Aloha from Maui -Post 3

We continue on our quest to find every snorkel beach on Maui. I look like a lobster on several body parts - especially my foot-tops and my knees. Ah, the divine misery of sunburn!

Friday morning was our big 5-hour snorkel trip on the Boss Frog boat to Molokini and Turtle Town. Molokini is a partial rim of a volcano crater that rises only about 100 feet above sea level. The crater is about 150 feet deep, but the waters are very clear and teeming with fish. The boat from Ma'alaea takes about an hour to get there, and they provide breakfast and the snorkel gear. We got suited up and went in the water and spent about an hour swimming with and watching tropical fish, looking for eels in the rocks and admiring the coral. We were pretty much the last ones out of the water.

This first picture is toward Molokini - that low half-crater in the distance, with Kahoolawae also in the picture.

At the Molokini crater, a number of boats are anchored as people suit up and go into the water.

After we got out of the water, one of our colleagues took this picture of us in the seating area of the boat.

Then it was on to Turtle Town which is off the resort town of Wailea. We got back in the water (they have a ladder down into the water - you go down the ladder, put on your fins and swim off) and went searching for turtles. The water was not as clear, and I saw a few turtles on the bottom, and then headed back. About halfway back to the boat, I saw a turtle, maybe 3 feet long, on the surface right in front of me, so I stopped, swam parallel to it and watched it dive down. Pretty cool. When we got back on the boat, we had a hamburger lunch and headed back to the dock.

We knew that Joanie and Ray were going to the luau at the Hyatt Regency in Ka'anapali, so we called them to see if they minded if we joined them. They had VIP seats because it was Joanie's ?0th birthday but we decided to go anyway. We called and got reservations, got dressed and headed down there about 4 PM. I found Joanie and Ray in the VIP line, figured out where they were going to sit, and when we got into the seating area, we got a table about 50 feet from them. We were seated next to a nice family from Long Island and enjoyed talking to them. It was a nice dinner - roasted pig, teriyaki steak, veggies, rice, salad, fresh fruit, etc. The luau show was wonderful - Linda thought it was the best we've ever seen (I frankly don't remember much about the others - except when I had to go onstage and act foolishly). The climax was a fire dance that was exceptional.

We met Joanie and Ray afterwards, but they wanted to walk on the beach and we needed to go back to our condo. We'll see them again on Saturday evening for dinner.