Hawaii: Humpback Song and Sunsets

Let's start with yesterday...

Yesterday I got up early, not that it really mattered because I was still somewhat running on Central Time, but also...the chickens.  Kauai has chickens everywhere.  I can only assume they were brought to the island for food purposes, but some got loose at some point.  But anyways...the roosters like to start cock-a-doodle-dooing at around 4 am.  I can only figure the locals get used to this in the same way you can get used to the sound of airplanes or trains.

But back to what I actually did.  So I started out the morning by doing a kayaking trip up the Wailua River to a point where you pull out the kayaks and hike a mile through the mud to Secret Waterfall (I can't remember its Hawaiian name).  I have never experienced so much mud in my life!  Our guide Judah kept telling us to "Embrace the mud" and so embrace the mud we did.  I saw people who definitely weren't expecting all the mud...but then again neither was I, but I was prepared with the right type of shoe.  At the end of our trek through the mud was a beautiful waterfall.  The water was cold, but after a bit you couldn't really feel anything anymore so it didn't matter.  The kayaking trip was interesting.  Pretty.  But it turns out I'm not very good at kayaking in a kayak meant for 2 people.  It took me and my partner a bit of time to figure out how to get on the same kayaking page.

After I got cleaned up (though I still found some mud on my legs this morning that somehow missed my shower scourge), I headed up toward the north end of the island.  Kauai is such a beautiful island.  Judah told us there are only 70,000 full time residents on the whole island.  Lihue (Lee-who-a) is the largest town on the island.  My hostel is located in Kapa'a (Kah-pah-ah).  But I drove up north through Princeville to Hanalei.  In Hanalei I walked around through the shops and scoped out the food.  I had already eaten in Princeville, but did manage to find it in me to eat my first Hawaiian Shaved Ice (on this trip...I've had it before, but not on Hawaii).  After touring the north side of the island, I made my way back to Kapa'a.

Today I had scuba diving on my mind.  This morning I did a two tank dive off the south shore.  It even turned out to also be part whale watching tour too!  We saw 4 turtles on our first dive and some fish I wasn't familiar with (and some I was).  During our surface interval and journey to our second dive site, we saw some whales breach.  Not full on insurance commercial breach, but surface and blow out their blowhole sort of breach.  Our  boat captain said they make their way to Hawaii from Alaska every winter and stay here until March or April.  He was surprised they were still around.  Underwater you could hear them singing!!!  Our second dive was even better than the first.  Turtles everywhere!!!  Big turtles, little turtles!  Sleeping turtles, swimming turtles!  So many turtles.  I post some pictures when I take a look at my GoPro videos and pictures.

This afternoon I changed my plans.  Originally I had planned to stay around the area I was diving, but I decided to head to the western shore and up to Waimea Canyon.  Waimea Canyon has been called the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" and it really is something else.  Waimea Canyon is perhaps best known for filming done for Jurassic Park.  I hiked the Canyon Trail today, but plan to go back for more tomorrow...as long as my legs are up for it after everything I did today.

I decided since I was out on the west coast of the island that I would just go ahead and drive the road until the end, so I did.  I have no traversed the island from the northern town of Hanalei, all the way around to the turnoff for Polihale State Park.  My rental car wouldn't be able to handle the pothole-filled gravel road all the way to Polihale SP so I turned around and went to Kekaha Beach to watch the sunset.

Belize:Days 6 & 7 -- Octopus!

We're on our last day in Belize.  We head out tomorrow.  Yesterday was the last day of diving.  We dove at Hol Chan Marine Reserve both in the morning and during our night dive.

We made the decision as a group to go to Hol Chan for our last day.  Hol Chan is a marine reserve on the south end of Ambergris Caye.  It was a different sort of dive.  Instead of the deep canyons of coral that we had seen the other days, we were in a sort of bowl that was protected and was a sort of nursery in a way.  We saw some smaller turtles, still about 3 foot size.  There were a number of smaller angelfish and butterfly fish; ones that were maybe 2" in size with juvenile markings.

Hermit crab with a huge shell!

We followed up our trip to Hol Chan with one out to Shark Ray Alley.  That was just a snorkling sort of thing where they chummed the water.  We had nurse sharks and sting rays come and swim with us.  It was a neat experience.

In the evening we headed out for a night dive at Hol Chan.  We saw a couple of octopuses and a number of moray eels out feeding.  There was a HUGE snapper that was eating.  I actually saw it eating a fish.  There were lots of lobsters and shrimp and rays out as well.  Video will come after I get home.

Today I slept in and went souvenier shopping.  I went out on a kayak and that was enjoyable as well.  All I have left is to put things together for heading out tomorrow.  We'll spend most of tomorrow at airports, so so long Belize.  It was an unBelizable vacation. :)

Belize: Day 5 -- Mr. Ray the Spotted Eagle Ray

Finally some decent weather!  No rain today and the sun even made an appearance.  Today was only a two dive day so we had the entire afternoon free.

We started off the day at Dardanellos and the theme of the day was lion fish hunting.  On our first dive our dive master speared probably 8, while a couple people in the other group got some more.  The nurse sharks were surely quite happy about that.  One of the lion fish was apparently not quite dead yet when he took it because he banged it against some rocks before swallowing it.  Quite a frenzy going on.  We continued our dive through the canyons before coming to rest up on a flatter area.  We were getting ready to start heading to the surface when this huge spotted eagle ray came.  Mr. Ray (I named him after Nemo's teacher who is also a spotted eagle ray) circled us three times before leaving.  It was amazing.  He had a wingspan of probably 4-5 feet and was just gorgeous.  What an experience!

Our second dive took place at some other site I can recall.  I feel like the name was somewhat unusual, which is why it didn't stick with me.  It was much the same as our other dives, which isn't bad.  The canyons of coral are still amazing and fun to explore.  We just didn't have any big creatures come find us on this one.

This afternoon I headed out to look at some shops with one couple who I know pretty well from going to Curacao together last year.  I spotted a couple things I might get if I have money left over at the end of the week.  After that I took a handstand photo right outside our hotel.  I forgot to take one in Curacao last year which was a bummer, but I made sure to get one this time.  Dinner was at Elvi's with a small(ish) group.  It was good.  I'm really liking the coconut white rice, which is found at most restaurants around here.

Tomorrow is the last day of diving.  I hope we see a couple more awesome things before heading out!

Belize: Day 4 -- More Rain

Day 4 in Belize, day 3 of diving started with a lot of rain, same as the past couple days, except it was really bad this time.  Eventually the rain started to slow, but more importantly the wind slowed down.  We headed out to Tuffy Canyon for our first dive today.  They said that it is common to see a lot of lion fish around here so they took their spears.  Lion fish are an invasive species that migrated from the Indo-Pacific a couple decades back and have taken over the reefs in the Atlantic.  They have few natural predators and are capable of producing tens of thousands of offspring a month.  Because of this, in the Atlantic and Caribbean it is perfectly acceptable to killed lion fish.  Nurse sharks love lion fish, but only if they're already dead.  On this dive our dive master managed to spear a lion fish and feed it to a nurse shark, who devoured it in about 2 swallows.

On our second dive (I'll have to check on the name) our dive master showed us his shark whispering skills when he lulled two different nurse sharks down.  Other than that, while it was a good dive, nothing huge to note during the dive.  The canyons are still amazing and I would definitely call this the best diving I've ever experienced (not that my experience is huge).

After lunch we came back for one last dive for the day.  We were diving at Esmeralda 2 (yesterday we did Esmeralda 1).  This one started with a huge turtle!  The shell was probably 4 feet from front to back and its head was the size of a bowling ball.  It was beautiful!  No more lion fish even though we were on the look out.  There were a lot more beautiful fish, some lobsters, and even an octopus (though I missed it).  When we got to the surface and were waiting for our boat to pick us up, three dolphins swim under us.  I unfortunately  didn't get a picture, but I swear it happened.  I have other witnesses.  Two were full sized and one was a small one.  They were probably 40 feet below us.  I hope they come back for a visit another day, when I can get some pictures.  We surfaced in another huge rainstorm, so that was fun.

This afternoon and even have been spent reading, socializing, eating, and making a trip up to the Belizean Chocolate Boutique for some more hot chocolate and more chocolate.  Yum. :)

Belize: Day 3 -- Wildlife All Over

This morning started out beautiful.  While we were eating breakfast the sun was shining on the sea and it a gorgeous.  By the time we met up for the first dive at 8:30, it was raining and the wind was blowing again.  In fact, it was bad enough they had us wait about 15 minutes until the seas calmed a bit.

Despite the weather, the first dive of the day was probably the best dive I've ever been on.  It was amazing.  Our first dive of the day was at Tackle Box Canyon.  It was the coolest thing because we were diving down and through these canyons that were only about 5-8 feet across.

We saw so many nurse sharks.  They're everywhere here.  But we went beyond nurse sharks this dive and saw 3 black tip reef sharks.  Their appearance was short, just a quick swim through, but we saw them.  When I got up I saw absolutely exhilarated.

We came back in to shore during our surface interval because the distance to the next dive site is so near and the waves not fun that it is just easier.

This picture just seems very Finding Nemo-ish to me.

Our second dive was at Esmeralda. I was so much wildlife on this dive.  Things I had never seen before.  The usual nurse sharks were all over, and there were a lot of the rainbow parrotfish, and snappers, and butterfly fish as we've been seeing on each dive.  But this dive was much more awesome than that because we had some black tip reef sharks that circled around, and then we had a bull shark swim around us.  We also saw a ray or two (not sure if it was the same one or not).  Then right at the very end a sea turtle!  I've been wanting to see one this I went diving for the first time, but until today they had always stayed out of sight.  While under the water it was bliss, the wave action up top was again, pretty horrible.

Our dive master trying to explain that the big, muscular shake you can see in the background near the center of the picture is a bull shark.  In diving you have to just try your best sometimes.

The last dive of the day was at Ten Commandments.  I guess somewhere along the way there is a tablet from the Catholic Church in San Pedro with the Ten Commandments on it.  The best part of the entire dive was when we got caught in the middle of a school of jacks.  Hundreds of them. They circled us back and around and all over.  It was amazing.  The whole time we were just waiting to see if there was a shark or something chasing them.  I never did see one though.  We did see a nurse shark that had a hook caught in its mouth.  Our dive master turned the shark over and tried to get it out, but couldn't get it before the shark had decided it had had enough and swam off.

After making our way back to shore and cleaning up I headed out to the shops in town with some of the others.  We stopped at a Belizean chocolate shop and I bought the most delicious hot chocolate ever.  It may have burned my tongue, but it was so good.  Most of the group had dinner together at a restaurant on a pier called Palapa's.

Belize: Day 2 -- Nurse Sharks!

Well...so far Belize has been rather grey and windy.  Hopefully the weather will pick up the next few days.

This morning actually started out pretty nice.  We started out the morning with breakfast at our hotel.  I had this huge breakfast that was too much to handle.  I couldn't even finish it all.

After breakfast we headed out to load up for our first dive of the day.  We have enough divers we are split up between two boats.  I'm on the larger boat of the two, and there our group is split into two groups as well.  Our first dive was (I believe) Mermaid's Lair.  No mermaids were seen, but I nearly dropped down onto a nurse shark!  I was settling down and I look down at were my feet are to find that swimming right under me was a nurse shark.  And there were probably 5-6 others we saw on the dive as well.  On our first dive visibility was around 70 feet.  We traveled up and down the canyons of the reef, which is pretty neat.



By the time we got to the second dive, conditions were decreasing.  Swells were up to probably about 6 feet and visibility dropped to about 40 feet.  We made our way along some more canyons, saw fish and coral and more nurse sharks.  The movement in the water was starting to make my stomach a bit queasy.  And then we got up to the surface and I nearly lost my breakfast.  We had to wait for the other divers to get on the boat first so we waiting on the surface for probably 5-10 minutes for them to come get us, all the while going up and down, up and down the 6-8' swells.  Not good.  But we eventually made it on board and back to shore.

The rest of the day I most just hung out, relaxed, tried to go for a walk through town but got rained on.

Hopefully over the next few days the weather clears up.

Belize: Day 1 -- Flying the Caravan

Here after follows the tales of my scuba diving trip to Belize...

My morning started off ridiculously early.  I'm not a morning person at all, so the fact I needed to be at the airport by about 4:30 at the latest was too much for me.  I did somehow manage to get myself up and to the airport on time though.

By 6:05 we were in the air and on our way to Atlanta for part one of our travel adventure.  After landing in Atlanta we didn't have any time to waste.  By the time we arrived at our gate, our place to Belize was boarding.  On the way to Belize I watched The Devil Wears Prada (which I had never seen before, but had recently finished reading...the book has a more satisfying ending) and watched the first 45 minutes of Baywatch, before we landed.

The airport in Belize City is tiny.  6 gates and you taxi on the runway.  We landed, pulled a u-turn, and went back up the runway until we could turn off to the airport.  We ended up spending a much longer time at the airport than we had expected due to weather.  The airport at San Pedro (our final destination) does not have instrument landing, so they had to wait for the weather to clear before they started allowing flights to continue.  Because I was starving I grabbed some food.  I grabbed a johnny cake, which as far as I could tell was just cheese and chicken.  It was good and filled me up enough.

Our fearless leaders, Tyler and Tim

Sitting in the front of the Caravan!

Eventually the skies cleared and flights started heading out.  Our group was large enough that we took up a couple flights because the airline, Maya Island Air, was flying Cessna Grand Caravans.  As they started boarding people for my flight, one of the airline employees asked if I "wanted to be the co-pilot". Umm...duh.  Yes, I want to sit up front!!!  So I was taken around to the side and climbed up a small ladder to the front seat.  It was awesome sitting up there, looking at the gauges and looking out the front window as we took off and landed.

We got checked into our hotel and wander San Pedro for a bit.  We had supper at this absolutely delicious restaurant called the Hungry Grouper.  I had Jerk Chicken with Coconut Rice and a garden salad.  Absolutely delicious.

Diving starts tomorrow!  I'm ready for some sharks and turtles!

For most of the flight we flew at 165 knots and 1520 ft.