Scuba Diving Vacations

It's a fairly busy week here in Kona... Ironman is this Saturday. Ironman is likely the world's most famous triathlon event, held here annually for almost three decades. I can still remember the big worldwide showing of the '82 Ironman on television where the woman who was leading collapsed just short of the finish line and was passed after what seemed like minutes of crawling (she eventually made it) which turned into a huge PR boon for the event.

The only time I've gone downtown to see the finish of the race was back when I was here on vacation over a decade ago.. lots of good energy... I was really impressed that there were people in the miles before the finish line looking at contestant's numbers on their shirts with binoculars, then looking up the names and cheering them on by name as they passed to finish the last miles of the race... pretty cool. Being the slow season in October, we're sometimes out of town that weekend, most of the times I've been here I've just avoided the traffic and stayed home. The town pretty much shuts down, at least the north end of it outside of downtown, that day. I'm debating between heading downtown for some good energy or just watching college football for the day and avoiding the crowds.

We've been having fun on our charters this week. We had our newly certified students on board yesterday and did a one way drift north of Hoover's (the northern most mooring off the Kona airport) that I led... I love that dive... lots of pinnacles, saw a flame angel, a big spiny lobster in a hole, a very cool Reticulated Frogfish (which I'll post a pic of on my next post) in a coral head, and DOLPHINS UNDERWATER ON THE DIVE!!!! Yes, I have a very few seconds of that on video to be posted later...

Here's a photo of a Zebra Moray (Gymnomuraena zebra) that we came across on that dive.

later,