Reflections of My Travel

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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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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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This morning we got up at 0245 and headed to Haleakala Bike Co. We were there by 0315 to get all geared up. After about an hour, everyone was there and we all loaded into three vans and began our ascent to the top of Haleakala volcano. We got to the top just as the colors of the sunrise started to streak across the sky. At 10,000 feet, up above the clouds, we watched the most glorious sunrise I’ve ever seen. It was brilliant. And it was made even greater by the fact that it was a full moon so the moon was setting on one side of the volcano while the sun was rising on the other side of the volcano. When the sun popped up through the clouds, it lit the fading moon back up and cast a shadow from the volcano right below the moon – it was spectacular! I have to say that it was by far the most worthwhile thing I have ever gotten up before 0300 for. Once the sun was fully risen and we had all taken plenty of pics and video, we loaded back into the van to go a few miles back down the road. We stopped along the way to see some nene (Hawaiian geese, close to a Canada goose). These geese were pretty neat because they live up on the volcano and are actually evolving to lose the webbing of their feet since they are no longer waterfowl. When we got to the staging area just shortly after the nene stop, they unloaded all of us, gave us each a bike and a map back to the shop and said “later”. It was nice that we were able to bike back down at our own pace. It was so exhilarating to go careening down a volcano on a bicycle. After just a few miles, while we were still up above the clouds, we pulled over on the side of the road to take a few pics and have a little granola bar breakfast picnic. It was just so pretty. We continued on down, speeding around hairpin curves and enjoying the quiet morning scenery. We passed by some pipi pastures and a few lio stables and had to dodge several moa crossing the road (to get to the other side). There was no peddling until we got back into town (who turned the downhill upside down?!) and even there it was only sporadic. Eventually, our nice little bike ride ended back at the shop. We turned in our equipment and stopped at a diner in the same shopping center for some breakfast. Then we got back on the Road to Hana so that we could go back to get some pics of those painted trees (we looked them up and found out that they are Painted Bark Eucalyptus trees, Randal was right). After getting plenty of pics of the very pretty painted trees, we turned back around and began our trek to the west side of the island where our hotel for the week is. The trusty GPS guided us here with no problems but it was too early to check in. It’s one of the more touristy places we stayed, right on the bay with shops and stuff all over so we walked around for a couple of hours. By the time we did check in, we were ready for a shower and bed. Ended up going to sleep around 1745.