Snorkeling

We snorkeled twice in Kauai. If it were up to Jeff we would have snorkeled every day. We rented snorkel gear at a local shop. Most tourists rent everything from snorkel gear, to camping equipment, to beach chairs. It's hard to fit those things in your luggage on a plane. We snorkeled at Tunnels Beach, also called Makua Beach. Does that ring a bell? Did you see the movie Soul Surfer? Probably not but you've most likely heard about the female surfer with only one arm, Bethany Hamilton. Tunnels Beach is where a shark attacked her and took/ate her left arm. She was much farther out to sea and I didn't find this out until after our first snorkel visit, thank goodness. Our second snorkel visit was much shorter. Anyway, we lugged our snorkel gear from the parking lot to a spot on the beach. On the way we saw this fella.

Jeff said, "Do you see that dead seal? Everyone's taking a picture." This monk seal was not dead, just resting. Apparently they beach after a meal to rest and digest. Lifeguard's will rope them off (see the arrow) so people don't disturb them. A lot of pictures and video were being taken.

I watched it's belly rise and fall a few times and then went on my way.
Here was an easy spot to enter the water to snorkel.

There's enough area for people to get their masks and fins on and then start swimming. You can see the reef formations easily from the beach. This was only my second time snorkeling so I still had that newbie hyperventilating breathing reaction for the first few minutes but I was fine the rest of the time. We only wore our fins on the second day. I didn't really like them.

They were huge and we didn't have much swimming space between the reefs and the other swimmers. We saw TONS of fish. Way more than in St. Lucia. Plus I didn't get sick breathing in diesel fumes. We could also take our time.

I call this one the fish photobomb.

I think this is a shot of my favorite fish (again with the arrow). It's neon; bright, bright, neon.

I think this Google image example is the same fish.

It looks way more florescent in the water. We also tried to look for some shells. I finally found a cowry shell. I've wanted to find one since I was about 10 years old. I gave it to Jeff to keep in his swimsuit pocket. It actually looked a lot like this one with the spots on top but dark instead of light.

Ten minutes later we looked at our finds and the cowry shell had limbs coming out of the opening. It was still inhabited so we had to throw it and pretty much all our shells back for the same reason. Jeff used his underwater camera that I bought him a few years back. After 10 minutes in the water it stopped working and he hasn't been able to use it since.

At least we were able to get a few pictures but that stinks about his camera breaking. Snorkeling was a very fun and cheap activity (probably the cheapest thing we did all week including eating). I'm getting more relaxed with it and I even dove down a good bit. On our second snorkel day Jeff said he wanted to go back to our towels so I headed to the shore. Instead he stayed in the shallow water looking for shells and kept spitting at me through his breathing tube. Disgusting. Apparently Tunnels and Anini Beach were the best for snorkeling. We walked around Anini but didn't return to snorkel.