Our trip to Hawaii was to be my wifes and I first vacation together since we got married 3 years ago. We got off from work on the 15th of December, and had planned on going home, showering, changing into some clean clothes, then putting our bags into our van before driving of to Vegas where we were to fly from on Hawaiian Airlines. However, upon leaving work, the weather got much worse, was quite cold and very snowy. Fearing that we may get stuck in Ely, NV due to closure of the mountain pass because of the snow, we opted to get home, throw on some clothes, and hit the road. Good thing too, as we traveled the weather got worse, took us almost 6 hours to get to Vegas when it normally takes us 3.5 to 4 hours.
We arrived in Honolulu early morning on the 16th with no further travel difficulities. Checked into our room at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and unpacked. We were prety tired from the traveling, and by then we were quite hungry as well, not knowing where anything was, we decided to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant, knowing full well that it would be prety spendy, we decided to eat there anyway, however, we had no idea just how spendy it would be. A simple basic breakfast for my wife, son, and I that would normally run in the $30 range most any other place, cost us $75. The food was good, but not $75 worth of good, especially for a breakfast. We expexted to pay that for a dinner, not for waffles, and omlets.
The morning of the 17th, I was picked up by Aaron’s dive shop at the tour buss area at the Tapa tower. It was a good fun group of people going on the dive. The people of Aaron’s dive shop were great! Very safty concious, and at the same time made sure that we had fun on our dives as well. Kevin and Kit were the divemasters, and also along with us was Tim, he was the photo pro that I hired to come along, he is part of Aaron’s dive shop as well. Captain Scotty was our boat captain, and was very helpful as well as fun. All in all a great crew to go out with. Our first dive was at the Mahi wreck, max depth was 95 feet, visibility was about 30 - 35 feet. I’m told that visibility in the 60 - 75 foot range was the norm, however, due to loads of rain the days prior to diving, there was quite a bit of run off. The visibility was a bit lower than normal. Despite that the dive was great! Saw loads of awsome sea life! I uploaded photos from that dive onto my profile here on Dive Buddy, the photos were a combination of ones that I took with my camera, and photos that Tim from Aaron’s dive shop took. The most spectacular of the sea life seen, in my opinion was the loads of spotted eagle rays, just an awsome site! By the way, if you look at my photos, and can identify what they are, please drop me a line and let me know, I will update the captions on the photos. After about 25 minutes of bottom time, we all got back on the boat and headed to another site called the LCD wreck. While in transit, we saw what is believed to be the first humpback whale sightings for the season, such an awsome site! After a serface interval of an hour, we all back rolled into the ocean and went down to the LCD wreck. Max depth was about 80 feet, and bottom time was about 25 minutes. The sea life on the LCD wreck was just as cool as the Mahi wreck, got some really cool photos there as well.
Enough can’t be said about how great Kevin, Kit, and Tim from Aaron’s dive shop were! As well as captain Scotty! If you ever plan a trip to Oahu, I would definately recomend diving with Aaron’s, a fine quality shop with some really great people! We all hated for our dives to end, but obviously they had too, serious safe fun was had by all! After we got back to shore all our gear got packed up in the van and we were taken back to our respective hotels. The ride back to our hotels was quite entertaining too, we all joked and laughed, and reflected on what we had seen and done on our dives. Kevin, Kit, and Tim were all awsome divers and just fun to be around! The wife and I are already planning on going back next year, and I definately will be diving with the Aaron’s gang again!
This concludes the blog for "Diving Oahu, HI (Part one). Stay tuned for "Diving Oahu, HI (Part two)