The wedding in California was only the tip of the iceberg for our vacation plans! We decided since we were already hours away from home, why not just go a little bit further and have that Hawaiian vacation we had intended on taking for my 30th birthday??
I think everyone in Alaska goes to Hawaii every year, so we had plenty of people to ask for suggestions. Everyone had their favorite island, so we had to narrow it down. Matt’s top request was to go diving and my top request was to see active volcanoes - the only island that satisfies these two is the Big Island! (You can see the sloping side of Mauna Loa off in the distance.)
We haven’t been diving since we went to Cozumel shortly after I was certified - almost 6 years ago! When I was making plans, the dive shop recommended doing a refresher pool dive. I tried my hardest to get a pool dive in before we left, but given the lack of pool options in Anchorage (and the triathlon training season), I couldn’t fit it in. Luckily, the dive shop in Kona was able to squeeze us in for a quick refresher dive. I’m so glad they did, I felt so uncomfortable when we first got in, but started to get excited by the end of it! I was even waving at people who were taking photos of us through the pool window.
We tried to maximize the diving options by combining a two-tank morning dive and a two-tank manta ray dive that evening. The dive shop affectionately refers to such divers as dive animals - ha! We were killing time between the dives trying to calculate how close we were getting to the nitrogen limits and plan out the last two dives to make sure we didn’t hit it. Luckily the Manta Ray dive was fairly shallow.
I didn’t end up taking my camera on the dives, so we only have a few iPhone photos from the day, but the dives were pretty awesome. Only a single Manta Ray showed up on the night dive, but it was still amazing. He was a juvenile male named Grayer who is estimated to be about 700 pounds. He didn’t care at all that we were there, he swooped right over Matt’s head several times - it was incredible!
Plus there were several varieties of eels creeping around that were highly entertaining. One looked like it was stalking the smaller fish, but these larger blue fish would get in between it and it’s prey. The eel looked so frustrated! Haha, I don’t know if it was a coincidence or if there really are “protector” fish, I’ll have to look it up! :)