Blue Water Rafting- July 24

Last night I slept better than the first night, but still, it wasn't that great. Instead of pulling out the bed, I took the cushions off and laid them out on the floor, covered those with sheets, and had a make-shift bed. I also learned how to turn the air conditioner down so I didn't freeze my hinnie off.

We woke up early this morning so that we could drive down to the dock and meet up with the Blue Water Rafting tour group. Blue Water Rafting is a snorkel tour, and it actually turned out to be less snorkeling than any of us had thought. But it was good! We got there early, and of course they were a little late, but it's Hawaii, what else would you expect except laid back workers? The captain guy asked if I was over 18- yep- so that I could sign my life away on a waiver form, and put me in charge of getting Mom and Dad to sign it too. We loaded up and there were only like 13 other people on the raft (luckily there were 5 people that were a no show so we had more room). One of the guys, Danny comes up to the meeting area with a bright red Hawaiian shirt on, with a black guitar shirt under, a bandanna, sun glasses, long hair, and immediately says, "I'm with the band." Now there are two ways this could have gone. One- he could have been oober obnoxious, over the top, annoying. Or two- he could be really fun and entertaining. Which do you think was our luck??? Number two. This guy was seriously entertaining, which was just icing on the cake because our two captains (Captain Devin and Captain Rob) were freaking hilarious on their own. Devin and Rob were cracking cheesy jokes the WHOLE time, but they were so perfectly planned that it was hilarious. Let's see if I can remember some... At one point in time we saw sea turtles and stopped the boat to watch them stick their heads out and such and Rob goes, "The reason that they're called green sea turtles is because their meat is green. I can vouch for that, I ran over one once. It worked out quite nicely though, I could eat it right there on the spot. It kind of tasted like spotted owl and bald eagle." That was funny :o) Or when we hit a pod of dolphins, Devin says, "So, you know, when dolphins travel in a group it's called a pod, right? Well when a dolphin travels alone, scientists call it an i-pod." Hehehe :o) And also when swimming with the dolphins Rob said that the dolphins were attracted to our boat because Devin had painted a nude lady dolphin on the bottom of the raft. Okay, not all of their humor was clean humor, and not all of it was histarical, but it was good. When we came in to the dock at the end of our trip they kept on going on and on with some bird jokes. That one was for sure good, but I can't remember it all, but I'll try. "Be careful when you're feeding the birds, they have churpies. But don't worry, it's tweetable. Yeah, with the right medicine, it will only take 3-4 beaks." I know there was more to it, but you get the gist.

Alright, so aside from the comedy act, the tour was incredible. It started out with us seeing turtles right away, they honestly were surrounding our boat. Then we took off and stopped because there was a large pod of spinner dolphins. We didn't get to see any do any amazing tricks or anything, but we stayed with them for a little while. As we were leaving the dolphins we saw a blow fish that was blown up. We circled him with our boat and for some reason Rob reached down and touched it. Yep, those things really are sharp is what he told us. Freaking gracious. One of the 18 year olds on the boat lost her top on the drive out. She wasn't sitting near me, so I don't know exactly what happened, but Rob had to slow the boat down so that she could re-tie her bathing suit. That's classy chica, really classy. We looked at the southern most tip of Maui and got a little lesson on the different kinds of lava. That began our 30 minute lava tour. We saw side ways blow holes (and got sprayed by them thanks to the careful manuvering of Rob). We drove our boat into a cave (where we again got sprayed by a compression cave). We saw lots of different lava formations that looked like squirrels, hogs, Walter Mathow, Fred Flinstone, and a light switch. At one point in time we stopped the boat and jumped in the water really quick and ended up swimming with a crocodile. Do you believe me? Well don't, it was just another rock formation that looked like a croc head. I just thought it was cool to say that I swam with a crocodile in Maui.

Then it was time to hit up the snorkeling spots. We went to Molokini which is a really popular snorkeling spot that we went to last time. The cool part is that you're snorkeling in a volcano crater, the not cool part is that it's a REALLY popular place to snorkel, so there's more people than fish. This trip was different, because we snorkeled the back side of the crater. Blue Water Rafting is the ONLY company that takes snorkelers out there. The back side of the crater is more for divers, since it's a 300 foot steep drop off into the ocean, but right along the reef there's some pretty cool sites to see. Oh my gosh. The water was so unbelievably blue/purple. And it was so clear that even though it was such a long way to the bottom, you could still see pretty far down. The reef was beautiful and the fish were not shy :o) There was this one part of the wall that was safe enough to get right up against and you could ride the swell up and down like a water elevator. It was quite the experience.

We had one more spot to snorkel before heading in. Along with the Molokini trip most boats stop off at "Turtle Town" Rob told us that we were skipping Turtle Town and going straight to "Turtle World." We got off the boat and immediately saw two turtles. Then one more came swimming over to them and then one more appeared out of no where. The rest of the group followed right behind us, so Mom Dad and I headed more in land to check out the coral and see what fish we could. There wasn't too much fish activity in the coral, but I got to touch a sea urchin, and I really was intrigued by the coral and the small fishies I was seeing. By time we went back to the boat, we couldn't find those turtles again, but we saw one more swimming at us so we chased him for a little while.

That was basically the end of our tour. Oh, except that Rob had some fun doing donuts in the raft right before we entered the harbor. Yeah, the 4 hours went by pretty quick, and we had an amazing time. For sure, I would recommend the trip to others, but pretty much only if they went on the "Pineapple Express" with Devin and Rob.

We came home and showered quickly before we headed out to Kahalui to do some shopping. I found a really cute bathing suite at this one place, and it was on clearance, but unfortunately they only had XS and L bottoms and those didn't fit me. I definitely needed one of the middle ones. Sad day. But I did end up getting a cute bathing suite cover up from Hilo Hatties that I wanted. I don't think we got much from the Mall except an early dinner. But after the mall and after dinner we headed out to Ho'olaki something beach to see if we could watch the wind surfers. Nope- there were NONE out. Sad day. We walked along the cliffs for a bit and enjoyed the ocean, but without any wind surfers to watch, there wasn't much need to stay too long.

We drove back and Mom and Dad headed up the stairs while I headed across the street to walk along the beach while talking to Alysha. It seems that I can't leave my two roommates home alone without them wanting to cause harm to each other. Poor girls. I ended up talking to Alysha for an hour and a half -ish and for went my run. Because even though it's not all that late, I am that tired. The snorkeling trip ended at 11:30am, but when we were driving out to the mall, I all of a sudden realized how tired I was. I couldn't stop yawning and Dad was having a rough time staying awake too. That trip this morning really took it out of us. So I'm not going to do much more tonight, and I'm going to call it good. I'm waking up early tomorrow morning to go for my run to make up not going tonight... I just hope I can get up and go. We're not leaving until 7am, so I think I can get up at 6am. Yeah, I can do that.