Day 7 - Flying, Diving & Breaking Laws

Today we sadly leave Maui and all its beauty and head to the Big Island, Hawaii. We spent some time this morning cleaning up the van after breakfast and coffee then headed to Kahului where we dropped off the van and headed to the airport. The flight was a quick 30 minutes just barely reaching altitude before starting the descent. Provided with the padded seat belt was a barf bag so I was anticipating a very bumpy ride. Surprisingly it was very smooth and the approach to Hawaii was spectacular. The Hawaii airport was the same style as Maui, mostly open air and large areas without even roof covering. Obviously their weather is predominantly sunny. Next we went and picked up our new mobile hotel for the next week and off we headed to the marina to meet the boat for our diving trip. Scheduled was a dusk reef dive and a night manta ray dive. This will be Annemarie’s first night dive and with 1000 pound mantas swimming around in the dark, it could get interesting. Turns out it really wasn’t that dark. To attract the manta rays lights are used which attracts the plankton, the rays sole food. We sat on the bottom around a ring of rocks called the camp fire and waited for them to arrive. Arrive they did, gliding through the water effortlessly, within inches of us, with a wingspan over 12 feet. It was such a sight to see. This was much more impressive than the evening dive, but that was nothing short of spectacular as well. We saw many of the fish only seen in Hawaii including the saddle wrasse and a nudie snail named because its lungs are outside its body for all to see. Back on land we had to find a place to camp. I had been proactive and booked a hotel in case we couldn’t get the van in time before our dive. Unfortunately we found out the hotel was at around 1500 feet and you do not go to altitude for 18 hours following a dive. The second problem we ran into was all the parks gates closed at 9 so we missed park camping by 8 minutes. We were forced to break our first Hawaiian law and find a place along the road to park for the night. It turned out to be quiet and without incident. Diving photos will have to be updated when we return.Læs mere