Hawaii 2005

Wednesday, Oct 19th, 2005

We got home REALLY late from Volcanoes National Park, so we slept in until 8am on Wednesday. We drove North to the Hilton Resort at Waikoloa to check it out. The locals call it Disneyland because parts of it were designed by Disney Imagineers. It contains pools which resemble miniature water parks, a man made saltwater lagoon, a dolphin area and a monorail and "Jungle Cruise" style boats to provide transportation through the mile-wide resort. They welcome visitors to come walk around and check it out, but you have to be a registered guest to use the pool or the lagoon.

http://www.hiltonwaikoloavillage.com

We rode the "Jungle Cruise" boat around the canals until we got to their coffee shop, then we had brunch overlooking one of their pools, then we rode the monorail back to our car. On our way back, we checked out a couple of beaches, but the surf wasn't up.

We got home, took a quick nap, assembled our dive gear and headed out at 5pm to meet Captain Lisa and our dive boat with [HOBBIT NEEDS TO PROVIDE NAME OF DIVE SHOP]. We arrived at the dive boat as they were loading it up. There were 5 divers, a divemaster and Captain Lisa (the owner.) I've gotten efficient at packing my tropical dive gear - everything goes into one of my old Marine Corps seabags. The one that I brought on this trip is pretty faded and weathered. When I handed it up to the divemaster, he pointed to it and said, in a loud voice, "How many dives do you have? You have to *earn* a gear bag like this!"

I looked up at him and said, "I didn't buy it, it was *issued* to me."

It was Hobbit's first boat dive, and she was a little apprehensive. The divemaster did a great job of explaining everything that we needed to do as Captain Lisa navigated us to the dive site. We were the fourth dive boat to arrive at the site and, as I was assembling my gear and tugged on my wetsuit, I watched as several more boats arrived.

The divemaster handed each of us a dive light and said, "Hold this above your head and point it forward at a 45 degree angle. The krill will be attracted by the light and the Manta Ray will swoop in and eat the krill. Hold it above your head, otherwise he might come in too close and knock your mask off."

The sun was setting as we started getting in the water. On this boat, we did a "giant stride" entry - we would step to the edge of the boat with our fins on, then take a giant step off the boat, sinking down 3-4 feet before bobbing up to the surface. We followed the anchor line down to a depth of around 35 feet, then we assembled and met the divemaster. The divemaster led us around the side of the coral wall, up to a flat spot that was about 30 feet deep.

We could see lights ahead of us and it resembled the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind when we came over the edge. There were 30-40 SCUBA divers asitting in a giant circle, shining theit dive lights in at a 45 degree angle toward the center of the circle.

We sat down and shined out lights upward and within a few seconds our lights were surrounded by thousands of tiny underwater insects (attracted by the light.) A few minutes after that, a large Manta Ray began swooping around, its mouth wide open (its mouth was about as large as the opening of a 55 gallon drum) skimming along, consuming vast quantities of floating krill.

It swooped over me several times - once getting so close that its stomach bonked into my flashlight.

The Manta Ray hung around where we were because it was where there was the most krill. He didn't care about us. We were just rocks that shined lights and attracted food.

http://www.konacoastdivers.com/engray.html

Thursday, Oct 20th, 2005

We drove around the North end of the island to get to the East/Wet side of the island. Hilo, which is the oldest town on the island, has a bunc of buildings from the turn of the century and a Tsunami museum. The Tsunami museum is short on the science of tsunami but long on garden club ladies who are collecting and archiving survivor stories from the tsunamis that hit Hilo every decade. After we visited Hilo for a while, Hobbit navigated us to a thermally heated pond that is next to the ocean. Ahalanui Park is in the Southeast end of the island, which is the part of the island which has most of the "alternative culture" people. Hobbit described the the thermal pond as, "The lava rocks heat it up like a really big hot tub. It is open to the ocean and the water cycles through so it didn't have a case of unwashed hippie ass (aka: fecal coliform) like most of the hot springs in Washington State."

www.hawaiiweb.com/hawaii/html/beaches/ahalanui_park.html

We drove back as it got dark and we braved the "Saddle Road" - a one lane road that runs up the saddle between the two volcanoes - the highest point on the road is about a mile up. Driving the road was quite a lot of fun - it would have been much more fun driving a sports car instead of the Chevy rental car that we were driving. We got home around 8pm and tucked into bed, because Thursday was going to be a big day of SCUBA diving and boogie boarding!

Next, the mysterious Aloha Rock!