Underwater (and some topside) Images from Hawaii, July 07


Living, Food and Diving:
We spent two weeks in Hawaii -- one week at the CAD '07 conference in Honolulu (Oahu) followed by a week in Big Island. The pictures below are mixed up in sequence -- the first three rows are topside, the rest are underwater.

Honolulu: Surfing is simple: you lie on the board aimed at the beach; as the right wave steals up on you from behind, you stroke a few paddles to gather speed, then grab the board at the sides, slide up to a kneeling position. A step forward, and up you go on a crouching stance, being carried by the wave towards the beach at decent speed. That's the theory. In practice, you push off, execute various levels of pitch, yaw and roll simultaneously while attempting to get up, and 15 meters on, part ways with the board, crash into the water, come up gasping, gather your board, leave your pride behind, and trundle/paddle back the start point where your instructor of the hour, Big Jack, is waiting with a sad smile. "You're making me look bad, Ajay" complained Big Jack gently, as I made my way back to him. Jack was one of the fifty surf instructors who work off the Waikiki beach at any time, each giving 2-hour Surfing 101 ($35, pay first, in case the sea takes you) classes to first timers. "Dose two got it down by now" he said. His other wards, a couple of tween-aged kids, were successfully navigating the 70m run from the sand bar to the beach, weaving through the mass of 2000 boards and bodies in various states of crash-and-paddle-back. Jack's instructions must have been good, since the two kids had 'got it down'. But persistence pays. Eventually the oceans throw you a kinder wave, one that does not rock your board as you unsteadily execute the 'get-up' move; lady luck keeps other hapless souls out of your path, and there you go, riding the huge beginners' board to the beach, simultaneously experiencing equal doses of exhilaration, relief, and hope that the eventual dismount will match the grace of the ride. Having thus vindicated Big Jack, I happily checked surfing off the 'things to do in Hawaii' list. Much of the 'must do' stuff in Oahu is vastly over-rated, but for me, the surfing made this part of the trip more bearable. We stayed at the Marriott Resort at Waikiki, convenient for tourists, but a lousy hotel -- hounded by broken/slow elevators and slower personnel. Making matters worse, the TV did not carry ESPN2, so I missed the first week of Wimbledon.
Since TV dinners were ruled out, we tried some restaurants in the neighborhood: Roy's, Tanaka of Tokyo, and Ciao Mein; Roy's is good, the others not.
We only made one day of diving -- a Sunday 3-dive outing with AAAdiving, run by a big Brit called Alex with a bigger laugh. The first two dives were at wrecks (YO-257 + San Pedro; and I think Sea Tiger), the third was at the Kewalo pipe. AAA operates in self-serve mode: take your gear to the boat, rig it up; if you're fine, the DM will leave you to run your own profile and wander around the site in your own time -- as long as you safely clear deco's on your safety stop; what you can spot is what you will see. At the end of the day, you pack our stuff, haul it back to the AAA van which dropped us off at the hotel. The dives were pretty good; water temps around 27C, no currents, good visibility. There is little coral on the wrecks or elsewhere -- but plenty of life, including turtles, rays, and the usual reef creatures.

Big Island: We stayed at Sheraton in Keauhou (Hawaiian names are mostly vowels with an occasional consonant; quite unlike the Poles) -- a very good place to stay. By now, we were avoiding 'fine dining', and got lucky with simple local fare, such as fish tacos and nachos at Lulu's, Pizza at Rocky's in the Keauhou shopping center; the Kai restaurant in Sheraton is also ok, and the nearby Kenichi is acceptable. On day 1, we drove to the Volcano National Park at Kilauea -- well worth the three hour drive despite the fact that there were no active lava flows that day. The next day we drove to Waipi'o valley -- another couple of hours driving, then an hour hike down to a nice black sand beach.
On the final three days we made eight dives: two each morning with Pacific Rim Divers, and another two evening/night dives with Dive Makai. The dive sites had their usual exotic names (Garden eel, Wash rock, Rabbi's point, Turtle heaven, Golden arches etc.). Roughly speaking, the first morning we dived just outside the marina in Honokohau harbour (we saw a tiger shark swimming around from the boat, but it did not show up when we dived); all the other dives were off the coast near the Kona airport. Pacific Rim Divers are well spoken of on the web; and with good reason. They operate in full-service mode -- day one, we hoisted our dive gear bags to them; they take care of it all till the final day, when they rinse your gear while you're sitting in the Boathouse nearby drinking beer. All you do is pack up and go. Plenty of food/snacks on the boat. But most important, both Carlos and Patrice are super spotters (as was David of Dive Makai) -- which is great. We dived in groups of 5-7, but pretty much dived our own profiles (most dives ran well over an hour).

About the photos: I was shooting as before with my Canon G7 in the Canon WP-DC11 housing and Inon Z220s strobe driven in slave mode. Kitty used her Canon S80, but took only a few pictures on this trip. Click on the thumbs below to see a larger image.

 



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If you want the original of any of these, send me email.