Maui Day 2 - Fish Turtles and Sharks...oh my!

So when you are sitting in Houston, planning what you are going to do on your Hawaiian cruise at each port, things sort of blend together and it almost turns into a work exercise in terms of scheduling which meetings where. Do we do a Luau? Where? What island? What wants to Scuba dive? Maybe we skip Scuba, and just go snorkeling? I’ve heard Maui is good for snorkeling…ok, let’s go snorkeling in Maui. We then called a company that does the snorkeling trips and discovered the main boat they had was booked up, so we got relegated to the “red headed step child” of the fleet. A smaller boat with fewer passengers, that basically tags along the big boat. Great. What seemed like a filler trip, turned out to be one of the most memorable of the whole vacation.

We went to 2 different locations, Turtle Town, and Molokini. Molokini, is a half crater off the coast of Maui that shelters the reef and allows for some of the most spectacular snorkeling ever. Remember that relegation thing for our tour? Well, that turned out to be the best thing that happened. Our captain decided to reverse course and instead of going to Molokini first, and then Turtle Town, we went to Turtle Town first and Molokini second.



Essentially we avoided the 10 other 100 passenger tours and their stops so we had the locations to ourselves. Awesome! This quickly paid off, in that the Hawaiian Sea turtles hadn’t grown weary of a bunch of tourists swimming around their house and were just floating around like I wasn’t even there. What resulted was a close encounter of the Turtle Kind. And by close, I mean I could of touched the turtle had they not warned me it was illegal to touch the turtles and arrests had recently been made for such an encounter. Instead I had to settle for some very cool Turtle footage. That waterproof case for Courtney’s new Flip camera paid off instantly!





So you have some idea as to the clarity of the water, those Turtles swam down probably about 30 feet to go under the reef. It was very clear, and compared to Molokini, this place was cloudy!

As we wrapped up this location, we were getting back on the boat, when a huge school of fish swarmed. Apparently one of the crew were feeding them and they were familiar with this routine. What I was able to capture was the last part of this swarm. Lisa, my aunt handed me her camera and was going to sink down a bit so I could take her picture in the school of fish. In the 30 seconds it took us to coordinate that, they were gone. Impressive none the less!



We then set off for Molokini, already satisfied with this trip. I had not expectations of seeing a turtle let alone filming one from and arms reach away! What could possibly top that!

When we got there, the Captain kept saying things like, “wow, I haven’t seen it this clear in a long time”. I have come to recognize that when crew members who do this every day get excited, you are about to see something unique. This happened last year on our Boston Whale watching tour. Our naturalist was giddy and squealing as we watched a mother humpback and her bay jump out of the water continuously for a good 20 minutes. So my ‘cool stuff’ radar was up. The captain said the visibility was at least 150 feet. Think about that. Your standard basketball goal is 10 feet. Stack 15 of those on top of each other and that is how far into the ocean you could see. It was like snorkeling in Ozarka water.

I am not one to wait for tourists even if I am one, so when the crew said go for it. I grabbed my fins and snorkel mask, and jumped in. As I was doing that, the following conversation took place between another snorkeler and a crew member.

Crew: “You might actually see some white tipped reef sharks here.”

Snorkeler: “what.”

C: “yeah, but don’t worry, they are as threatening as a Labrador Retriever.”

Me: “so, we could play fetch with the sharks?”

C: “Ha! Probably!”

A different snorkeler, on her honeymoon I believe, overheard the last two comments and said…

Honeymooner: “Wait. What? Sharks?”

Me: “Yeah! We get to play fetch with some sharks! Should be fun!”

Crew: “wait. Let me start over…”

I didn’t wait around for the crew to explain to the petrified honeymooner because frankly, the look on her face was all I needed…and so I jumped into Molokini’s Ozarka clear water and set off to discover something cool…

I’m not going to lie, at first I was not real impressed although it was very clear. It was basically the same type of fish we saw at turtle town cruising around. I did film a few, but am only going to post a few videos here more to show how clear and how blue the water was.







It then became more fun to film the people. So as I was cruising around with the Flip I was filming Courtney when my sister came up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and pointed straight down…



This 8 seconds of video is pretty useless except I know what she was point at…Shawna proceeded to practically jump out of the water and swam towards the boat screaming “Shark! Shark! There is a Shark in the water!”

So lets just back up a quick second and recall that conversation with the honeymooner and anyone else who was probably paranoid about sharks. The last thing they probably wanted to see or hear is someone in full fledged panic mode yelling about a shark in the water.

SO what did I do? I had a video camera! I swam after the thing of course! Now this was a white tipped reef shark, or apparently the Labradors of the snorkeling world, it was probably 3 feet long but as you can see in the video, not really threatening. I was on the surface, and was swimming as fast as I could trying to follow the thing about 15 to 20 feet below me. As I was doing this, I saw the biggest fish I had seen yet. It doesn’t really show on the video, but you’ll notice me cut away from the shark briefly to show a fish that was probably 2 feet long and 12 inches tall. Most of the rest of the fish you see are probably about the size of your hand and maybe a bit bigger. I tried to follow the shark as long as I could, but me in big ole flippers on the surface was no match for the little white tip.



Once the shark left, we basically were just swimming around. My brother David was the first to do it, and I’m not sure anyone else besides myself and crew actually did it, but we had the bright idea to free dive down to the bottom. These videos are pretty uneventful except I think it gives you a good perspective of how deep the water was despite how clear it looks. If you are really interested there are more on our YouTube channel



So snorkeling was a success. Heck the trip was a success at this point and we were only on the first Island! Our afternoon was spent in the historic whaling town of Lahina before we head back to the boat. Just driving on Hawaii is cool.

Maui was complete…Off to the Big Island, where I led the rebel cause and managed to get Shawna, Courtney, and myself deleted off the Passenger list of the cruise ship. It was SO worth it…

Jon

Hawaii, The Beginning - Greg Lind and Volcanic Surprises

To start with, this trip was extremely packed full of numerous experiences, from 100 feet below the ocean surface, to nearly 14,000 feet above it.

This trip will be split up into each days experience to avoid a 50 page long post. While there will be stories to explain videos and photos, the majority of these posts will likely be photos and videos with context provided.

Read what you want and re-vacation with us on the Blog, or simply ignore us for the next week or so as we post tons of photos and videos of our most recent adventure.
We look at it this way, its better to put the photos and videos up here so you can ignore us or watch as you choose rather than us plop down in your living room and tell you how amazing our trip was when you really don’t care.

So with those disclaimers…we landed in Oahu.

We literally got on a plane at 9am in Houston and thanks to that ever spinning globe we call Earth, we landed 8 hours later in Honolulu, Hawaii on the Island of Oahu at around 12:30pm and promptly got in our “transfer” vehicle. We were thinking beat up van, old taxi, whatever…nope. We got the luck of the draw, and our draw was a limo. Good start so far!

This Limo took us straight to our cruise ship, the Norwegian Cruise Lines “Pride of America”. We got checked in and promptly left the boat to go meet family for lunch before the boat departed.

Travel Day 1 – Wake up in Houston, Go to sleep on cruise boat in Hawaiian waters…so far so good.

Thanks to that lovely time change, we woke up the next morning at like 4 am or something ridiculous. For those keeping track at home that would be like 9 am Houston time. The advantage of that was we got to start off our trip to Maui by watching the sunrise through small ocean rain storms.

Good Morning Maui!

You would think that would be a good day in itself! Nope. We were just getting started…
First up on our list…Mama’s Fish House.

You think, a fish house, who cares? This is not your normal Fish House despite the hole in the wall name it goes by. This was considered by many at the table the best meal they have ever had, or at least right up there. The Menu literally listed the fish by the location of where the Fish was caught that morning and the Fisherman who caught the Fish. Courtney and I both had Some Hawaiian fish called the Unu (I think) that was caught that morning by Greg Lind somewhere near Maui.

I have no idea who Greg Lind is, but I am pretty sure I have never been to a restaurant that tells me who caught the animal I was going to eat. Ever been to a steak house that said Jorge Sanchez butchered Bessie this morning in the Fields outback. Nope, didn’t think so. So the food was fresh…but I haven’t even mentioned the view yet…

Then there is this fun tradition that you are supposed to do when you are in Hawaii. Try poi. Try what? Poi.
Wikipedia says this:

Poi is a Hawaiian word for the primary Polynesian staple food made from the corm of the taro plant (known in Hawaiian as kalo). Poi is produced by mashing the cooked corm (baked or steamed) until it is a highly viscous fluid. Water is added during mashing and again just before eating, to achieve a desired consistency, which can range from liquid to dough-like (poi can be known as two-finger or three-finger, alluding to how many fingers you would have to use to eat it, depending on its consistency).

They then provide this appetizing photo…

We describe in both texture and taste as “Wallpaper paste with a purple hue”
So …Courtney and my Uncle Sean got to try this delightful little delicacy…

Looks Yummy!

While that little diddy was going on at one side of the table, My Mom was trying raw oysters courtesy of my Chef Brother for the first time. I had to capture this paparazzi style. Rapid clicking of camera while trying raw oysters can only enhance the experience I am sure. The result was something like this, with a few edited out, but you get the point…

And just some Bonus photos from the beach at Mama’s Fish House…

So what do you do when you eat a huge meal and are this close to being in a Food Coma? Go drive for 3+ hours on a road famous for how twisty it is of course! We took off in our 3 rental car caravan on the Road to Hana. Something like 60 bridges and 200 turns in 36 miles...or something...

We only had one casualty from this little drive…One person didn’t quite make it the whole trek without bringing back lunch for a second go around…Nothing some serious Febreeze couldn’t handle! Probably sucks for the next person to rent that car after the Febreeze wears off…
But oh the views we discovered!

Then just when we were about to turn back to make the trek through the vomit comet road, we came across a sign that said “Hana Lava Tube”. So of course we had to go check it out! This was a little gem. The more famous Lava tubes are on the big Island as a apart of the Volcano National Park. This one wasn’t nearly as populated and at one point we turned our flashlights out and we could not see our finger poking our eyes. It was quite literally void of all light. What a Lava Tube is, is essentially an underground tube that formed when the volcano erupted and had solidified on the surface but continued to have molten lava flowing underground and essentially traveled through these tubes that later remained. Sometimes collapses would occur that would allow discovery and skylights. This particular tube was about a quarter mile to the point where we were no longer allowed to go. Everything you see in the pictures are rocks. Even the ones that look like we took brownie batter and tossed it on the ceiling…

And so we concluded our Improvised Day 1 of the cruise, and Day 1 on Maui. Yes. We didn’t plan any of this. Tomorrow, the planning begins, and what a plan it turned out to be!
Jon