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!