Day 2

On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Hanauma Bay to go snorkeling!  Neither of us had ever been but we loved it.  It took me a while to get used to breathing out of a tube because I would laugh at the fish and then take in a bunch of salt water and end up choking almost every time I laughed.  I got the hang of it by the end though.  There were so many fish and they weren't scared at all about swimming next to us.  In fact, I was looking around and thought I hit my hand on some coral so I looked over and a Reef Triggerfish (this picture is from wikipedia) had just bit me and was watching me with a face that said, "I just bit you and you better run 'cause I'll do it again."  The funny thing is that its a little fish and so cute so I was laughing pretty hard (then choking).  About 5 minutes later, Jeremy was watching another Triggerfish and it came right up to him and bit him on the finger.  Then it bit his leg just to let him know it was in charge.  Crazy!  It even drew blood with its 5 little teeth marks.  We later saw this kind of fish chasing other fish away and concluded that it is the bully of Hawaiian reefs.  I also found out it is the state fish of Hawaii.  Pretty funny.

I actually took this picture, but its one of the better underwater photos we got.  We saw 2 sea turtles in Hanauma Bay and they were awesome!

After snorkeling for a few hours and getting more tired than it felt like we should, we headed over to see the Halona Blowhole.  It was right off the road so there were lots of people watching it with us.  It was a windy rainy day, so the blowhole was giving quite the performance.  Its amazing how much water and noise comes shooting upward.

After the Halona Blowhole, we drove a little ways and hiked for a while to get to this secret blowhole that was even better.  We were the only ones there and there were several blowholes all around us.  The two biggest are called the Dragon's Nostrils.  This picture is a wave crashing almost on top of Jeremy.  He got soaked.

 

Since these blowholes were not as well known, we could stand right between them.  I'm not going to lie, it scared me to get that close because they were so loud and there wasn't much warning before they went off.  Also, some were way bigger than others and some were just really loud air, so you never knew what was going to happen. 

Here's a video of the Dragon's Nostrils with the huge waves crashing in the background.  I loved this place and could have stayed watching for hours.

After that, we wanted to drive on the H-3 to see the Ko'olau Mountains.  This highway cost $100 million per mile to build and it tunnels through the mountain to get to the other side.  This is a picture I took later in the trip of the H-3 and the Ko'olau Mountains.  You can see the raised freeway if you zoom in.

We decided we wanted to see more sea turtles, so we went to Turtle Beach.  We were not disappointed because 3 turtles had beached themselves.  Apparently this is very normal here.  It was too stormy to snorkel here, so we went to find Waimea Bay. 

There was no coral at Waimea Bay, so we kept going to Shark's Cove.  This was Awesome!  Sadly, we didn't take pictures at Shark's Cove, but it was one of our favorite places.  The cove was protected, so the water wasn't too crazy to snorkel.  Also, it was a little deeper, so we didn't get stuck in too shallow of coral and scrape over it.  The fish were everywhere and so were the turtles.  We watched one turtle playing in the waves and swirling around and it reminded me of their personalities in "Finding Nemo."  They are just like that.  They are so graceful in the water (not on land) and wave their flippers and dance in the water.  They are not afraid of people and as we were watching a little one playing around, a huge one swam right next to me to join him.  We watched a different turtle trying to eat off a rock, but the waves kept pushing him away.  It was so funny because it looked frustrating to me to keep doing that over and over, but the turtle didn't seem to care.  

If you can't tell, we loved the turtles.  Finally, we wore ourselves out completely, so we drove back to Waikiki for dinner and walking on the beach.  Sadly, we never saw a sunset because it was too stormy the whole time we were there.