we parked, paid our little entrance fee, watched the movie about caring for the reef, and headed down the big slope to pick our spot to 'camp out' to snorkel the HUGE bay, which is now a nature preserve.
while there are few times in my life where i am speechless, one such moment came this day. i was beside myself. practically speechless, completely in awe and unbelievably moved. two words:
sea turtle
we had been snorkeling for nearly an hour. i resigned myself to the fact that we were probably not going to see one, though we'd heard at both our own lagoon and at shark cove that there were sightings while we were there. we headed to the 'rear' of the bay, thinking that turtles would not be as far inland as we had been snorkeling. the waves were pretty high and we were getting uncomfortable with the current and our swimming. we were getting pushed around quite a bit, both into water and into the reef, so we decided to start heading in a bit. we passed the large center area of the bay that has little to no coral in it and were just about to head in. we had separated by about 5 yards, with jason behind me. and then i saw the piece of reef move, and suddenly it became clear that what i was seeing was the shell of the sea turtle. i could barely catch my breath to get jason's attention (and he had the underwater camera!)
jason and i swam with that turtle for a good ten minutes, doing our best to keep clear of him and let him do his thing (after all, he is an endangered species!) all the while trying to get as many pictures of him as we could...we won't know how those turn out until we have our film developed (boy, that's weird to type, as i don't think i've taken pictures with film since we got our first digital camera in the summer of 2003!)
he swam up and down. he munched on coral. chewing and everything. and he looked right at us and didn't give a hoot that we were there. he was awesome.
it made my day, to say the least. i followed the turtle out into deeper and rougher water, while jason gave up after getting bashed into some coral. i said good-bye and we both headed into the shore, content and knowing that whatever snorkeling we opted to do now wasn't going to get any better than that.
we showered and got dressed and then headed into the nearby town that also has a brew pub (we'd already tried a couple of their brews since being on the island, but we knew we'd be able to get a good sampler here!) we were there right when they opened and got a marina side table. the first question our waitress asked us is if we are beer drinkers - i said "we have a son named Porter..." and that led into picking 12 of their 13 on-tap beers for 'sampling'.
the beer was great, the food was fantastic and we spent a good time hanging out in the pub on at the marina.the rest of the afternoon we had designated as souvenir shopping, since waikiki and honolulu were between us and our resort. we tracked down the hilo hattie store, and then loaded up at the local ABC store in waikiki (which was still busy as ever - SO glad we weren't staying in a hotel there!) we have been somewhat disappointed by the souvenir options here - many made out of hawaii. we're guessing it's because this is the hub, with over 80% of hawaii's population living on this island. we have gotten a few neat things, but a vast majority of what we've seen is not authentic neat knick-knacks, but rather tourist crap. ah well. another trip to another island. :)
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