Yesterday was one of two days off! Time to see some fun Hawai'i fun things!
The first thing I got to do was my open water dives #1 and #2 of my scuba certification. It was great - every time I dive, I like it more. Visibility was good, the coral were beautiful, the fish were swimming, and the shark didn't bite.. Yup! A pretty successful scuba dive. :)
On the boat ride there we saw 3 pods of dolphins who swam with the boat for quite a while. Once in the water at our dive site, we got to see them from under the water and very close. I heard them too! First time to see dolphins and it was incredible. Other flora / fauna included black coral, lots of fish whose names I don't remember (but including 'Gill' from Finding Nemo - which is actually a moorish idol fish), and a small shark in a cave we swam into.
We went out to the north west part of the Big Island and loaded up our gear and walked into the water to join in with the water world below us. The dive boat had two dive teams - one group that had been diving throughout the islands all week and then myself, my instructor, and a mother / son pair. Thankfully, the mother had brought her underwater camera and got some great photos that she shared with me after the dive.
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| diving along - ascent from dive #1 |
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| dolphins! |
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| Fishy |
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| Just keep swimmin', Just keep swimmin' |
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| Doin' alright :) |
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| so colorful fishies! |
After logging the dive in the logbook (and buying a tshirt), I hurried back up the hill to Waimea to join Jason and Cyndia to join our group going on a hike to see lava. After about 2 hours of driving and getting lost on a 7 mile road 3 times, we finally found our way to the site. We found a guide and hiked over 6 month old lava flow and joined our group who was on their way (but more slowly - such is a hike with middle school kids chatting away).
After 3 ish miles of avoiding a few missteps and nearly missing chunks of lava scraping my legs up into a bloody mess (it happened to someone 2 years ago - but not to me!), we finally made it to the flow. Oh my. What magnificence is ret hot flowing magma. Apparently, this site is the only place in the world where lava is flowing through a lava tube from the volcano and depositing straight into the ocean - no land flow. It was great. Small deposits slowly dripping into the sizzling ocean as the waves crash over the magma cooling a layer which is then pushed into the ocean from the continuing push of fresh lava from the bottom of the earth.
We got to the lava flow while the sun was still up but slowly the sun retreated making the contrast of darkness and the glow of the molten earth more apparent. Waves would crash, lava would spew like fireworks, a constant sound of sizzle and the bright glow of the lava kept me entranced. It was like sitting by a campfire staring and getting lost in thought, but in a much more powerful way - fire is great, but fire from the depths of the earth is even better.
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| Walking over the barren lava flow |
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| The beauty of magma |
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| Wearing a rain poncho watching the lava |
Two completely different 'lands down under'. The view of the land under the sea, and the view of the lava - the land
under the sea = Amazing.
~Elizabeth
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