SNORKEL FUN at Hanuama Bay

Oh yeah! Snorkeling! After all the hard work we've being doing (she's obviously working harder, but still) Cheryl felt it was high time we go do something fun. So we hopped into the car and drove over to Hanuama Bay, legendary on every travel show as THE place to stop and stick your face in the water. The place was a sea of japanese tourists, but that's ok. For the most part, they're nice folks.

Hanauma bay is actually a marine preserve, and it's better protected from the waves than Shark's Cove. However it has one of the highest deathrates of anywhere on Hawaii; mainly because of the high traffic of dumb, unexperienced tourists that flock there. In fact, two tourists had died there last week. . .they swam out to the Witches Brew--a semi-underwater cave that gets slammed with waves continuously. . .what they were thinking, if they were thinking at all, I don't know. We stuck to the nice, calm waters near the coast :)

There were TONS more fish here, ranging from some regular black and white striped sergeantfish to the GIGANTIC bigger-by-far-than-your-head parrotfish. I was especially excited to see the parrotfish, not only because they were huge, but because they have these big beaks that they use to chomp on coral. I floated about for 15 minutes just watching and listening to one go "chomp chomp chomp!" on the coral. Then it got pissed off at another parrotfish and started chasing it around. That made me nervous, so I moved on, floating about and hoping my poor little white belly wouldn't scrape against the coralbeds as I passed over.

Reefs are just wonderous places. You can hear a constant background of clicks and crunches as things munch on the coral and go about their little lives. There are fluorescent fish here! I mean, bright glowing greens and pinks and yellows and blues! I mean, you see it on tv, and it's kindof neat. But in real life it's damn near unbelievable. And thankfully I didn't see any moray eels or sharks or anything possibly scary like that. So I had fun, and even found a quarter! AT first I was psyched because I thought I'd found some ancient coin. .but then I saw the Georgia Peach on it. . . so. . .well. . .I was impressed just to find one!

So, good times. Didn't get burnt, although the freckles are aplenty now. And Carl leaves tomorrow! And ten days till I"m 21!