Hawaii

December 22, 2010 Wednesday, Kona, Hawaii-The Big Island. Today we got up at 8:30, ate breakfast then went to the Pink Champagne Bar to see about getting Tender tickets to go ashore. The coast at Kona is too shallow for the cruise ship to dock, so they have to anchor about 1/4 mile off shore and take us by Tender boat to shore. It is a covered speed boat that holds about 60 people-it was very squished and took about 5 minutes to get to shore. We waited in line for our turn to go ashore. When we got there, we had two hours to wait until our snorkeling adventure. We walked around the shore and shopped a little while we waited. We got on a small catamaran with 15 passengers plus 2 crew. Mike was our captain and 'T' was his shipmate. The drove us 12 miles towards the protected coral reef. On the way they spotted a 40 foot spotted shark whale that was right by our boat. So to got my underwater camera and started to to snap pictures. I got a picture of the side of it! Then Mike asked if any of us wanted to get in the water with the whale and I said YES! So he told me and two others to grab snorkels and jump in, and as quick as I could, I did. I started looking underwater for the whale, while hanging on to the side of the boat, but I didn't see it. I got back into the boat, and Barbara and several others were going to get in, we waited awhile to see if we would spot it again. When it became apparent a while latter, we left to go to our snorkeling spot. When we got in the water, we weren't allowed to touch anything or go on shore, but it was beautiful and we had about an hour to swim around and look at all of the fish and coral reef. It was beautiful to see the fish and reef close up. I got lots of pictures with my camera.When we got back on the boat, our crew had fresh cut pineapple, sodas, chips and cookies for us to snack on. Barbara was one of the last ones to swim back from snorkeling, and Mike started throwing cookies close to her, and the fish would swarm up right by her and she would scream. The more Barbara screamed, the funnier that Mike thought it was and he kept tossing cookies out close to Barbara and saying "I love it when they scream!" He was getting quite a kick out of scaring her. On the trip back to our ship, we stopped at several locations to see interesting things. We saw lava holes, sea caves, a home owned by Oprah, next door to one owned by Tiger Woods. We saw Parrot Cave and a place that looks like the eyes and nose of a woman with long hair. In the olden days, natives would put fires in her eyes and nose to scare off people that came by. As we were heading back, we got caught on the tail side of a hurricane and it rained really hard for about 30 minutes. It was raining so hard it made us get the giggles. Barbara put on a snorkel and we started laughing even harder. As we got closer to our cruise ship, we started to see some dolphins. Mike said to us "Do you want to see something really cool?" We all said yes. So he started steering the boat in circles as fast as he could and the dolphins started jumping in our wake. It was so neat. What a fun experience. We got back on the tender, then when we got back to our stateroom we showered and went and ordered salads from the Cadillac Cafe to take back to our room. We relaxed in our room and watched t.v.