Early Birthday!

For an early birthday celebration Will planned a new adventure for us. We went on a snorkeling adventure with a water sports company in Hawaii Kai, right on the marina. The boat took us out onto Maunalua Bay on the Southeast end of Oahu. Just past the bay is what is referred to as a turtle cleaning station. It's an area in the ocean with a large reef about thirty feet below the surface of the ocean. Here many turtles come to rest and eat. There are also many large schools of reef fish that come to the area as well. The fish eat the algae off the turtles, hence, a turtle cleaning station. We got to snorkel with at least four turtles (sometimes it's hard to know if you see the same one twice or its a different one, but I saw four in one eye shot, so there were at least four!). At one point I couldn't see anyone around me, and it was just me and a turtle swimming through the ocean - so cool! As Will described, it was a boat ride with a "twist." The twist is that in addition to standard snorkeling, we went in "scuba sub" scooters. Google it! It's where you put your head into a globe type thing and can then go under water and see the sea life. It was a little trippy and my depth perception was all off, but it was a unique way to see the fish and turtles. We even got to feed the fish bread and when they ate it out of your hand they sucked at your fingers. Will got a little bit of a paper cut like scrape from one of them!

Here are views from the boat. (P.S. I found these from another girl's blog who did a similar trip!)

Koko Head

Diamond Head

And here are some pictures I found from a Google search of the turtle cleaning station. Obviously not exactly what we saw, but very similar and it gives you an idea of the turtles that we saw!

After our boat trip we had lunch at Kona Brewing Company and later that night we had carrot cake for dessert that Will ordered from Honolulu's best cake shop!