Reflections of My Travel

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This was our first morning of waking up at 0200 to start working. It was easier than I though it would be (probably because we haven’t slept later than 0300 yet). And it was nice because we were working the same time as the guys back at the office. And it was good and quiet around here. I didn’t even get terribly sleepy, no more than the sleepy spells that hit me every day at the office anyhow. When they hit, I got up and walked around the room till I woke back up. We have some mini wheats and apple sauce and such to snack on so we waited until after work to get something to eat. We probably won’t do that again tomorrow. I was starving by 1030. We walked to get something to eat (factoid: “deluxe local breakfast” = eggs, rice, and Spam® at McDonald’s – mmmmmspam {ick}) and then came back and took an hour nap. Then we got all of our snorkel stuff together and headed to Black Rock beach. Snorkeling is awesome! There were some pretty good waves breaking right at the shoreline that knocked me over a few times (yes, I did bring half the beach back in my bathing suit) but once we got about 15-20 feet out in the water, it was relatively calm. The undulation of the water took some getting used to and made picture taking much more difficult than it was in the nice calm Lake Wedowee (must learn manual focus!). We weren’t in the water 2 minutes when a great big sea turtle swam under us! It was beautiful. I followed it around a bit and it swam right up in front of me, maybe five feet, it surfaced and swam back down right in front of me. It was so exciting. I tried to get a little movie clip on my camera, but really I need to master still shots before I can hope to get a good movie clip underwater. When the turtle swam away, I started looking at all of the fish. They were very pretty. But they’re fast little buggers. Probably saw about 15 different kinds of fish. And the coral was very pretty too. Saw some urchins and anemones on the coral. It was all very surreal to me. After about an hour, while out there looking at coral, it occurred to me that I was beginning to feel very sick. I had been warned against drinking the salt water because it would make you sick so I had been very careful to not swallow any. I’m guessing it was all the undulating and maybe even trying to look through the camera while undulating. In any case, I felt awful and I got Randal’s attention to start heading back in. On the way back to shore, ANOTHER TURTLE! I was so excited, I forgot about being sick and watched it swim around beneath us for a bit. When it swam off, I remembered how I felt and finished swimming in. It was such a great experience. We sat on the beach for a while enjoying the scenery before heading back to the hotel to shower the salt off of us. We went walking to find some dinner as the sun was setting. When we got back at almost 1900, we went to bed.

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Another workday, another 0200 wakeup call. The good thing was that while we were out walking yesterday, Randal happened to see a menu on a restaurant advertising an Early Bird Breakfast from 0730-0830. Turns out that in Hawaii, I’m an early bird! Who’d have ever even dreamt of making such an accusation at me? Anyhow, at 0730 this morning, we put up our lunch away messages for work and headed to breakfast at Moose McGillyCuddy’s. It was fabulous. And the only deal we’ve found on the islands yet – eggs, bacon, and toast for just $1.99. Can’t beat real breakfast for two for less than $5. We finished working around 1100 and took a quick nap and then grabbed the snorkeling stuff. We first went to Airport beach (I never did figure the name out, no airports around that I could see). This beach was awesome! Ten times better than yesterday. We probably stayed in the water about two hours. There was an expansive reef, just offshore. Lots of fishies and two more sea turtles. The first one kind of snuck up on us while we were further out. He kept swimming at Randal while he was taking pictures and almost ended up headbutting him. After the near-collision, the turtle found a nice opening in the reef and went in to take a nap. Soon after that, I started to get sick-feeling again so I motioned to Randal that I was going to get out and would keep and eye on him. I was sitting on the beach maybe 5 minutes when I saw a turtle head come out of the water just offshore, less than 10 feet in. I watched him resurface about a dozen times in the same area when I finally got Randal’s attention. He came closer to shore and i grabbed my snorkel and mask and met him and showed him how to turn the camera to movie mode and then we went to watch the turtle. I hadn’t put my flippers on but since the turtle was only in belly-high water, I was able to stand and bend down to put my face in the water. The turtle was snacking on the reef, the algae on the reef, I assume. He was calm as could be while we all gathered around him. Then he decided to move down the beach a few feet so he tried to knock me over. That turtle probably stuck around that general vicinity for about 45 minutes. It was just too cool. We got some awesome pics and two unbelievable movie clips. From there, we went up the coast a little to Honolua Bay State Park and Marine Life Refuge. We were told we’d see better and healthier reefs there because it is state-protected. When we got there, the water right at the shore was as murky as Lake Wedowee. We had to swim out about 150 yards to get to some visible reef. I will admit, the reef was much healthier and more abundant. However, there did not seem to be as many fish and even out there the water was kind of foggy. The good thing is that Randal has nearly perfected his free-diving so he was able to get down 15-20 feet and get much closer pics of the coral and fishies. We stayed out on the reef for about an hour and then started fighting our way back in to the shore. That was the other kind of bad thing about this bay, it had a good current so the entire time we were in the water, we were fighting the current. By the time we got back to the shore, I was exhausted. We went back to the hotel, got a shower, and walked to find some dinner. We got back a little late and ended up not getting into bed until nearly 2000. Getting up at 0200 is going to be awfully rough!

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After work today, we drove up and around the northwest coast of Maui. It was a beautiful drive. More treacherous than the Road to Hana. But every bit as pretty; perhaps a bit more since it is less traveled and, therefore, less spoiled. It was very windy and most of it was one lane (not the 1.5 lane that the Road to Hana was but literally one lane). There were some spectacular cliff views of the coast. Once we made it back around to Kahalui, we set up camp for the night and are ready for bed.