Hawaiian Adventure

My daughter and her family are enjoying a vacation in Hawaii this week. Coming from an impoverished childhood, she is feeling abundantly blessed and appreciative to be able to do this. Other than day trips or visiting relatives, we were never able to take a “real" vacation in her growing up years. Our struggles in life can all work out to the good, though, if they result in character-building, humbleness of mind, diligence, initiative, a work ethic, and a grateful heart. Denise wrote me this email describing recent adventures and gave me permission to post. I enjoy her narratives.

Hello Everyone!

Well, today we had A LOT of fun! We took a snorkeling tour today on a motorized raft boat. It was quite an adventure! Within 2 minutes of leaving the dock, we were jumping big waves and Austin was getting drenched. He was sitting on the side raft part and seemed to be in the hot seat for getting wet.....or should I say the cold seat. This was 7 am this morning and it was a bit chilly to be wet. Alexia started crying immediately...she was scared of the ride with all the bouncing and high speed. I changed seats so I could sit next to her and make her feel more secure and she calmed down and enjoyed it more. She and I were in a good seat where we didn’t get very wet at all....until our BIG MOMENT when we had a bit of a catastrophe!

Part of our tour included checking out some lava caves along the edge of the Maui Island. It was neat and the captain of the boat was telling us all kinds of history about the area and lava formations. Well, this one cave (appropriately named The Tunnel of Doom) was big enough to back the raft into so the captain did that and then he was talking about the various layers of the lava rock and things so we were sitting in the cave for awhile. It was a windy day so the sea was pretty choppy. We were getting splashed a little bit in the cave while we sat there as the water hit the walls of the cave. We pulled out of the cave at one point because it was too choppy. Then the waves settled a bit so he backed into the cave again to finish his talk about it. It was eerily calm compared to the first time he had backed in. He had his back to the rest of the sea as he talked to us and then all of a sudden (too late) he saw a big wave coming and there wasn’t time to get out of the cave before it hit us. So, he warned us really quick to take cover (we had rain jackets on the whole time....but we needed to brace ourselves and make sure we were covered with our jackets). My back was to the wave also, so I turned my head to see what he was talking about and it was HUGE! The cave got dark as the wave entered (it nearly filled the whole cave opening) and I leaned over Lexi to protect her and we had the experience of a lifetime! At just the right moment, the captain floored the gas on the boat to try and keep the boat from slamming into the walls of the cave as the wave came crashing in. He was successful at doing that, but when the wave hit the wall, the entire boat basically went under the wave.....which meant we all got SOAKED! We had about 6 inches of water in the bottom of the boat and every bag, towel and clothing that people brought were completely soaked. Even though we had rain jackets on, we were drenched all the way through because most of us didn’t have time to put our hoods on and the water went right down our backs as we ducked for cover. Alexia was crying again (gee, I don’t know why) and I told her it was ok and “this is what vacations are all about!” (that quote is a little inside joke between our family and my parents). Alexia didn’t think it was funny. LOL! It all ended well...no one got hurt and we all thought it was funny and exciting. The captain apologized for it but we thought he did a great job of handling it when it happened. He seemed to be a very skilled captain. The waves were really big all day and he knew just when to accelerate and when to lay off. We were amazed this little boat could handle the rough waters. The waves were much bigger than our boat yet our ride was pretty smooth considering...other than the first 5 minutes or so.

We also snorkeled in a couple different spots. The first spot was somewhat boring for me but Austin and Chris saw a HUGE sea turtle about a foot below them so that was cool for them. Austin really enjoyed snorkeling. Alexia attempted to snorkel but the water was too cold for her and so she never did it. She just got back in the boat and waited for us. We were disappointed that she didn’t get to see anything but we couldn’t do anything about it. She got in the water twice...trying to get used to the cold but just couldn’t do it. The second snorkel spot was much better and more colorful. That one was Molokini which is famous for it’s snorkeling. I got some pictures with my underwater camera until it ran out of battery. : (

I will try to upload them and attach a couple to this email.

Along the way, we also saw a large pod of spinner dolphins...one of them even showed off it’s spinning action by jumping clear out of the water vertically and spinning. There were probably more than 20 dolphins all following our boat and jumping out of the water. Pretty cool. We saw several humpback whales today, a couple of them breached out of the water, which was really neat. They were a little distance away from us though. We never saw any real close to the boat. There were a few turtles swimming around our boat at one point also. It was a very successful trip for seeing marine animals! Oh yeah...and we also saw a wild rooster and 2 chickens in the parking lot of the boat dock. Hawaii’s land wildlife seems to consist of farm animals. Last time we were here, we saw a cow wandering the streets. They have some strange wildlife, don’t they?

Well, that was pretty much our day today. It was a 5 hour boat ride so it really wiped us out. We went out to eat tonight and did a small amount of shopping and called it a night.

Tomorrow, Austin and I are going on a zipline and then we are going to watch the sunset from on top of Haleakala mountain. We get to sleep in tomorrow morning though. Our zipline is not until 2pm. Chris and Lexi will come but they will just wait for us at the zipline place.

The pictures were taken with my new Olympus underwater snap shot camera. I am still trying to learn how to use it so it may take even better pictures than what I have here, but I thought it did pretty good on these. I did not use the official fish names because I don’t know them...except for the trumpet fish. I also included a sunset photo from last night on our hotel beach.

Denise