Here’s a little gallery from my last two trips out to sea. During my stay at the Waikoloa village, I had extensively surfed the web for good dive and dolphin swim companies, and I made two selections based on recommendations that I could find on review websites such as Tripadvisor, and based on price and group size. Hawai’i does become expensive once you have reached certain hotel standards and want to add ocean sports activities.

So after I had left the Waikoloa village yesterday and headed down here to Kailua-Kona (where I am currently sitting by the pool of my hotel, drinking a soda and typing away on my laptop), I had reached the area of the big island of Hawai’i with the biggest number of such activities and tour operators. Most of them operate out of Honokohau harbor, which is very conveniently located three blocks up from my hotel, which came in handy for my evening and early morning check-ins at the boat dock.

Yesterday I went out with Blue Wilderness divers for a two-tank trip right next to the Kona Intl (and military) airport for a Manta dive. We had of course very high expectations, especially after our first dive trip before sunset, where everyone was just talking about previous Manta Ray encounters they had had. All the more disappointing then when getting into the water again right after sunset, racking up that courage and energy to stay warm (it does get a little chilly after a while out on the water, even in Hawai’i), doing all the prep work and sending down the light box and waiting for the Plankton to come up and just sit there as free food for the Mantas – the star of the show did not make it to the venue. This is apparently a dive sport where you can either have very numerous Mantas (they talk thirties here) – or then: None. Seems I had picked the wrong time or dive company. This is to say, because the Blue Wilderness usually operates out of other harbors and has only a few Manta dives each month, of which this should have been one. Well I guess I may have to return for another try.

At least the Drammamine medicine had worked all right and I did not yet feel seasick. This was quite important as I returned to the harbor that night only towards 9:30 pm and would have to be on the boat again by 7:30 am the next morning. So after a quick breakfast of raisin bread in my room and swallowing some more tablets, back to Honokohau. This time it was a bigger boat and a bigger party, but apparently also better experience of the company (or better luck), as we were hardly out of the harbor when we encountered the first school of dolphins. I think we are talking 200 plus here, most of them Hawai’ian bottlenose Dolphins (the regular Tursiops truncatus or “Grosser Tümmler”) but also some spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris). This was really a blast to be in the water with them, but I must say it was incredibly hard work. Without the usual dive gear just having mask, snorkel and standard (speak: “cheap”) fins, hauling my underwater camera gear was so heavy and bulky. Also you want to get the dolphins between you and the sun, so this means 1) in the right direction (which means a lot of swimming, anticipation and hope you are in the right place when they fly past) and 2) you want to be at least at the same depth if not below the dolphins – a lot of free diving, and I got out of breath so quickly. And as a bonus, we did spot a few Mantas (I think there were three of them, but hard to tell as I was a bit far out) at their cleaning station, which is probably not quite the same as the Manta night dive would have been, but it does make up for it a bit.

This trip was a great encounter (see pix for yourself), but man was it tiring! What an experience!