We had arranged for a snorkeling tour of Molokini and Lana'i today, so we got up early and headed out to Ma'alaea bay to the Pacific Whale Foundation. It was a calm day and the ride out to Molokini went fine for Chloe and me. I was a little worried since both of us are a little prone to seasickness.
We arrived at Molokini -- a submerged crater with abundant marine life and jumped in the water, taking in the colors of all the cool fish with unpronounceable names -- humuhumunukunukuyamalangadingdong anyone?
About twenty minutes into the swim, I started feeling a little queasy and headed back to the boat. I should explain that my experience on boats is generally not good. The last time I was on a boat for a full day was in junior high school, when my dad had the misguided idea to go out on a fishing boat at 5 in the morning to catch salmon. We both ended up being sick for the entire eight hour trip and I vowed never to do anything like that again. However, vows are easily forgotten after eighteen years, and it was time for a refresher course. In the time since then, I took skin diving class at UC berkeley and did fine until the swell picked up on a dive near Fort Ross, and the combination of the moving sea and the kelp waving slowly in opposite directions made me turn green and then throw up in the water. The good news was that whatever I had eaten for breakfast seemed to attract the fish. It was a miserable day which had started out with the humiliation of having to wear a womens wet suit because I was so skinny. I must have been a sorry sight -- a pale skinny teenage boy with boob flaps dragging himself out of the water on his stomach. Well, as I said I had clearly forgotten about both of these experiences, so what could be better than combining two activities which had each made me extremely sick in the past? They would probably cancel eachother out right? Well ... no. I sat very still on the boat, and kept my eyes fixed on Maui as the captain informed us that we would be heading out into the "open ocean" for the 25 mile crossing to Lana'i soon. As people filtered back on the boat, word spread that some jellyfish had stung a few people and we saw some of the nasty looking red welts.
Along the 25 mile crossing we saw some humpback whales and although I didn't see it myself, other people saw a few of them breach. I was concentrating on the horizon, however. A pod of bottle nosed dolphins were swimming with the whales, which was also cool to see.
Right as we entered the bay, a pod of spinner dolphins surrounded the boat, and we watched them surf around and jump out of the water.
By the time we got to the dive site I was feeling a lot better so I headed into the water with Chloe and we swam around for a while. I cut things short when I started feeling ill again, and clambered back onto the boat. Big swell started coming in a few minutes later and I began to feel very poorly indeed. Chloe came back on the boat around ten minutes later to find a slightly pale husband staring out at the horizon, a half eaten hamburgr on his lap, who was refusing to even talk. Finally the critical point came when I realized that I wasn't going to get out of this trip without throwing up , so I ran downstairs, elbowed my way into the bathroom, and didn't even manage to close the door before things got messy. It's probably in bad taste to go into much more detail but I'll just say two words: "Projectile" and "Vomit". Oh and also that I had eaten fruit for breakfast. I felt much better afterwards, but was faced with the daunting task of wiping down the now orange bathroom and cursing their low-flow toilet system. Despite it being messy and disgusting, I really felt worlds better afterwards and was fine on the 20 mile trip back to port. Right before maneuvering back into the slip we saw some huge sea turtles in the water. So there you have it -- no more boats or snorkeling for me!
From port, chloe and I headed out to Kite Beach to scope things out, but it was completely dead. Some locals filled us in on the intricacies of the launch. Over all it looks like a beautiful beach though.
On the way back to Kihei we stopped at Neil Pryde, and then Ichiban Okazuya. Ichiban is a humble storefront with really great fish plates.
We had the teriyaki Ahi with gobo root and talked to the chef for a while before heading back to the hotel to eat our fish on the beach.
