I don't even know where to begin with my hawaii trip. It was easily the most amazing week of vacation I have ever taken. It was exciting going somewhere I've never been, without no one but myself.
And most exciting was that this was my home for the week...the Kona Aggressor II (no one told me what happened to the first one.
The boat was a 85 foot catamaran that had 14 passengers and 6 crew. It's first cruise was February 1992! We cruised up and down the coast of the Big Island (Kona) searching for the best diving.
In total I did 25 dives, so there is a lot of things I could talk about (thats around 25 hours in the water!!) The coolest things I saw were.....
1. The Manta Rays. It's impossible to describe how awesome these gentle giants were. Basically we sat on the ocean floor at night and shined out lights up, attracting the plankton. The plankton then attracted the enormous mantas! They had around a 15-20 foot "wingspan". I saw one that was easily the size of my car.
While they look scary, they are totally harmless. One gave me a little slap to the face as it went by, but otherwise they just floated on by.
2. Turtles! The whole reason I went to hawaii was to swim with turtles. And I was not disappointed. I saw at least one turtle every day. I even got to swim with one for about 10 minutes. We also saw a giant sea turtle, which our dive master estimated was over 100 years old!
3. Fireworks on the boat: I was on the boat on 4th of july, and we celebrated by shooting fireworks off the boat. It was very amazing to have our own private show!
4. The open water and all the fishes! I spent a lot of time just floating along taking it all in. We saw millions of fish, of every color. I have hundreds of pictures, and I can't fit them all in one blog.
5. A hammerhead shark!!! I didn't get a picture of him because I saw him on a dive I didn't have my camera. My dive buddy and I were just hanging out below the boat when he swam by. Luckily he didn't bother us!!!
The other great part of the trip was the people. It was a very diverse group, but we all loved diving. Everyone else was very experienced, so I learned a lot from them.
My favorite person was my dive buddy, Ansley. She was taking a gap year between high school and college and spending her time traveling the world. It was nice having someone similar in age to me, and we both were looking for the same creatures on dives.
I couldn't have asked for a better vacation (I think I said that already) The only problem was that it was too short. Can't wait for my next diving vacation!!
Here are some more of my favorites:
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