Scuba Diving Vacations

OK, so the picture is of an anthurium... we don't have much blooming in the yard right now.

The other week someone called me out of the blue to ask if I knew where the shop with the lady in Kailua who makes handmade clay orchids was. I don't get down to Alii drive all that often so I didn't know and wasn't any help with that question. The other day Pat and I went to town for happy hour at Don the Beachcomber's (good mai-tais and pu-pus) and went for a stroll down Alii drive afterwards. We walked by the shop and decided to go in. Well, the clay orchids are pretty much amazing. They look like the real thing. They're made out of a soft polymer or something rather than what we'd traditionally think of as clay, so they almost feel kind of real too. We were quite impressed.

I thought I'd give that business a plug as it's not the typical touristy type of business you see all over the place. If you are ever wandering downtown you might want to keep an eye out for the place just to take a look at their orchids. Here's their website, you can check out their gallery to see the type of work the owner does... very lifelike.

Interestingly enough, the shop is run by a mother/son team (as far as I can tell in one visit, sorry if I'm wrong) and the son is someone I've run into at the boat ramp on occasion. He's a marine researcher/diver and videographer and we know some of the same people. If you visit them, tell 'em you found out about them from Steve from Wanna Dive... they'll actually have a clue as to who I am... it never hurts to build up some good will.

Aloha,

Steve

Aloha,

I wasn't actually on any of these dives as Bob was leading them at the time and I was Captain up topside, but this week Bob and his divers saw a tiger shark in the distance on one dive outside the harbor, a smallish whaleshark overhead on another dive at a spot long known as "outhouse" and occasionally mentioned as "thunder reef", and then topped it off yesterday with a 10-12 foot hammerhead at "golden arches". It was a good week for the shark fans. I lucked into my second tiger sighting ever just a few weeks back, but it's been a couple of years for me for both hammerheads and whalesharks.

The picture above isn't from the other day, it's of a whaleshark (I figure about a 26 foot long one) I saw on a dive at "sand chute" a few years ago. Nobody had time to get any pictures on this weeks sightings as they were gone in short order. Whalesharks can get HUGE, but are completely harmless as they eat plankton, although they can handle something sardine sized, and are basically filter feeders. Tigers and hammerheads are always a thrill to see. The tiger I saw a couple weeks ago was about as close as I'd care to have it (say 20-25 feet) but I've swam very close to a hammerhead (say 5' or so) before - they're gorgeous animals.

Later,

Steve

Here's an adult male Spotted Boxfish (Ostracion meleagris). I've got a lull coming up in a few days, I'll put in an extra post or two then.

Aloha,

Steve