| Okay welcome to 8:15 am our third morning. We got up at 6:30 am and drove out to the Honokohau Marina (near Kona) and got on a zodiac boat (one of those big black inflatable ones with a motor that turn riding over surf into an amusement park ride) to do one of our favorite things in the world to do–SNORKEL at Captain Cook Point (also known as Kealakekua Bay in Hawaiian). I'll give you a little bit of history why this is called Captain Cook point when Eric gets those pictures scanned in later. It's a pretty interesting story.
Anyway, the guy behind the wheel is the super laid back Captain Tony who came from San Francisco back in 1968. He's totally into surfing. We had him as our captain 2 years ago and we loved him. He knows all kinds of cool historical, geographical and marine life info about this area. He also likes to play tricks on you while you are on the boat to make you bounce around more and get wet with huge waves (if he thinks you can physically handle it). Eric and I were so happy to get him again–Tony rocks! This four hour trip is not cheap boys and girls but it's worth every penny and always one of the highlights of our Hawaii adventure.
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Okay, you say (Who are YOU, anyway?), you guys are in Hawaii and you are taking a picture of a common white duck. Why?
I'll tell you why…this is a very special duck. He has decided he owns the Honokohau Marina. He even owns his own special sunning rock. This is our third snorkeling trip with Capt. Zodiac tours over four years and every time that duck swims out to meet our boat. Then he goes back to his rock. When we come back in the early afternoon he is right there waiting for us–sitting on "his" rock.
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| This is the ONLY cruise ship registered in the US. It's called "The Patriot". It is a new set up where the cruise ship goes between the islands over the course of a week. You can stop off at an island for a day trip or stay there until the next time the ship comes by that island again. Not my (Simone's) cup of tea but it's only done four trips so far and it's VERY popular already.
The smaller boat next to it is a local tourist boat that takes tourists out for either cocktails or dinner. It lights up at night and you can hear the Polynesian music coming from it. That is just way too tacky tourist for us. We also heard that the food sucks which means that even if it wasn't a tacky ride, we'd still pass on it. |
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Some local surfers which we saw from the Zodiac boat on our way out to snorkel. The waves are great for surfers while we are here because some huge storm off Japan has really roughed up the seas and the waves have just gotten here the last day or so. It makes for thunderous crashing waves to sleep by at night and cool surf watching during the day if you are not a surfer yourself. |
| Eric took a picture of this massive wave from his position on the front of the Zodiac boat on our way back from snorkeling. This wave ended up washing all over me which was a bit of a surprise as I was just beginning to dry off and this water was FREEZING.
Luckily, I saw this coming and turned my face away before the wave hit us so I didn't lose my sunglasses 🙂 Wet and cold for the rest of the windy trip back to the harbor but it was worth it though–that wave was AWESOME!!!
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We finally got the best of our snorkeling pictures on CD-ROM today (01/10/01). We will have more snorkeling pictures while we are in Maui because we are going on a day long snorkel trip around the island of Lanai where we may even be lucky enough to be in the water near humpback whales or dolphins!
To see a larger version of each photo, click on the thumbnail version. We had one heck of a time finding a place in Kona where we could have these photos either developed to disk in less then a week so that we could add them to the website. We tried to rent a scanner, which was a disaster. If you are in Kona and need quality film developing, business, packing/shipping, copying or internet services we highly recommend "Zack's Business Services". They don't have a website, so I can't link them here but they are totally worth the extra money for their photo services.
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| Okay, it's kind of hard to see this through the camera because it makes this lava cone look farther away then it really is, but up close and live you can really see a woman's face in it. The old story is that this area was forbidden to all but the kahuna (ancient Hawaiian priests) and this is supposed to be the Volcano goddess, Pele, protecting the area from trespassers.
Look up towards the top of the cone and you'll see two holes that look sort of like eyes. then below that is a scary open-mouth, and to the left of her is a long swath of red hair trailing behind her. This picture really cannot do this amazing lava cone "face" justice–it just doesn't give it the depth that you see for yourself when you look at it live, but we tried to capture if for YOU, our loyal web folk, on digital film.
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This is a pod of Hawaiian Spinner dolphins that swam along side our boat for awhile. These dolphins are all around the coasts of the Hawaiian islands and exist only here! They are very small dolphins, not like the Atlantic bottlenose, and are called "Spinners" because of their behavior of jumping up in the air and "spinning" then falling back down into the water. We saw a mom and a baby together and the baby dolphin was practicing his spins then would come up to the boat (we joked that he was waiting for applause), and then he would run back to his mom. We took some photos of him, but they didn't turn out well because of sun glare off the water from that direction. |
