Sunday, Snorkel Sunday

I get it.
Believe me.
I can't drink.

And I don't care, really. At least, not when I am at home or otherwise in control of my surroundings. It's the fact that Pete CAN drink that really sticks in my craw. I am, after all, doing this for the both of us.

On Sunday, we decided to take the morning for snorkeling. We had thought that we would not have time because it would take up an entire day. Usually, you book with a trip on a boat, they take you out to a location, dump you in the water, you snorkel until they sound the horn, then you get back on the boat. But a couple of wedding guests who live on Maui suggested a location south of us on a marine sanctuary where we could splash into the water on our own. We rented gear from Snorkel Bob's for eight bucks a piece in the morning and went off in search of the spot.

Ahihi Bay's landscape is compliments of the most recent lava flow from Haleakala volcano in 1790. If you drive just past the parking lot, the road takes you across the main part of the flow. It looks like an enormous backhoe came through and ripped up the land, but the large brownish black chunks are lava, which Pete could almost not believe. We drove across it a bit before turning around and getting our stuff together for snorkeling.

It's about a five minute walk across the lava flow to the beach. The rocky shoreline means that there is not a lot of sand being kicked up at the shore, so the visibility is quite good. There were a few people there, but the space is relatively small, so it looked more crowded than it was. I let Pete take care of spitting in my mask as that is grodey, and I can't do it. He says it keeps it from fogging, and it seems to work.

We don't have any pictures from this part of the day because you can't leave stuff in your car or on the beach unattended because it will be stolen; a nice bonus and a comment on the interesting sociology of resort areas. We bought a waterproof camera, but we have to take that in for developing like they did in the old days.

Suffice to say that the snorkeling in this bay is amazing. You see fish right away and almost as quickly are over beautiful coral beds sparkling with blues, reds, and yellows. I don't know how many different species of fish we saw because we did not have a waterproof guidebook to go along with our waterproof camera. They were not very skittish, either, with a few species coming rather close. Pete could dive down a number of feet, and he could hear the whales singing. I tried to dive as well but could not get my ears to clear and probably would not have been "allowed" to go down deep enough to hear them anyway. We swam about until we got cold and then got out to warm up. My teeth were actually chattering as I sat on the shore.

We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips and watched a mighty whale show in which a cow and a calf took turns breaching. I want to think it was a lesson, given to teach the value of fun to the young.

We went back in for a little while because we had to leave at around 2:30 so we could return to the condo and get ready for the buffet dinner at the Abroe's at 4:30.
It was quite the spread, but I think that Matt may have tired of having his picture taken.