Swimming With The Turtles

John has settled in at the hospital.  He is very familiar with all the protocols all of the doctors want, and he says it was pretty easy to get the images in the order each doctor preferred.  He gets along with the other staff (as always!) nicely.  The number of patients isn't so pressing as to exhaust him, so he is a pretty happy guy!

We've discovered that there is no such thing as insulation in ANY of the Kauaian homes (at least, any we've heard about).  Everyone counts on the tradewinds to cool the seaside, and as you go inland the elevation increases so they count on the cooler air up there to keep things comfortable.  Also, the higher up the extinct volcanos you go the rainier it gets. The cloud cover and rain keeps things cool.  (The highest mountain on Kauai is also the rainiest spot on earth getting as much as 460 inches of rain a year.  Let's see, 365 day in a year - that's more than an inch every day!  Believable since the summit is perpetually wrapped in clouds.) Most homes have ceiling fans and some homes have air conditioners at least in the bedrooms. 

Our upstairs one-room apartment should be cool, but with John working in an air-conditioned building all day it just won't cool down enough.  That and the longest wall in the whole place faces due west, so it gets 100% of the hottest sun there is.  We buy a pedestal fan that helps, but he's still not getting much rest at night.  I talk with our recruiter, explain the problem, tell him we've found an air conditioner that sits on the floor and vents heat out thru a 4" conduit that mounts in the window - and it's on sale for half price!  Please, please, please help us out here.  They agree to buy the a/c and to work something out with the apartment owner over ownership since it'd be pretty hard to get that thing into a suitcase to fly home with!  Makes all the difference in the world.  It also does a lot to make us even more comfortable with this travel company. 

We head to a new beach called Poipu.  Now THIS is a resort beach.  Golf courses everywhere, resort hotels and condominiums, life guards, beach-side restaurants.  It has an area partially enclosed by huge boulders, then a spit of sand that juts out into the ocean with a tiny island of sand bordered with breakwater rocks, and then a beach completely open to the ocean.  We opt for the first spot, don our aqua shoes as we notice the cooled lava shelf we have to walk on before getting deep enough to swim, and go snorkeling again.  It was the same wave-action Weeble-wobble thing as before trying to get to swim depth.  We must look like a couple of drunken ol' coots hanging onto each other, giggling like school children, but, again, we're ANONYMOUS so who cares. 

We see a few of the same fish as before and a whole lot more.  They are bigger fish, too, and not in the least afraid of us.  Then, suddenly I sense something and my mind shifts gears.  Holy cow!  It's a turtle; NO, two turtles! 

They swim right up to the lava shelf and start nibbling on the mossy stuff growing there. 

They are only in about 18" of water, their backs are actually a bit out of the water.  I swim right over to them and they couldn't care less.  I'd read in the guide books not to touch them because they have bacteria all over them that I really don't want eating away at me, so I try to keep my distance.  Remember the Weeble wave action?  The waves seem determined to toss me into those crazy critters no matter how hard I try to move away.  I start laughing into my snorkel (yes, you can talk to each other underwater, too, but it's not too intelligible...) A couple of times I was almost touching noses with them - and they still didn't care. 

Then I decided, you know, if I was trying to get a snack I wouldn't want a bunch of goofy tourists staring at me, so I completely back off.  God was good enough to give me an upclose look at these guys in their natural habitat, and that's good enough for me.  Thank you, Lord, for your blessings big and small.

We snorkel over toward the spit of land and out toward the island. 

I know you've been dying to see my Man of the Year, so here he is!  Look, no beard!

The bottom has been a mixture of sand and rocks, but as we get closer to the island it turns almost completely to rocks.  There are sea anenomes of several different types and colors slowly boring holes into the igneous (volcanic) rocks.  The bigger the hole gets the bigger the anenome gets.  Tiny baby fish, especially clown fish, hide in the spines of the anenome so that larger fish don't eat them.  Under the rock something catches my eye.  Ick!  It must be a sea snake 'cause it's definitely "snaky," and I don't like snakes.  I find out later it was an eel!  We decide it may be time to abandon snorkeling for the day.  Again, it's been about an hour and seemed like only a few minutes.

John likes this picture of two turtles: one on his back and one at his feet!

John's favorite picture to take is sunsets, so we shower off (yes, every beach has fresh water showers so you can rinse the salt water off), rinse our snorkel gear, pack it away and stroll down the beach waiting for sunset.  At this particular beach on any given day you get a spectacular sunset - and John has dozens and dozens and DOZENS of sunset pictures to prove it.