As we went to bed last night, I started thinking about the tight timing we had on our planned excursion today. We had tickets booked for a 12:15 ship excursion to go snorkelling with Captain Zodiac. But the all aboard call was 3:30 pm - so I needed to check the details of our excursion. That is when I discovered our start time had been changed from 12:15 to 7:45 am! Yikes - that, meant we didn’t have a relaxing morning, rather another 6:15 alarm in order to eat breakfast and pack our snorkelling bag to go ashore. Glad I read about that last night and not when we awoke this morning!
We gathered with 62 others in the MainStage and caught the first tender (after staff) to go ashore. Kona has a large pier, but it is being restored so we had to tender to go ashore. Each Zodiac took about 16 guests and we had two Canadian who we met through Cruise Critic as well as 3/4 of the quartet (that perform on the Lincoln Centre Stage) in our boat. Captain Ashleigh and First Mate Kate were our gudies today.
We had hardly left the pier when we spotted a pod of spinner dolphins. We learned that spinner dolphins actually sleep during the day and swim while they sleep. They were in pairs of two, which allows them the ability to use the right half of the brain on the right side and the left half of the brain on the left side to move in unison. They come to the surface to breathe as they are mammals, and they did that in pretty consistent cycles. They are capable of staying underwater for 20 minutes at a time, but they tend to do that when they are hunting and awake.
We then headed out 3.5 miles offshore, where more wildlife might be spotted. Other boats had gathered, then departed. We hung around and were rewarded with some amazing views short finned pilot whales, who also were in a sleeping phase. Captain Ashleigh cut the engine and the pilot whales just swam towards our boat. We watched them up close for about 10 minutes. Awesome!
After we saw the pilot whales we learned that an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the richter scale had just occured on Kona Island! The other boats who had seen the pilot whales first, said suddenly the whales took a deep dive downward - about the time of the earthquake, like they sensed a change in the environment! We felt nothing (and later learned friends on land hadn’t felt the earthquake either!)
We then went boated on over to Kealakekua Bay Marine Preserve. You need to be a competent snorkeler here (and we are) as you jump out of the boat into 15 - 80 feet of water to go explore. In addition to snorkelling equipment, Captain Zodiac had pool noodles to offer if you were nervous about being in the water. As this is a Marine Preserve, you had to wear Reef friendly sunscreen (we did) and you are not allowed to touch anything! Not the fish, not the coral, nothing. As experienced snorkelers, we had no trouble swimming around for an hour and spotting all kinds of fish. We saw moorish idols, barracuda and moray eels, to name a few. J saw a tuna!
There was a monument to Captain Cook donated by Great Britain to Hawaii. Captain Cook died here. Interestingly, when we did our driving tour of Kauai, we saw Waimea Bay, where Captain Cook first set foot on a Hawaiian Island (the first white person to do so).
After an hour of snorkelling, we climbed back in the boat and started heading back towards the pier. We stopped to view some parrots nesting in the walls of the volcanic rock right along the shore. We saw more spinner dolphins and had some fun playing in the waves with the boat!
As we arrived back at shore, we noted all kinds of people swimming long distances in the ocean. These are people perhaps still in town leftover from last week’s Ironman Triathlon. Captain Ashleigh told us 30,000 people were in town for this intense competition (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26 mile run). Cruise Ships are not allowed to come into town when the Triathlon is going on!
Swimmers practicing for lengthy swims in the ocean!
Once ashore, J returned to the ship to eat lunch. I saw a long line for a return tender so decided to go into town to explore a bit! J waited about 12 minutes for a tender. I ended up walking on 30 minutes later without a wait. Holland America has learned how to get people safely on a tender. They have two staff on the tender boat and two on land (or on the ship) aiding each guest that steps on a tender. The ocean did not look rough - but there was about a 5 foot swell, so that meant a lot of movement on the tender boat when you are trying to step on.
After lunch and a nap, J and I went up on the back terrace deck to enjoy the sun and lots of folks milling around. We met two more friends from Cruise Critic on the 10th Deck where we had some laughs visiting. We learned that R & E always go to the piano bar for entertainment at night, and I was saying I wanted to go to the MainStage where Cantare was performing, but I didn’t know anything about it. A young man on deck chair right near us spoke up and said that Cantare would be performing songs from the Stage and Screen. He introduced himself at Falu from the Netherlands as one of the performers of Cantare!
And so after a appetizer of hawaiian fruit and chocolate dessert (and okay main course of Marlin in between), we went to see the show Cantare. First time I have seen a standing ovation in the Mainstage! It was a top notch show - and Falu was a great singer! There were four men singing different songs from Grease to sounding out the rhythms of Chariots of Fire, or Jaws or whatever! Great entertainment!
We then followed the advice of R & E and went and checked out the piano bar. Talent here too, and lots of people singing along to familiar songs. The male and female each sing and play the piano - with minimal music to follow! Impressive.
Well that is the excitement of Hawaii behind us - and we now have four or five days at sea ahead of us (Kind of hard to figure out as we cross the International Date line and we supposedly miss October 17th entirely!)
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