Holy crap! Two awesome dive trips in one year! After Cozumel, we thought, “Hey! Let’s really mix it up… and go back to Coz in the fall.” We were already starting the process when our FinLife friends held out this giant carrot with 10 days of Diving off Kona! written on it. Well, being the easily-swayed horses we are, we ditched the Coz idea (Sorry Kim and Claire) and said “Let’s do this thing!”
The whole idea was four couples sharing a beautiful house in the hills above the Kona coastline on the Big Island. For you geographically challenged, that’s the Island of Hawaii. It REALLY was hard to not turn this down. Getting to travel with fellow FinLifers, “Cruise Director” Jeanette, “I’m here because Jeanette told me I need to be” Jason, “Camera Bug” Grace, “Tiki Boy” Matt, and of course the Iron Diver himself, “Bun Boy” Bert, was a big incentive. We love those guys! Their nicknames for me and Shelli are too vulgar to post here. Ha!
Using our Alaska credits from postponed trips, we flew non-stop from PDX to Kona. We opted for seating in steerage, but it worked out that the flight was not packed and we got the row to ourselves. Once arrived, and rental cars procured, we climbed (drove) the 1200 feet up from the airport to our palatial house in the rainforest zone. It really was beautiful. From the back patio, the view of the Kona coast was stunning, as were the sunsets. We had a pool, jacuzzi, giant kitchen, and full run of the place. We also had hot and cold running geckos and the occasional cockroach and millipede. Hey, it’s the tropics, they come with the turf.
We were also serenaded by these odd birds that came out at sunset and kept at it until dawn with their whistling call that Jason finally identified as going “Bo PEEEP.” Holy shit, was that annoying. The call, not Jason’s description. So we could sleep, we shut our bedroom windows to quiet those annoying little bastards. In the evenings we looked in the trees but could find no sign of them. Like any smart critter, they shut the hell up when we drew near. After several days, Shelli decided to use the Googles on the Interwebs and made a discovery. Those weren’t annoying little bird-bastards, they were annoying little frog-bastards! The size of a dime, they are an invasive species (shocker) from Puerto Rico called the Coqui frog. Good luck finding those little mothers. In the end, we learned to accept them, and they us, as they kept up their serenade. Every. Fucking. Night.
Let’s talk diving. After all, this is Scuba Diving.Rocks! Not, Let’s-be-pissed-at-the-topside-wildlife.com (that would include the Covid-denying, mask-refusing, predominantly-white, Free-dumb, found protesting at some intersections).
The diving was incredible and far better than we expected. We mostly dove with Kona Honu Divers for seven days out of our ten-day trip. We were all impressed with the divemasters and the dive operation overall. The coral reefs in Hawaii are really pretty monochromatic, pale greens and grays, but the fish are spectacular in color and shape! There is a ton of endemic life as well as reef fish you can find in other tropical realms. We saw so many cool things. I believe I saw at least one creature I had never seen before on every dive. Some notable sightings from everyone: Several octopus, a school of at least 20 juvenile blacktip reef sharks at about 2-3 feet long, white tip reef sharks – one that was knocked-up, a 10-foot tiger shark at a distance, spinner dolphins (first time seeing dolphins from below), spotted eagle rays, dragon moray eels, tons of butterflyfish, surgeonfish, endemic triggerfish, huge frogfish, a sea robin, and some fantastic invertebrates including pencil urchins, giant white shrimp, and multiple species of nudibranchs.
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Our scheduled Manta Dive turned out to be a bust and so it got turned into a night dive that was really great nonetheless. As we returned to the boat, two finally showed up, but we were out of air. Bucket list item… not checked.
The most bizarre dive we’ve ever experienced was our Pelagic Magic dive with Jack’s Dive Locker. Head out at sunset to about 3 miles offshore and stop the boat over water a mile deep, and experience the greatest migration on Earth. We were six to a dive boat and, once at our destination, there were six, 50-foot ropes dropped over the side. We jumped in and attached a lanyard to our very own rope and drifted with the current at around 20 to 40 feet with a flash light faced into the current around us to see what we could see. Every night creatures come up from the twilight zone to near the ocean’s surface to feed. Most of the critters are uniquely adapted to their ocean world and exploit it with such incredible adaptations. Others are larval forms of well known species like crab, lobster, jellies, and so much else. If you saw it yourself, it would hit about a 9.9 on your weird-shit-o-meter. Truly the most alien creatures we’ve ever imagined. Check it out here. After about an hour of watching strange beings go by, it was time to get back on board to discover that the sea had become very unkind, which challenged all of us to not lose our dinner as we raced back to the marina.
So many cool experiences on every dive, even the underwater geology was amazing. Collapsed lava tubes, lava fields of fractured rock and others of truly molten rock in twisted shapes, it really accentuates how relatively young the Big Island is. And that takes us back up topside to explore this massive island.
Shelli and I managed to get a couple of good road trips out of this too. First one was heading south to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. I can’t lie, it was cool to see jungles, lava fields, coffee farms, more lava fields, beautiful landscapes, and more lava fields. But as the driver, it was the most tedious driving I have done in years. Cops in Hawaii are nearly as ubiquitous as they are in California and their speed limits are painfully slow. I appreciate the sentiment, but holy shit I felt like an old fart just trying to keep it at five over. On the other hand, I also saw speed signs in the rare 55 zones that read “minimum speed 40.” Only other place I’ve seen that is in Florida, Land of the Retired Raisin.
Kilauea Crater was amazing and I was very sorry that I did not get to see the fountains of molten lava shooting skyward. Everything was quiet aside from the steam vents we visited. Again the geology and volcanism blows your mind. The whole caldera is roughly 3 by 4 miles across. You see remnants of at least 4 lava lakes. Each one has sunk well below the other and finally the last vestiges of this crater has just become a huge pit. The hotspot that made this island is moving southeast and that’s why Leilani Estates got screwed in 2018 and that a new seamount is forming off the southeast shore. They call it Lo’ihi seamount. I call it Hawai’i junior. Give it 5,000 years or so and it will be smothered in haole robot tourists.
Our second trip was to the north and skirted Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea may be a little taller, but seeing Mauna Loa towering over the south, you really appreciate how incredibly massive Mauna Loa is. Once again we drove past expansive lava fields of every type, this time along the open coast, and then headed into the hills to Waimea for lunch. We had hoped to head to Hilo on the wet side of the island but we had hit our limit for the day and wanted to head back. There was still more fun to be had with our housemates on this epic trip. Food and drink to be shared, jokes to be told, movie lines recited, nicknames invented, and those goddamn Bo PEEP frogs needed an audience.