I've made it to the beautiful island of Hawaii! I finally arrived here on the evening of July 29th and have been running/swimming/driving around non stop since. This little vacation on the way to South Korea has been amazing.
One of the first things we did once I arrived was drive up Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano standing 13,803 ft above sea level, its peak is the highest point in the state of Hawaii. Three of us really enjoyed the long bumpy ride up...one of us did not enjoy it so much. On top of this volcano are the world's largest observatories for optical, infrared, and sub-millimeter astronomy.
I would say the coolest thing we have done here so far is night diving with the Manta Rays in Kona. The four of us went out on a small boat with My Kona Adventures (www.mykonaadventures.com). This was amazing for a few reasons, I've never gone diving at night so that was pretty wild itself. Then, I didn't really know what to expect as far as how big these things were or how close they would get to us. It didn't take long for these massive creatures to start swimming along the bottom maybe 20ft directly below us. We held on to the side of a raft that had a underwater light and would attract all this plankton, then the massive manta ray would look up, open it's mouth and shoot up right at us! At the last second before swimming into us it would flip back so that it was basically belly to belly with us and then swim back down. They would keep circling for the plankton many times, each time skimming our bellys or elbows as it swam by.
I have about 2 weeks before I have to leave Hawaii and start my life in S. Korea so I hope to keep you all posted on the the trouble we cause in the upcoming weeks. We received word that a category four hurricane named Iselle is on the way...so that could be interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment