February 18, 2007 Waikiki

We were up at 7 for our buffet breakfast at 8. Buffet breakfasts in each of our hotels are included in our tour. They run upwards of $17 USD per person, but it doesn’t hurt as much when you have prepaid it as part of the overall fee. This hotel features the “Oceanarium,” a two storey high aquarium with some fairly large fish, including three rays.

It never ceases to amaze me how well I can sleep when on vacation. At home, when I wake up after six or seven hours, I can rarely go back to sleep as my mind buzzes with all the cares of the day. When I wake up on vacation, I can usually go back to sleep without trouble until I am fully slept out after nine or ten hours. When I finally get up, I am totally rested. I love it!

We explored the hotel, and then went to the beach at 10:30. We had decided to only stay for an hour to avoid sunburn and because we had booked an activity for the afternoon, so, after an hour, I waded in for a dip. Although the beach was beautifully sandy, I soon found that the bottom was actually hard rock or coral almost as soon as you got into the water. The water was also quite shallow, so, although it hurt to walk, I couldn’t swim. I thought of the water shoes that I had left at home because I didn’t think I would need them on these beautiful sand beaches. I waded half way to Australia and the water was still hardly past my knees, so I gave up and returned to shore. When I got back to Celeste I found that I had taken a large gouge out of the ball of my left foot and earned two other long but shallow cuts, one on each foot. Limping back to the hotel, we ran into some lifeguards who gave me some gauze patches and bandaids.

With my injuries patched up, we caught the shuttle for Atlantis Submarines. Although we had previously ridden on boats with viewing windows below the surface, those boats never actually went under water. I was quite interested in the opportunity to actually dive 120 feet below the surface. The bottom is actually quite flat off Waikiki Beach and would not normally attract fish. However, the submarine company has sunk various structures to build an artificial reef. There were two concrete structures, two steel structures, a couple of ships, and a couple of airplanes. We saw plenty of smaller reef fish, a shark, and five turtles.

If you look carefully, you should see two turtles in the centre of the picture, resting on a sunken ship.



On returning to shore, we were greeted by a sales girl offering free chocolates if we would go on a tour. Free chocolates!? Off we went for a tour of a jewellery factory called “Maui Divers.” We saw a short film, took a tour (although there was no one working because it was Sunday), and then had to walk the gauntlet of the sales area. Fortunately, neither one of us is a big fan of jewellery, and we escaped unscathed. Most of the jewellery features local corals in gold settings.

We are staying in the centre tower of this picture.