5986 This is snuba gear. They have two different color hoses in case you get tangled up it’s easier to get straight.
5992 The dry side of Maui. It’s just green on the top of the hills from this side. The other side is greet all the way to the sea. Notice the island cloud pile on top.
6008 The Atlantis submarine and it’s shuttle boat. They have a very cute sub-tender that on the other side of the sub. It looks like a cartoon tug boat.
6014 Diana and the Cool Cat’s burger and shake. Yum!
Nov 28 - Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. Second day in Hawaii. Diana and I are taking separate tours today. She loves the helicopter tours and I love the water so she’s going flying and I’m going underwater. Each of us is doing something the other won’t do. If Diana want’s to accompany me in the water we go snorkeling. When she’s otherwise occupied I go diving, this time SNUBA. I know that SCUBA is Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (invented by Jacques Cousteau and Joe Gagnon), I don’t know what the SN stands in for in SNUBA. Well, I think I figured it out, (I’m writing this the next morning.) it’s a combination of the words ‘SNorkel’ and scUBA, a portmanteau. Don’t know why I didn’t see that earlier. Duh! That means that when writing snuba it’s not necessary to capitalize it, it’s not an acronym. Anyway SCUBA wasn’t offered on the tours, probably because of the age of the people on the ship, very few certified divers aboard, but they did offer snuba. With the snuba system you have on a regular diving mask and have a SCUBA style mouthpiece with regulator in your mouth. The regulator is hooked to a long hose that leads to a raft with your air tank that floats on the surface. Because the hose length is kept under the minimum depth at which you need to be a certified diver you can use it without a license. You just wear a mask, snorkel and weight belt, put in the mouthpiece and you’re good to go.
Our dive boat, Trilogy, was a sailing catamaran but a much smaller, sleeker one than the one in Hamilton. It has a forward retractable stairway between the pontoons at the back and stairs built into both aft pontoons. The snorkelers are going in up forward and the snuba people, all six of us, are going in aft.
While sailing out we were accompanied by a large pod of porpoises that raced with and passed our boat. We also saw two Hawaiian humpback whales. They’re smaller than their cousins and don’t really migrate too far from this location.
Each snuba raft has two hoses, one yellow, one blue, with regulators attached. These hoses are about 15 feet long so you’re good to about one half an atmosphere of air pressure at that depth. (Boyle’s Law - Air, being compressible is reduced in volume by half for every atmosphere of air pressure increase. Air pressure increases approximately one atmosphere (the pressure at sea level) for each 33 feet you descend into the sea. That means that the air in your inner ear shrinks by half at 33 feet and you have to get more air in to ‘pop your ears’. Although if you wait that long to do it they estuation tube may be jammed. It also means that your full tank of air is now half empty for a scuba diver but for snuba the tank is on the surface and there’s no further compressing of the air.) You might have to clear your ears 2-4 times going up or down to 15 feet. I like to clear early and often, it’s easier on you then letting the pressure build up and then doing it. Less painful and you don’t have to waste time going slightly back up to clear them if they get stuck. There’s no heavy equipment to wear although with the advent of buoyancy compensation vests wearing the SCUBA tank has become much more comfortable. Snuba has a small harness constructed like a Sam Browne belt to keep the mouthpiece from getting away from you but that’s it.
The freedom of being underwater and able to stay under is extraordinary. When properly compensated, you can float effortlessly across the reef feeling very fishlike but instead of using an air bladder to control your buoyancy you use your lungs. Breathe deeply and you ascend. Expel a larger amount of air than usual and you go down. The reef here is very healthy indeed, lots of coral types and an abundance of fish. Parrotfish, wrasses, dory, triggers, angels, needle and assorted types I can’t name. No clown fish, I guess Nemo is lost again. I didn’t encounter any large schools only a few groups of 15 or less but the solitary fish and pairs were everywhere. I scoured the sandy areas between the groups of coral to see if I could spot any skates or rays hiding in the sand. You can usually see their beady little eyes sticking up slightly but no luck. I did come upon two sea turtles. One came out of an overhang in the coral right in front of me. They’re protected and you’re not supposed to approach them but he approached me as he headed for the surface to breathe. I watched him go past me to the surface where he paused to take two breaths and then glided back past me down to his hiding place. I did go down to the bottom to look under the ledge but he was so far back inside that I couldn’t see him.
The water was clear, warm, no surge, tiny waves and very little current. Altogether a great day in the water. On the way back to Lahaina I asked the captain where I could get a good lunch, maybe a burger or something like that. He told me that Cool Cat’s had the best burger in town and maybe on the island. I agreed to meet Diana on the pier in a shady spot after our tours. Rather than tender back to the ship for lunch and waste time in the process we’d eat downtown so she’d have more time to look around.
We were a bit late coming back as they had given us extra time in the water since the conditions were so good. Diana was sitting on a wall at the pier under some trees talking to what turned out to be a group of Canadians. I said hi and we headed off to look for Cool Cat’s. I knew it was upstairs over some shops across from Banyan Park. Banyan Park is a half block park covered by a single banyan tree. It’s huge! With that sort of landmark I figured I couldn’t miss it and sure enough I couldn’t. Cool Cat’s was another thing altogether. They had one small round sign hanging right behind some Christmas decorations when approaching it from the direction we came. After we passed Banyan Park I knew we had gone too far so I turned around and sure enough, there was the sign.
You figure in Hawaii a place called Cool Cat’s would be casual. It was downright Jimmy Buffet casual. Surfing memorabilia on the walls, steel kitchen chairs around steel legged red plastic top tables. Looked something like a Ruby’s run by someone who is perpetually stoned. The seating area is mostly a second floor balcony with no windows just the short fence type rail and pillars to hold up the roof. Since it’s almost always 80 here and we’re on the dry side of the island I guess it doesn’t rain much and it’s always warm, who needs windows.
I had been told that the milk shakes were excellent here as well and when I saw them on the table next to us they sure looked good. They had a burger topped with a grilled Ortega chili in addition to the onion, lettuce, tomato and cheese. That sounded good so we both ordered one. I got a plain chocolate shake and Diana ordered a Chunky Monkey shake which apparently features some banana mixed in.
The burgers were excellent. You had to take the dill pickle slices out and eat them separately as the strong dill flavor overpowered the taste of the Ortega chili. It was a large chili seeded and opened up. It covered the entire burger in one piece. It was delicious. The shake was excellent as reported. It was served in an old fashioned malted glass like a ‘40s drug store and they left the steel tumbler it was mixed in. What I didn’t realize was that there was enough in that tumbler to fill the glass two more times. It was thick, creamy and a chocolate delight. Diana reported that here banana chocolate shake was also very good.
While we ate Diana filled me in on her helicopter ride. She was stuck in the back middle seat again. Somehow she always seems to get that seat and it’s not a good one for seeing or taking pictures. She did manage to get a few really nice shots in the area of the observatories atop Haleakala and the road going to them.
After lunch we walked up Front Street to do some shopping. Or rather Diana shopped and I waited. It wasn’t such hard duty here. Plenty to see and people to watch. Every so often the peace and quiet of this touristy beach town was disturbed by a very loud Harley-Davidson going slowly by. A shop a block down the street rents them and apparently every renter has to inaugurate his trip by going down Front Street coasting and revving the engine. One guy went around the block 4 times. I think he was in over his head and didn’t really want to try to drive anywhere that he had to do more than 8 miles per hour. They were pretty bikes and fun to look at and had they been just driving past it wouldn’t have been very bad at all. I guess it’s the inner outlaw biker coming out.
When we got back to the ship I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me. I never enter the ship’s photography contests because, frankly, most people wouldn’t recognize a technically or artistically excellent photo if it was the only shot available. I know this based on the winners of previous contests I’ve seen aboard ship. The passengers vote on the winner and will almost always take a corny humor shot over a well composed and technically perfect shot. Well, if you remember the picture I sent of the White Bellied Sea Eagle… I was so pleased with that shot that I submitted it and it won. I guess I have to eat my comments about the passengers taste in pictures or admit that my photo is terrible. I can’t have it both ways.
Trip’s getting very short now. Soon it’s back to the ‘real’ world.
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