I guess some of the mantas have a wing span of up to 15 feet.  Pretty amazing.

I’ll fill you in on the details of the dive tomorrow.