Our Maui
Experience
December 17, 2001
We rolled out of bed at 5:00AM (some
relaxing vacation!), and headed off to the Kihei p ier
to meet our boat. Today we would head out to Molokini Crater and
fulfill our Deep Dive requirement for our Advanced scuba
certification. The boat hit the water at 6:00AM sharp as we
motored out to the crater in total darkness. The water was
extremely choppy, and even one of the divemasters was hurling over the
side. Luckily I had picked up the patch from the doctor before
we had left, so I was feeling fine. Sandra doesn't get seasick
for some reason. After a 15 minute boat ride, we arrived at the
crater, all by ourselves. No other boats were even visible on
the horizon around us as the sun came up.
We dove in an encountered a
wonderland of tropical fish, with several varieties of sharks,
including whitetips, reef sharks, and grey sharks, along with morays,
squirrelfish, and butterflyfish. Visibility was near 150 feet
here, but as we were doing our deep dive, we descended to 130 feet,
where the fish were mostly above us. Only the sharks really hung
around at that depth. After fifteen minutes or so at depth, we
scooted back up to the boat. The boat was lunging violently, and
as I climbed up the ladder, I became sick immediately. After a
good hurl over the side, though, I felt better. I didn't
understand why the patch wasn't working, but then I realized that it
had come off during the dive!
We were off to Aloha reef, where we
would practice underwater photography. We snacked on the
cookies, Hawaiian bread and pineapple that B&B provided on the trip, a s
the divemaster continued to be sick. At Aloha, we saw green
turtles, morays, sharks, octopus, and a few fish. The dive site
wasn't the greatest, but it was fun to use the cameras. We
headed back to shore, where we hit the Kihei Cafe for French Toast w/
Portuguese Sweet Bread and a muffin, before heading back to Ulua for a
scooter dive. We went next door to Makena beach this time, but
the tide was bringing in the sand, making the visibility nonexistent.
We were fumbling with the scooters, trying to put on our fins while
holding them, but I dropped one of my fins and was unable to find it
in the sandy mess. Since we had the scooters, I tried to go out
without the fin, but as we motored out, my weight belt fell off and I
shot to the surface. Good thing we were only twenty feet down!
Another diver found my belt, but we called off the dive due to the
poor visibility. We didn't care for the scooters anyway.
They were too clumsy, and it felt like you were going to be sucked
into the propeller.
I put up a sign f or
a lost fin, and we headed up the coast to Lahaina. About a
half-hour from Kihei, the road is good, fronting the ocean, with
fantastic views of the West Maui mountains, along with Molokini,
Molokai, and Lanai. Lahaina is a pretty cool little town with a
boardwalk, some nightlife, many art galleries and shops. We hit
Bubba Gump's for a Lava Flow and a Blue Hawaiian and viewed the
Hawaiian Experience at the domed theater. The film was an
interesting history of Hawaii. We saw the centerpiece of the
town, a single tree that created a forest. You have to see it to
believe that it's really only one tree.
We headed back to town to drop off
our film, and hit the sheets. Tomorrow would be our trip to
Lana'i!
DAY 3
DAY 5 |
