Hawaii — Snorkel Heaven

The main reason Russ & I chose Maui as our vacation destination was the snorkeling. We love to snorkel, and I knew from my trip with Cindy Lynn that Maui has fantastic snorkeling right from the shore. (Instead of having to pay for a boat trip to a snorkel location.)

If you're wondering what snorkeling is like, let me show you some pictures. Here is a turtle that we saw from a boat one day.

It's exciting to see the turtle, and the water in Hawaii is quite clear and so you can see it pretty well.

But here is what it is like to swim with the same turtle while snorkeling. (This is a postcard, because it's really hard to take good underwater pictures without better equipment than we have.)

And while this is not a picture of us, it could have been. By the end of the week we had named Russ the Turtle Whisperer. He was amazing. When we snorkeled on the Big Island Russ had snorkeled for a while near a turtle and never forgotten it. He was determined that if there were turtles to be found, we would find them, and find them we did. Sometimes we found turtles that were just sitting on the bottom and not moving, but several times we found turtles that were swimming up for air, and we swam along with them. The turtles are so ponderous on land — and amazingly graceful in the water, and swimming alongside them (never too close, of course!) is an amazing feeling.

Here is another postcard that is a good depiction of what snorkeling is like.

When you put your face under the water with the mask on it is like being in a different world. The water is so clear around Maui that you can see really far--all sorts of coral, lava formations, and of course fish. The yellow fish on the postcard are all kinds that we saw while snorkeling.

By far the star of the underworld show is the parrot fish. They are spectacular--almost neon! Every time I saw one was amazing. Here's a fun fact about parrot fish. They eat coral, and then poop sand. Seriously. (Where did you think it came from???)

The first day that we snorkeled we went near our condo, and later a couple of miles south of there. The next day we snorkeled at the southwest tip of the island in a nature preserve. The area is surrounded by the most recent lava flow on Maui (300 years old), and is pretty harsh.

It was really windy for the rest of the week, and we ended coming back to this area to snorkel every day. This was our favorite place to snorkel--it's called "Dumps." I kid you not.

On our last day of snorkeling we were sitting in the sun to warm up so that we could go in again, and a couple came up to the entry area and asked us what we'd seen that day. They told us that they snorkel at Dumps every day. Russ & I were SO JEALOUS! They said that they think Dumps has the best snorkeling on Maui (we felt very affirmed) and that a couple of weeks ago a whale came up near them while they were snorkeling. (We were again jealous.) I did notice that when we got out deep there we could really hear the whale songs while we were snorkeling. That was awesome.

On our first whale watch trip the captain had a hydrophone (an underwater microphone) that he put in so that we could hear the whale songs. Don't watch the video (it might make you sea-sick) but listen to the whale songs. Only the male humpbacks "sing," and all of the whales in a geographical area sing the same "song." Scientists don't know why they sing, but it sure is entertaining!

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Now some more stuff about the area where we were snorkeling. As we were driving around, we noticed a flexible black pipe going across the lava. We finally figured out that these pipes must take the utility cables to the remote estates along here. What a place to live!!

Most of the properties have high walls around them and loads of vegetation so that passers-by can't see anything at all. When we walked by one property the gate was open...so I took some pictures.


And here is a glimpse of someone's "back yard" as seen from a public bay.

Walk right out and snorkel--that's my idea of a back yard!

Here was another sweet setup. There's a little beach called "Secret Beach." You enter from a small opening in the stone walls.

And tucked away inside is a beautiful little beach, probably 100 yards long at the most.

It was just lovely. Fabulous sand, terrific colors, crashing waves, tide pools. This little beach had it all. And some lucky family has their own door from their yard to this paradise--this was on the far end of it.

So there you have it. All about snorkeling on Maui. Well not entirely all of it...there was the bit about how we almost drowned Susan (a novice snorkeler) by taking her to snorkel at a place where there were too many waves because of the wind...that wasn't too great. Fortunately we had the wisdom to abandon that beach and go back to Dumps, which was a roaring success. And there was the morning when an entire marine biology class from BYU-Hawaii was snorkeling and scuba diving at Dumps--we thought we should have taken that class when we were in college! And I'm sure you're all interested to know that my sinuses are much happier when I snorkel every day.

Basically all of me is happier when I snorkel every day....too bad there's not much snorkeling in Bahama...