|
Kaua’i |
|
Friday, August 29, 2008 SNUBA Diving |
|
While Kathie and Victoria had a morning scheduled at the resort’s spa to get their nails done and be pampered, I had a morning scheduled for myself that I had been looking forward to all week. |
|
A portend of things to come!!!! |
|
Jacques Cousteau, I’m definitely NOT! |
|
I’ve been snorkeling for almost twenty years, having done so in Florida, the Caribbean, the Gálapagos Islands, and now on Kaua’i. In spite of a curiosity about it, though I’ve never gone so far as to go scuba diving. While flipping through our Ultimate Kaua’i guide, I saw a heading describing this bizarre activity called SNUBA diving.
SNUBA is a hybrid between snorkeling and scuba diving, where you don’t go further than six or seven feet in depth like in snorkeling, but you stay underwater without having to surface for breathing. The way it works is that you have a regulator to breathe to, attached to an oxygen line stretching back to a raft with several air tanks on it. Even if you’ve never used scuba apparatus before, the training process is simple five minute introduction session that is more about where you will be going, what hand signals to watch for, and what instincts you need to overcome when you are breathing underwater. Five minutes later, we were all heading out into the reef area off of Poipu beach, all a little nervous, but excited nonetheless! |
|
From there, I returned to the Hyatt to regale Kathie and Victoria with tales of my Cousteau-esque adventure. Since we had been spending so much time on the go over the past week, we decided to spend the afternoon at the resort, relaxing and playing some Canasta on the balcony of our room before heading out for dinner down the road at the Sheraton resort. |
|
As I said, we didn’t venture further than six or seven feet down. The hardest part was to resist my overwhelming urge to surface to snorkeling depth to breathe. Once I got past that, though, I then had to overcome my sense of panic that I shouldn’t be breathing underwater! Having gotten past these fears, though, I settled in for a REALLY cool experience. Our guides really had our hour-long dive down pat. They gave us an opportunity to hand-feed the fish swarming around us. Surprisingly, some of these little buggers had little teeth that didn’t feel to good in their excitement at getting a free hand-out! We also we able to track down an octopus so we could have a close face-to-face encounter. All-in-all, it was a fantastic way to spend the morning and has definitely gotten my interest in Scuba diving up! |
|
Possibly the most beautiful place we’ve ever played Canasta... |
|
...or how about this as a dining locale??? |
|
Tomorrow: Our Helicopter Tour |