Turtles!!!

Well, it's all over red rover - we fly back to Honolulu later this afternoon. Maui was "cool" - not quite as "remote" as I thought, but looking back over the photos it sure is beautiful.

Row & I both agree that the BEST thing we did was go snorkeling with Turtles!!!I saw Catriona Rowntree go snorkeling with turtles on Getaway about 4 years ago and thought to myself - I'm going to do that! And so, yesterday I achieved one of my lifetime goals! Always a good feeling - definately made it worthwhile coming to Hawaii & Maui.

I don't have a pic from yesterday as we were in the water with them and our camera isn't waterproof but I can honestly say that we saw about 10 of them over the course of an hour or so and that we a couple of them surfaced within 1m (literally!) of Row & I!! They were SO beautiful and magestic - so old... truly amazing. In any case - I have found a pic on the web and attached him instead - as it is exactly how close we were to the turtles and they look exactly the same.

Ok - now that I've said that, I can get back to the start of the snorkeling trip! We started seeing whales within literally 3 minutes of pulling out of Ma'alaea Harbour - it was early in the morning and we were blown away by how many mamma whales and calves were hanging out in the bay - They were BEE YOU TEA FULL! Along the course of the day we probably saw around 25-30 whales, some where just surfacing to breath, others were doing tail and fin slaps, and some were just doing the "dolphin like" swimming (where you see there tops come in and out of the water as they swim along). The closest they came to us was probalby 50m or so. Again - truley awesome.

Our first snorkel spot was at Molokini Crater (see pic) - the crater itself was beautiful, the visibility amazing, reef colour was actually quite vibrant but the actual number and diversity of fish didn't really compare to the Barrier Reef or Bunaken Island (Sulawesi, Indo). But it was another thing we wanted to check off the list while we were here which was awesome.

Whoopsies - I'm babbling again... gotta go; gotta go.