Photos from Hawai'i
Apr. 23rd, 2022 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
I've really been slacking on posting the photos from Hawai'i - I got back three weeks ago, but I started playing around with video editing and forgot about the photos. Oops. It was mostly a diving trip, anyway, with relatively little time spent on dry land.
I rented an apartment in Kona on the Big Island, for minimal covid exposure - definitely better than hundreds of people in huge hotels. It was a nice little place, with all the facilities.
Flowers on the tree outside the balcony.
One evening I ate at a place called Da Shark Shark (I always ate outdoors, which is fortunately easy in Hawai'i), and when you put the cherry from your cocktail glass on the bar, the anoles came along to share dinner with you. I stress that the cherries were from the rim of the glass, and weren't dipped in alcohol! Sometimes the anoles were willing to share the treasure, and other times they chased each other away.
While I'm on the subject of lizards, there was one morning I arrived at the marina and discovered a teeny gecko on the roof of my rental car. And I had to ask myself how long it had been there. Was it there three minutes earlier when I was doing fifty mph on the main highway out of Kona?
The rental car was a Hyundai Elantra - it was awful, of course, as rental cars always are, but it had one incredibly annoying feature. It muted the stereo every time you put it into reverse. Apparently people can't be trusted to back out of a parking space without crashing if there are sounds inside the car. And it didn't stop playing, it just rendered it inaudible, so if you were listening to a podcast or something, you'd have to go back or you'd miss some. If that's a standard feature of Hyundais and you can't turn it off, that would be a hard line reason for me never to buy one. Maybe somewhere deep in the menu system, there's a way to tell it not to?
I took one day off diving and headed a little way up into the hills for some birdwatching and a short hike. Here's a wild turkey displaying. There were two males following a female - they were constantly showing off, and she was utterly uninterested.
The Pu'u Wa'awa'a Reserve (yes I do have to look up the spelling every time).
Sunset views from the restaurant at the Kona Canoe Club.
I made a short video that shows the anoles and the wild turkeys in action. It also shows the tropical rainstorm that scuppered my plans to spend my last afternoon in Hawai'i chilling by the pool with a book. Bummer!
https://youtu.be/AU_6SWLyDiQ
And since I haven't posted them here yet, here are a couple of the videos that I've been editing. This one is the Manta Ray Night Dive. Mantas eat plankton, and plankton is attracted to light. So when lots of divers go to a cove after sunset and light it up, the mantas come for a late dinner and do somersaults over your head. Or sometimes into your head - be ready to duck! It's a totally crazy experience.
https://youtu.be/klNI2fve3m4
And another Kona speciality night dive, but at the other extreme, the blackwater dive. The largest animal migration on the planet happens every day. It's a vertical migration, where creatures that spend the day in the lightless depths of the ocean come to the surface at night. They're invertebrates, they're almost all predators, and luckily for us, they're only from a couple of centimetres to thirty centimetres long.
Because Hawai'i slopes so steeply into the Pacific, you only need to go three miles offshore to be in water that's five or six thousand feet deep. The dive companies tie you to the boat for safety (they don't want to lose anyone out there!) and then you just hang in the water and watch the show that passes in front of your eyes. Look out for the pelagic seahorse!
https://youtu.be/63W_xPSiWCM
There's more video to come, of course, lot's more. All the pretty fish in the clear blue tropical waters of the day :-)
I rented an apartment in Kona on the Big Island, for minimal covid exposure - definitely better than hundreds of people in huge hotels. It was a nice little place, with all the facilities.
Flowers on the tree outside the balcony.
One evening I ate at a place called Da Shark Shark (I always ate outdoors, which is fortunately easy in Hawai'i), and when you put the cherry from your cocktail glass on the bar, the anoles came along to share dinner with you. I stress that the cherries were from the rim of the glass, and weren't dipped in alcohol! Sometimes the anoles were willing to share the treasure, and other times they chased each other away.
While I'm on the subject of lizards, there was one morning I arrived at the marina and discovered a teeny gecko on the roof of my rental car. And I had to ask myself how long it had been there. Was it there three minutes earlier when I was doing fifty mph on the main highway out of Kona?
The rental car was a Hyundai Elantra - it was awful, of course, as rental cars always are, but it had one incredibly annoying feature. It muted the stereo every time you put it into reverse. Apparently people can't be trusted to back out of a parking space without crashing if there are sounds inside the car. And it didn't stop playing, it just rendered it inaudible, so if you were listening to a podcast or something, you'd have to go back or you'd miss some. If that's a standard feature of Hyundais and you can't turn it off, that would be a hard line reason for me never to buy one. Maybe somewhere deep in the menu system, there's a way to tell it not to?
I took one day off diving and headed a little way up into the hills for some birdwatching and a short hike. Here's a wild turkey displaying. There were two males following a female - they were constantly showing off, and she was utterly uninterested.
The Pu'u Wa'awa'a Reserve (yes I do have to look up the spelling every time).
Sunset views from the restaurant at the Kona Canoe Club.
I made a short video that shows the anoles and the wild turkeys in action. It also shows the tropical rainstorm that scuppered my plans to spend my last afternoon in Hawai'i chilling by the pool with a book. Bummer!
https://youtu.be/AU_6SWLyDiQ
And since I haven't posted them here yet, here are a couple of the videos that I've been editing. This one is the Manta Ray Night Dive. Mantas eat plankton, and plankton is attracted to light. So when lots of divers go to a cove after sunset and light it up, the mantas come for a late dinner and do somersaults over your head. Or sometimes into your head - be ready to duck! It's a totally crazy experience.
https://youtu.be/klNI2fve3m4
And another Kona speciality night dive, but at the other extreme, the blackwater dive. The largest animal migration on the planet happens every day. It's a vertical migration, where creatures that spend the day in the lightless depths of the ocean come to the surface at night. They're invertebrates, they're almost all predators, and luckily for us, they're only from a couple of centimetres to thirty centimetres long.
Because Hawai'i slopes so steeply into the Pacific, you only need to go three miles offshore to be in water that's five or six thousand feet deep. The dive companies tie you to the boat for safety (they don't want to lose anyone out there!) and then you just hang in the water and watch the show that passes in front of your eyes. Look out for the pelagic seahorse!
https://youtu.be/63W_xPSiWCM
There's more video to come, of course, lot's more. All the pretty fish in the clear blue tropical waters of the day :-)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-23 11:27 pm (UTC)The anoles are cute AF :)
Thanks for sharing. We're enjoying the videos
no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-23 11:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-27 03:46 am (UTC)but it had one incredibly annoying feature
My mom's car also has a terrible feature. Whenever you put it into park, the doors unlock. I suppose it's supposed to be 'convenient,' as you're theoretically getting out of the car soon, but it's a terrible safety feature! I might be sitting in the parking lot for a few minutes checking something on my phone, and I don't want the doors unlocked!
no subject
Date: 2022-04-27 04:15 am (UTC)Yeah - if you're lost in a dodgy neighbourhood and pull over to figure out where to go, it's not the feature you'd want!