Re: Trip Report - Hawaii

I went last year on one of those day boats for the Manta Night DIve. I
saw the mantas and had a great time. About 7 of them were in the show.
One of them hit my head. I purchased the DVD and evryone that watch it
feels jealous.

I had a great time in the Big Island last August. I miss it.

On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 10:43:46 -0400, Dan Bracuk <NOTbracuk@pathcom.com>
wrote:

>The Providers
>
>Air Canada (http://www.aircanada.ca)
>United Air Lines (http://www.united.com)
>Alamo Rent a Car (http://www.goalamo.com)
>ATR Condos (http://www.konacondo.com)
>Kona Aggressor (http://www.konacondo.com)
>
>Summary
>
>We went to the big island of Hawaii. The first week was spent on land
>with no diving. The second week was spent on the Kona Aggressor with
>nothing but diving.
>
>The Travel
>
>It was a pleasant surprise to see that there were direct flights from
>North America to Kona. We thought we would have to go to Honolulu and
>puddle jump. Our itinerary was Toronto - Los Angeles - Kona, all in
>one day, and then Kona - Chicago - Toronto coming back. Kona to
>Chicago was an overnighter.
>
>Getting ourselves and our luggage there and back involved a bit of
>luck. Our ticket and itineray showed a departure time from Toronto of
>noon. However, we checked the Air Canada website the night before and
>noticed that our flight was scheduled to leave at 10 am. The website
>info was correct. Good thing we checked. Coming back, I'm not sure
>how it happened, but we managed to book flights with a 35 minute
>layover in Chicago. Normally I insist on at least 2 hours. In any
>event, our flight arrived in Chicago on time and we managed to make it
>to our departure gate on time to board our flight. We had our
>boarding passes printed up in Kona. Then the airplane broke and it
>took about 90 minutes to fix it. About five minutes before we finally
>left, we heard a thump. Patti said, "that's probably our bags being
>loaded." I'm not sure if that was the case, but our bags were among
>the first that came onto the converyer belt in Toronto.
>
>The Non Diving Week
>Staying in a condo was nice. Ours was called the Royal Kahili. We
>bought groceries and had breakfasts there, but went out for lunch and
>dinner. It was a relaxing week. We made a road trip to Volcano Park,
>took an airplane ride around the island, and did some snorkelling.
>The airplane ride was expensive, but money well spent. It could have
>been more expensive but we aggreed to go to a time share presentation
>in exchange for a discounted flight. That was also worth it, we saved
>$150 per person.
>
>The first place we snorkelled was right across the street from our
>condo. It was more of a surfer's spot than a snorkelling spot and we
>didn't see too many fish. We did see three turtles though. They were
>just off shore, eating the grass off the the rocks. Another spot we
>snorkelled was on the north side of the island, at Hapuna State Park.
>Once again there were turtles just off shore eating the grass off the
>rocks. Just to the north was the Mauna Kea Resort, which had a coral
>reef wall just offshore. It would make a good shore dive. The
>visibility was not that good for snorkelling when we were there - the
>top two feet had a freshwater saltwater mixture which makes the water
>look scaly. I don't know if it's like that every day.
>
>The other place we snorkelled was at Kahalu'u Beach Park, a bit south
>of our condo. This place was like swimming in an aquarium. The water
>was anywhere between one and five ft deep. There was lots of coral
>and tons of fish. Plus, there was a reef to stop the waves so there
>was very little surge. The second time we went there I even took my
>camera. I only got a couple of good pictures though, photography on
>snorkel is incredibly difficult, at least for me.
>
>One thing about going snorkelling. Our rental car keys were all
>hardwired together, including the keyless control - which you don't
>want to bring into salt water. We had to cut the wires in order to
>free up a key I could put in my bathing suit pocket.
>
>The Kona Agressor
>
>The boat is described on the Aggressor website so I won't repeat that.
>It is a roomy and comfortable boat for the most part. The dive deck
>is a bit cozy. However, we only had 11 passengers and I don't think
>we ever had more than eight or nine on any one dive, so it wasn't as
>cramped as it could have been. The crew was cheerful and the food was
>really good. Something I had never seen on a dive boat before was
>draft beer. All the other boats that served beer had bottles.
>
>On some previous liveaboard trips, the boat's photo pro would take a
>bunch of pictures and there would be a 35 mm slide show at the end of
>the trip. Then we would be given the slides of us. While the boat
>captain said that the Aggressors have been doing this for awhile, what
>happened on this trip was a first for us. The photo pro took a bunch
>of pictures, made dvd, and our slide show was done on the television.
>That was nice, but fairly normal. The really nice part was that each
>passenger was given a cd that contained all the photos in that slide
>show. That means that non-photographers still end up with some rather
>nice fish pix.
>
>
>The Diving
>
>Hawaii has a reputation of being all lava and no coral. There might
>be places like that, but we didn't dive them. Our dive sites had lots
>of hard coral and many colourful fish. The reef is not as colourful
>as some other places because there is not much sponge and no seafans,
>but the fish make up for it. Yellow tangs and butterfly fish
>abounded. We didn't see much big stuff. The local peacock groupers
>are a decent size but they were the only fish more than a foot long
>(except trumpetfish of course). We saw one spotted eagle ray off in
>the distance, and that's about it for big stuff. There were lot's of
>small fish though.
>
>The visibility was in the 100 ft range most days and the water
>temperature was 77-79 F. Most of the dives were in the 40 to 70 foot
>range, with the top of the reef at 20-30 ft. There was a bit of surge
>in the shallows, but less than I remembered from my previous trip
>(1989).
>
>Kona's signature is the night dive with the Manta Rays. One of the
>local dive shops has installed some lights on the bottom. The
>combination of these lights and the diver's lights illuminates the
>plankton and some manta rays come up to feed. The way the Aggressor
>does this is to wait until the divers from the day boats have been in
>the water for half an hour or so, and then send their divers in. This
>leaves just the Aggressor divers in the water for most of the dive.
>Sounds good in theory, but you just can't trust those wild animals.
>There were no manta rays the night we went. There were lots of
>schooling fish feeding on the illuminated plankton, but no manta rays.
>For those of us on the Aggressor, it was oh well, time for a hot
>chocolate and Bailey's. However, there were six day boats out there
>as well. Imagine how the divers on those boats, who paid extra for
>that trip felt. Jack's Diving Locker for example, charges $145 for
>that trip.
>
>All in all, a great trip.
>Dan Bracuk
>If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.
>
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