Hawaiian holiday, Post 3: Scuba diving on Tuesday

Our whole week in Hawaii, a no-frills steak house above the entrance to the International Market Place employed someone to stand on the busy sidewalk, hold a big sign, and hand out flyers advertising their cheap meals, such as the $3.99 breakfast. On Tuesday morning, we tried it out. Both of us got a plate like this, plus a juice, for a grand total of $10:



Tuesday was the day we went scuba diving. Around 11am, our instructor, Alex, picked us up from our hotel. Alex was a British guy in his 40s and was getting married that Friday to his girlfriend of 8 years. His sister and her baby were also in the van, having just flown in the previous night for the wedding. After picking up the third scuba diver in the group - a man in his 60s/70s - and dropping the sister and baby off at their hotel (accompanied by Alex's frequent assertions that he never wants children), we arrived at the marina.

We shared a boat with two or three other instructors and their students. After getting our wetsuits on and loading the oxygen tanks onto the boat, we set out for our first dive site. On the way, Alex gave us lots of instructions, and said that he would keep a particular eye on me because I was the only one who had never dived before. I was to stay less than 6 feet away from him, and let him monitor my remaining air. I learnt the hand signs for up, down, okay, and no air.

I also learnt the two most important rules of scuba diving: (1) equalise constantly on the way down (i.e. making your ears pop every foot or so as the pressure increases), and (2) breathe - or "act like a woman and scream" in Alex's words - all the way to the surface if going up in a big hurry. The first stops your eardrums bursting and the second stops your lungs exploding. Dangerous sport, this!!!















Our package included two dives, each to a depth of about 10m (33 feet). Our first dive site was known for its green sea turtles. After getting in the water, and waiting for me to become comfortable breathing with my head underwater (it takes the brain a little while to realise this is now possible), off we went down the rope, equalising every foot all the way down to 10m. And then we let go of the rope and went exploring along the ocean floor. Amazing!!!

Here are some photos taken by Alex on his underwater camera (the reason for their varying levels of blue-ness is that Ben edited some of them to bring out the real colours of things - but the blue photos are more like what it looked like to us whilst down there!)...

















But best of all were the green sea turtles. They were huge; probably up to 1.5 metres in length, and absolutely unconcerned about our presence. Some of them had fish sucking on to their shells. We swam above and below them, next to them, and close enough to touch them (although we didn't). At one stage Alex was gesturing wildly and I thought he wanted me to pose for a photo, then turned around and a turtle was right behind me! (Unfortunately he didn't get any photos of us and a turtle though!) I don't know how many individual ones we saw, but at one stage I saw four all at once. They just hung there in the water, looking as blissful as anything you'd ever see. Magical!











The dive lasted about half an hour, when we had to go up because my oxygen tank was getting low. But apparently I lasted longer than Alex expected me to on my first dive (thank you, Instrumental Music Program!).

The second dive ended up being a bit of an anticlimax after all the turtles. Ben wasn't able to equalise one ear properly, so had to get back on the boat after a few attempts to descend the rope. We didn't see anything too exciting this time, although Alex was quite excited to see a particular frogfish had returned (the instructors are very familiar with their underwater workplace!!). I just looked up frogfish on Wikipedia and discovered they are called anglerfish in Australia; frogfish there means something else. But here's the one we saw - it's the orange thing (I didn't realise it was a fish until Alex made it stir!):



And here's a little eel we saw as well:



After this we headed back to the marina. The boat ride in the warm sun was glorious! (Oh to be back in Hawaii - as I write this in Burnaby, the temperature is 3 degrees with a forecast low of -7 within the next two days!) Anyway, I have to say that that first scuba dive was the highlight of our Hawaii trip for me. I'm very glad Ben talked me into it!! :D













That night we had dinner in the food court near the International Market Place - a huge meal of steak, salmon and prawns, big enough for two:



To be continued...

Click here to view more photos of our Hawaii trip.