About a month ago I was informed by my boss that I was going to be in Hawaii the week of March 30th to represent Syngenta at a conference. When I started to make my travel reservations I though, you should invite Susie to join you for the weekend since it is conference and Easter. So I did.
Friday afternoon, April 3rd Susie arrived in Honolulu around 2:30. I met her at the gate and gave her a lei that I had purchased at the airport. (I thought it was real flowers but it was silk treated with perfume to smell like the real flowers).
We had dinner in the airport then caught our Hawaiian Airlines flight to Maui for the weekend. We arrived around 6:30, got our luggage, picked up the rental car and drove across the island to Lahaina. Along the way we stopped at a gas station to pick up some small items for breakfast.
The next morning we were up early to drive to the Wala warf to catch our boat to go snorkeling. We used
Captain Steve's Lanai snorkeling service. The had a light breakfast before we boarded the pontoon boat for the trip to the island of Lanai. Along the way we were lucky enough to come on a group of three humpback whales, a mother, her calf, and a male.
We arrived in Lanai around 10 am and snorkeled near the boat harbor. The water was extremely clear and we had some great views of the coral and the fish.
Here is one of the bigger and better looking fish I saw in the water.
And this photo just to prove that I was also in the water.
After about an hour in this location we pulled anchor and sailed around the harbor to a new location where there were more interesting rock formations in the water. It was a bit rougher water and the coral was deeper but the views were more impressive than at the first location. Of course I left my camera in the boat so I didn't get any underwater photos.
We finished snorkeling around noon then rode back around to the north side of the island where we anchored and had lunch. Then it was back to Lahaina. On our return trip we ran into the same group of 3 whales we had seen earlier.
We were back at the warf around 2 pm, tired and sticky from the sea water. We did do a good job of avoiding sunburn. We returned to our hotel, showered, and took a short nap. Then we drove to Lahaina to pick up some Hawaiian clothing and to buy chocolate covered Macadamia nuts for family and friends.
We were going to eat dinner at Bubba Gumps but as we walked down the street we saw the sign for the Lahaina Fish Company. It had a wonderful seafood menu so we stopped there to eat. They seated us on the patio next to the water and we enjoyed a very delicious meal.
On our way out of town we noticed a large, new, LDS chapel on the hill. We decided that we would get up at 5:30 and go to the morning session of conference.
