Won't You Take Me to Turtle Town...

So you may have figured out that for the last couple of posts, although I wrote "today," I actually typed the entries on the day after the events took place. I got a little behind...but that all changes now. I'm in a typing mood, so when I write "today" now, it actually means Monday. As some of you know, my mom gave us some "blow money" to spend on some sort of fun thing in Hawaii that we might not normally do. We decided to use some of that cash to take a snorkeling boat tour, and we picked one that would take us to Molakini, which is the half-crater shaped island that you see in the photo above.

There are lots of people here who are happy to book adventures for tourists, often including a hefty (though hidden) booking charge on top of the cost of the activity. We took advantage of our resort's free wi-fi to book our trip on-line and saved enough money for a nice dinner tonight. We thought that we had gotten a pretty good deal, but didn't realize how good until we were waiting to check in this morning and heard a girl behind us in line brag about how she had gotten her ticket for only $89 instead of the regular $99 cost. Ravi and I did a mental high five when we heard that, since we'd gotten the same trip for $65--yes!!!

We were kind of disappointed when we arrived at our first stop, Molakini, because the crew told us that we had to stay only in this one little area (their company's reserved section of the crater). They enforced this rule by having a guy in a kayak yell at anyone who dared go beyond the boat area (me, of course, more than once). The water was super clear and beautifully blue, but the fish and coral were only average--not as good as other places we've been on Maui. They did provide a nice breakfast, lunch and free Mai Tais, though, which eased the pain a bit.

The next stop was at "Turtle Town," which sounded super gimicky to me and like it might be kind of lame. It actually ended up being pretty neat, though. Most of the people on our boat stayed in one small little area with their noodles (Kevin!), and they didn't see any turtles. Ravi and I ventured out a bit (stretching the rules and making the kayak guy keep his eagle eyes on us) and found a shy turtle. He was hiding under some coral, and only came out briefly to get some air before hiding again. I think that a lot of boats stop there and he's tired of being harassed by snorkelers. There were some neat fish and good coral, as well, so it was actually a really good stop. I also got to go down the waterslide into the water--lots of fun!

The ride back was very windy, which made for an exciting ride on the front of the ship for us. We got a great view of the Valley Island and even saw a turtle swimming in front of the boat. We were finally able to get a famous ice cream cookie sandwich when we get back to land, and it was delicious and deserving of the world famous claim.

I grew my nails out so they would look good for our wedding, but now they are making it difficult for me to type--they keep getting caught between the keys. Also, Ravi says that he'll be back on duty with the blog writing tomorrow. So this is Karen, signing off.