Hawaii Day 7 - Snorkeling Fun!!

I said on my post about our horseback riding that I was really looking forward to that day's excursion, but today was TRULY the day that I was most excited about! We were going snorkeling with dolphins!

My experience with snorkeling, or anything involving wearing goggles has never been a great one. My hair always ends up getting in my way, I can't find a mask to fit my face, you name it and it's been a problem for me. All of those problems equal my mask never getting a good seal so my mask has always filled up with water, or fogged quickly. Either way it's taken away from my enjoyment of wearing a mask while in the water. I brought my own goggles that I had, but again they were not sealing correctly, so I used the goggles from the dive tour that we went on. Everything worked amazingly well! My goggles sealed correctly so I never had my mask fill up with water or fog up, so I had a great time snorkeling today!

Before we left the dock Michel took a picture of a boat whose name he thought was funny:

If you can't see it clearly it's called "Kid's Inheritance" :)

Michel also took a picture of me before we left the dock. Notice, my hair is pulled back and I have on my swimsuit with my cover-up on top. Yeah, that didn't last long (the looking somewhat-put-together).

Before our first snorkel drop I put on a wetsuit top that I had rented and took my hair down because I can never get my mask to fit over my ponytail. I have special snorkeling needs apparently :)

Now, I'm ready to go!!

I rented a wetsuit after reading many accounts on TripAdvisor.com where people said to get the wetsuit because the water was cold. Boy, were they right! During our first time in, the water wasn't too cold because we were swimming where it was only about 10-12 feet deep. However, I get chilly easily. During our second time in the water (with the dolphins) the water was about 25-30 feet deep, and definitely MUCH colder. Anyways....

...back to our first drop in the water...we drove around looking for seaturtles poking their heads out of the water. The first thing that we spotted though was a monk seal lying on the beach - a public beach!! We took a picture, but it was too far away and you really couldn't make out what you were looking out. Our boat captains told us that monk seals are an endangered species, but they'll swim in the water for a couple of weeks, and then they'll find a beach to lay on where they can just sleep for a week. Must be nice... :)

....so, again, back to our first drop in the water, we quickly found some sea turtles and were released to go into the water. We saw all kinds of awesome fish, and got some up-close looks at sea turtles. At one point I was swimming only about 10 feet away from one, and he was swimming on the surface of the water, so it was really cool!!

In case you can't make it out, this is a picture of a sea turtle swimming about 12 feet below us

Here's the sea turtle that we were really close to...he didn't seem bothered by us at all!

Such an awesome experience - seeing marine life in their natural habitat!!

We snorkeled here for about 20 minutes before moving on to the next spot. One of our boat captains said that the spot we were going to had reported seeing a pod of dolphins, so we were going to try and find them, too. It didn't take us too long before we found some...

Again, it was SOOO cool to see these magnificent creatures play in their natural environment. For a few minutes we just saw their fins sticking out of the water, but they started doing a couple of tricks for us.

Michel caught the end of this dolphin doing a flip out of the water...so cool!

They had no fear swimming right alongside our boat

In some of the pictures you can still see the shoreline. We were probably only about 100 feet away from the shore when we found the dolphins. These were spinner dolphins which are very common to Hawaiian waters (as told by our captain). They're much smaller than bottlenose dolphins, and generally only grow to be about 6-7 feet long and a couple hundred pounds. Babies are only about 4 feet long and 150 pounds. We were actually very lucky and saw some babies - they were so cute! I would bring one home with me if I could! We were told that the babies were only 1-2 weeks old, and a couple jumped out of the water....coolest. thing. ever!!

We were allowed to go in the water with them, but were warned that they would be very skittish to have people in the water since there were baby dolphins. Unfortunately, this was true. We saw about eight dolphins - all cruising the bottom of the ocean - about 20-25 feet below us. we were able to see them from the top of the water, and even took a picture, but it wasn't even worth saving. It just looked like a shadow! Oh well...I'll always remember it :)

Awesome snorkeling today!!

Before we headed back to the boat docks, our captain took us to see where the Black Pearl was (the actual ship used in the Pirates of the Caribbean)!

Then he drove the boat around so that each family could have their picture with the ship in the background.

What a great trip!! I'll never forget our fun snorkeling experience!

Hawaii Day 6 - Dole Pineapple Plantation

Today was the first day that we didn't have anything to do - no excursions planned, no nothing. So I sent a message to a former high school friend who currently lives on Oahu and asked if she knew of anything that's a "must" and she suggested the Dole Pineapple Plantation. I had totally forgotten about this! Another friend of mine visited Oahu back in June and told me about it, so I was glad to be reminded of it. Suddenly, we had something to do. :)

We're on the train that takes us on a 20 minute tour of the plantation - ready to go!

Once off the train, we had the option of taking our pictures as pineapple people. Michel couldn't resist.

Then we took a tour of the garden. Um, how do I get my yard to look like this??

Once we were done at the plantation we walked around the gift shop for quite some time. It's pretty amazing in itself! They have some of everything in there, so we got some awesome souvenirs for ourselves and a few others :)

We had eaten a big breakfast at a place called Cinnamon's that was supposed to be good. By the time we finished at the Dole plantation it was about 11:00 and we weren't hungry, so we decided that we would head back to the cottage, change clothes, go on a pre-lunch hike, and then go eat lunch out somewhere. 

We chose to hike up Makapuu Point. We've seen the trail many times as we've been driving and it was a halfway point between our cottage and where we would be stopping for lunch. This hike wasn't nearly as strenuous as Diamond Head, but still a good workout. Unfortunately, like the smart people that we are we didn't think about bringing sunscreen and I definitely got a little pink from the hike. 

Again, this hike supplied us with AMAZING views!! Why can't Texas have these kinds of views??

By the time we finished our hike it was about 1:00 or so - perfect time for lunch! So off to the Blue water Grill we went. We went here on recommendation of our cottage owner. The view that we had from our seats was amazing! The best part about going to lunch at 1:30 on a weekday?? There was hardly anyone there :)

The house with the red roof is what I want Michel to buy me. And if he wants to throw in the boat that happened to get into my picture...well, that's OK, too :)

As I said earlier, the restaurant wasn't too crowded, but we did have one continuous guest who tried to join us at dinner: 

This duck had no fear of people. I'm guessing that he's had enough people feed him that he associates people with giving him food. He would literally stand about 6 inches away from Michel's chair and just stare at him. At one point he even stretched his neck up as high as it would go to try and see our table. It was pretty humorous :)

Hawaii Day 5: Horseback Riding and Ocean Fun

Our fourth day in Hawaii was one that I was especially looking forward to. We were going to Kualoa Ranch for a 2-hour horseback tour. On the tour you would get to see where movies such as Jurassic Park and 50 First Dates were filmed. 50 First Dates is one of my all-time favorite romantic comedies, so I was especially excited about this location. 

We drove out to Kualoa Ranch which was about an hour away and got our horses. Michel and I joked that when we did a horseback riding tour two years ago as an excursion on our cruise we were paired with horses who shared our personalities - mine stopped to pee or poop every few minutes, and Michel's kept stopping to eat. This time proved no differently. Michel's horse was EXTREMELY stubborn and strong-willed, mine was pretty easy-going, go-with-the-flow, and a bit easily spooked - much like me!

Michel on his horse, Kula

 My sad attempt of taking a picture of myself on the horse. As you can see, it didn't work out, but my horse was a gorgeous brown color and very easy to guide. 

I teased Michel on the trip that his horse was so much like him because Michel was supposed to be the one leading the tour - just because he got saddled and to the gate first. I was right behind him. When the gate was opened for us, Michel's horse refused to move no matter how many times or how hard Michel kicked him. After a few times the tour guide suggested that we let my horse, Abendigo, go first, and he went! So I became the leader...scary, huh?

We saw some beautiful scenery during our tour.

In the picture above you can see a big tree trunk lying down, and in the right side of the picture you can see a green bus...

I was never able to get a great picture of this, but this fallen tree trunk is where they filmed a scene in Jurassic Park. Remember when the kids were waiting in the car and then a T-rex came out of the trees?? That scene was filmed here! The whole movie was supposed to be filmed on Oahu, but Oahu had a hurricane hit, and the rest of the movie actually ended up being filmed in Kauai. 

OK, so remember a couple pictures up where I pointed out that green bus over to the side of the picture? That was a tour bus from the ranch that must have just broken down. The reason that I pointed this out is because I said that my horse was easy to guide, but was easily spooked? He would not go anywhere near that bus! He just stopped and refused to move, so our guide had to go to the front of the line and take the lead until we got around the bus, and then my horse willingly followed behind her and her horse. It's funny how horses are so smart, but so timid. In fact, later one of those same tour buses (the one that my horse was spooked by) passed us on the road full of tourists and my horse wasn't phased by it at all. It was the empty tour bus sitting on the side of the road that was spooky to him. 

Anyways, on to more sights. After we passed Jurassic Park we saw Godzilla's footprints! We also learned that the American version of Godzilla had three toes while the Japanese version of Godzilla had four toes. Pretty interesting, huh?

Right past Godzilla's footprints were what excited me most...the set for 50 First Dates!! The whole movie wasn't filmed here, but a few scenes were. The road that we rode our horses along was the road that featured Drew Barrymore driving down when she was going to the Hukilau Cafe. Alongside that road, Adam Sandler pretended to shut it down for road work, put his penguin in the middle of the road, and pretended that Rob Schneider was beating him up on the side of the road. In the scene immediately following when Drew Barrymore chases Rob Schneider into a big, open field with a baseball bat....

...it was this field!! Kinda cool :)

One of the coolest things that we discovered, though, is that the Hukilau Cafe is real! We tried eating lunch there, but after making the 25 minute drive out of our way to find it we were disappointed to find that it was closed on Sundays. Well...I'm not disappointed that it's closed on a Sunday; I'm disappointed that we made the half hour trek out there and it was closed. 

Every time I mention or say the words Hukilau Cafe it makes me thing of the Adam Sandler song that he sings in the movie. Anybody else big fans of 50 First Dates or is that just me? 

Anyways, we also saw several old military bunkers from WWII. In this first picture there's a cow standing beside it. The cattle here are raised for beef.

After our tour we stopped into Boston's Pizza for lunch, and it was delicious! We were both starving by the time we got here, anyways, but the food really was good. 

We headed back to our cottage, let our food settle some, and headed down to the beach. I will admit that I haven't been a huge fan of our side of the ocean so far. We're on the windward side of Oahu, so we have waves that break around the shoreline. They're not huge - probably about 3 feet tall, but they're not my favorite. Even on a boogie board they're a bit rough for me. But I still go out there everyday and try it for a few minutes. And when I've had enough waves, I lay out on the beach and watch Michel take on the waves. 

Here's a few pictures of our beach fun!

Great action shot!

We're having such a great time here!