Hawaii 2011 -- Day 7

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Blog by Greta:

Day 7: (Happy St.Patty's Day!)! The alarm rang at 6 am (although Mike was already up and about) for an early day. Today, we were doing a catamaran cruise of the Na'Pali Coast. We drove into Port Allen Harbor & had enough extra time that we grabbed a quick breakfast @ McDonald's Drive-Thru.

I decided to take the anti-nausea meds again as the waves were to be high and I have been sick on the "high seas". Mike even took one just to be safe. He's never gotten seasick, but this was to be a 5.5 hour trip, and after paying for it, you'd hate to be ill the whole way through!

We started off, and it was a nice, sunny & windy day. The catamaran was under power (they never did let the sails out - reading reviews, I guess they rarely do). We saw a LOT of whales - some rather close-up. It's the season that the hump back whales are here from Alaska to breed & to have babies. We've been on whale watching tours before when we were in Maui 6 or so years ago, but we got lucky and were very close this time. The closest you are allowed to get is 100 feet from the whales, and I think we were there. They were showing off - diving, slapping their tails, and breaching (jumping) out of the water a lot.

Then we saw flying fish. These were amazing - I wish we had pics, but the pictures wouldn't do them justice. The looked small - less than 6 inches long - but they literally woud FLY out of the ocean swells and flap their fins/wings and sail along in the air for quite a distance before diving in another ocean swell.

Then we saw a "herd" (pod, bunch, group - I don't know) of spinner dolphins. Over 4 dozen at least. They just dove in/out of the water once in a while, one leaps up and spins through the air. That was amazing. I'd never seen dolphins outside of a zoo before. They are pretty common for that area, but it was neat to see. Mike got some video of them diving in/out of the water - you can see just how many there are. They are smaller than the bottle-nosed dolphin you are used to seeing in a zoo - about 4-5 feet in length. They were so close, you could see their blow-hole on top of their head, and their eyes. Amazing. Then a bit later we actually saw about a half-dozen bottle nosed dophins! I guess this is somewhat rare, so it was cool to see them ourselves.

By then we were coming up on the Na Pali coast- which we'd seen from the helicopter. I guess by then, there were a number of people holding "aloha" buckets near the back of the boat, and just feeling miserable as they threw up into their bucket. Ewww, I am SO glad I took my Bonine!

The coastline was beautiful, and the boat was diving up/down less now because we were out of the wind, on the leeward side of the island. We saw the whole coast line - it's really beautiful. Then we stopped to do some snorkeling. We saw some fish - not a huge amount - but I am comparing it to snorkeling off Molokini Island a few while back, near Maui - and THAT was as if you were in aquarium! Mike & I did see an eel swiveling in/out of the rocks with another fish berating him the whole time- that was pretty neat.

Then back on the boat for a picnic lunch (sandwiches, mac/potato salad & fruit). Now that we were done snorkeling, you could switch your drinks from pop/juice to alcohol, but I opted not to. I was feeling fine, stomach wise, but we still had a wavy trip ahead of us in the full sun, and I didn't want to tempt fate.

The ride back was retracing our steps - mainly just a drive back. There were a NUMBER of people who got sick on the trip - I am so glad Mike and I were not among them. As I got off the boat, I heard one little boy happily say "Daddy - it was BUMPY today!". I turned around after hearing his father answer "Yeah, it was bumpy" and noticed that "Daddy" was the poor guy who was sick the ENTIRE 5.5 hour trip! Oh well, I guess that's good his little boy didn't realize how rotten dad felt!

Back to the resort, and then off to the beach at the resort. I hung out on the grassy area in the shade for the most part. Mike decided to try boogie-boarding, and got the hang of it by the end. We could have kept the board overnight, but since we're hoping to take surfing lessons tomorrow, figured it was just easier to turn it back in. I wanted to do some more snorkeling but the waves were huge (gnarly, even) and so I just opted to bob around in the waves for a while.

Then back to the room. Mike hadn't gotten much sleep that night, so we didn't head out to eat. He fell asleep, and I got to eat all the left-over Thai food - yum.

I just can't get over how we just leave the sliding door open the whole time (we're on the 2nd floor, so no one could break in w/o scaling walls). Even if you leave the door standing wide open for a bit, there are may be 12 mosquitos on the whole island, so nothing will swarm in. No snakes either - interesting!

Here are the pics from our day on the cruise - enjoy!

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