I’m not a fan of doing anything in the ocean at night.
There’s just no reason, in my mind, to be there. Not in the ocean. Not at night.
Yet, there I was, pulling on a wetsuit at Keauhou Pier, where, just after sunset, I would be leaving the safety of land to dive into the ocean to swim with giant manta rays.
I don’t know how I got talked into this.
For years, the Kona Surf Hotel — now the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort — would switch on its floodlights and illuminate the ocean, not realizing it would attract plankton, the microscopic larvae stage of various fish, shrimp, crab and lobsters on which manta rays feed. Folks would gather along the railings of the hotel at night to witness the sight of these giant creatures feasting on the plankton that accumulated in the bay.
In 1991 tour operators such as Fair Winds Cruises starting offering night snorkels with the manta rays. The Travel Channel once called this tour one of the “Top 10 things to do in your lifetime,” according to promotional material. So I had to try it.
It was definitely one of the most interesting travel experiences I’ve had thus far. (Well, a close second was getting lost with German strangers in the French countryside with a GPS that only gave directions in English. That was quite the adventure!)
We departed the pier just after sunset and took a quick five-minute boat ride into the bay, about 75 yards offshore. After we got our snorkels and fins on, we dove into the water and swam to a float outfitted with lights. We hung onto this float, starting straight down, hoping for mnata rays to swim by.
I never thought, in my wildest dreams, I’d want to see something swim toward me in the dark ocean.
And yet I did. And when it happened — albeit after 40 minutes of watching needle fish and parrot fish swim by — it was a spectacular event.
A manta ray with a 10-foot wingspan floated under us, spinning and twirling so graceful you forget (for a second) you’re in the wild ocean. I could ignore the growing seasickness that had reached my stomach by this point and enjoy this majestic creature, as it got so close I could feel it swim past me.
Simply amazing.
It was my first time doing anything this adventurous. I thought it would be interesting to hear what kinds of unique adventures you have been on. So let’s dish!
19 Comments
I guess the most unique, unplanned adventure was body surfing at Yokahama’s in Makaha about 20 years ago. Out of nowhere, a school (?) of dolphins surrounded me. Thank God their noses poked out for me to see what they were, or I would’ve made the sea a little warmer!
Swimming with the large honu (turtles) off the south side of Haleakala about the same amount of time ago was quite the experience also!
Oh Cat, wouldn’t you want the GPS to give you the directions in English? …or was it converting French names to English making them undecipherable?
Glad you had a great time on Maui! Thanks for taking us with you!
I had a similar experience in Waikiki one Saturday. A pod of dolphins just appeared and we were literally surfing with them. Coolest experience!
i’ve always wanted a Hunter S. Thompson kinda adventure. But no go so far. Its on the Bucket List(Actually, it IS The Bucket List). i dont think i even had sex-on-the-beach yet…the drink. Its on the Bucket List too.
I should blog about bucket lists… I don’t have one, but maybe I should write one…
It was quite a few years ago, a pal of mine “Moose” and I did a Dr. Gonzo type trip to Baltimore for a Friends wedding, it took us 5 hours to make the 2.5 hour ride from OC to Baltimore. Then 3 days to make it home, I don’t really remember all the details but for years someone would come up to me at a bar and say “don’t you remember being such and such a place?” It must have been one hell of a trip.
Hello Cat, I did a few night dives and it’s very exciting. I would like to do the night dive and see the mantas too.
I don’t think I’d want to night dive again… I’m too freaked out about sharks and eels. Anything with teeth.
Knowledge of some of my adventures tends to disturb and frighten people. Your aventure looked fun and interesting.
LOL! Now I want to hear about these disturbing and frightening people!
I want to do that dive someday, but I’m a tad afraid. My wildest/most interesting travel adventure was probably ziplining in St. Lucia. Or perhaps riding in the back of an open truck with a St. Lucian driver who had suspiciously watery, red eyes…
I’ve never done zip-lining, though it looks very cool. I’m not afraid of heights — but I’m afraid of falling from them. (Hence, I don’t like riding rollercoasters.) So I’m not sure if I’d be down for zip-lining…
The dive wasn’t terrifying at all, by the way. I think you’d be fine. You should try it!
night diving is fun. the fish swim slower so they’re easier to catch.
my most interesting travel adventure wasn’t a Marlin Perkins type thing. When I got furloughed from the airline I was working at, my wife and I started looking around at places to go before my flight benefits ran out. we checked the flights on a tuesday and saw that SFO-NRT and NRT-SFO were wide open on a friday outbound and sunday inbound. I had some travel fee waivers (the cheap airline used to give us fee waivers instead of bonuses so that all fees except for entry taxes and stuff were waived on a flight) to use so I applied them. emailed my cousin in Japan and she set up the hotel.
Left SF at noon on friday and arrived at Narita around 4 on Saturday. caught the train in to Tokyo station and walked to the hotel. nice, basic hotel in the financial district for about 80 a night (since it was a weekend and in the financial district, I’m assuming that rates were dropped way down…rack rates for weekdays were four times what we paid). met up with my other cousins and were on our way to sushi, sake, beer, iced coffee, and yakitori heaven. crashed at the hotel that night, woke up early the next morning for sushi breakfast at the 24 hour sushi restaurant in tsukiji. back to the hotel to pick up our stuff (not much since we were there for one night) then off to the city to kill a couple of hours. made it back to the airport for our flight and flew back to SF.
totals were 80 for the room, 76 for the flights (36 each for first class both ways, baby!!) a hundred or so for omiyage and a hundred or so for food and drink (we ate much more, but my cousin in tokyo is in the hospitality industry, so we got hooked up a bit). 24 hours on the ground in Japan.
Very cool adventure!
In keeping with the titular theme of the blog, my most interesting adventure was when I ate raw chicken in Japan. I was on Shikoku, an island off of Kyushu, in a town called Uwajima. My friend took me to an izakaya restaurant and we just ordered omakase (chef’s choice) and one of the dishes were Katsuo tataki (seared chicken served sashimi style). It was one of the most delicious dishes I have ever tasted. The rest of the night was a blur, but that moment, I’ll never forget.
Biking across the Golden Gate Bridge was an adventure. We rented bikes and rode across the bridge, when we started it was fogged in, you could even hear the foghorns going off. By the time we got about halfway across it cleared up and we could see how high we were! We went on a weekend so one side of the bridge was for bikes only, there were a lot of commuters riding so we couldn’t stop and take pictures. It was kind of scary but really worth it, great views and experience!
Also Zip-lining on Kauai and para-sailing on Maui were other fun adventures too.
I think it is a toss up really. It is between snorkeling in Palau at Jellyfish Lake or sailing a Nacra 5.8 catamaran single handed from Kailua Beach out into the Pacific and down to the lighthouse, turning around and sailing back to around Chinaman’s Hat, going into KBay circling coconut Island, and back to Kailua Beach. First time out in the Pacific solo on a cat, was nervous I’d turtle the sucker near the lighthouse. The waves and current were big but as long as the wind is below 20 the cat is easy to single hand in bigger water.
But man was it cool to swim with the Jellyfish. They don’t sting you because the fresher water takes away the sting. Everyone has got to try it.
My most interesting adventure was an entire study abroad. In my last semester of undergrad, my school got approved to do a study abroad program in Cuba. I couldn’t not apply! I pushed back graduating, convinced my beginners Spanish teacher to write a letter saying I was proficient in Spanish (I wasn’t…), and spent three months living just outside of Havana. Every day was an adventure, and it was truly a unique experience.
Don’t have much adventure stories.
However, falling off a boat into a school of ‘cuda in Tavi which later led to Fijian Boatmen pointing, imitating and laughing at me after I lit up the night with a flash from my camera does come to mind.
My boyfriend and I are planning on going to the Big Island in a couple weeks, and we definitely want to do this dive. We were on the Big Island last summer and had an amazing time, including a hike out to see the lava flowing into the ocean, which is probably my most interesting travel adventure (https://rpgcalledlife.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-carnival-best-travel-adventures.html). But I didn’t have my scuba certification then, so we couldn’t do any dives.
I’ve heard SUCH good things about this dive. Do you need to have night diving certification to go on the dive? Or is regular open water certification sufficient? And are they near the surface, so you don’t have to dive very deep to see them? I ask because I’d love to be able to take pictures, but my camera only goes to 33ft. I want to know if I’d need a housing case for it.
Sorry, I clearly got carried away with your description of the mantas and didn’t see that you were snorkeling, not diving. Oops. Anyway, I hadn’t realized you could do it as a snorkeling trip (clearly I have too many friends in the department of oceanography who are divers), or else I would have done it last time I was there. So cool!