I didn't witness a few of these but the last two days at Two Step saw the following queries:
- While pointing to a rebreather: "Wow is that nitrox? I've never seen nitrox before!" (You bet your ass this is the best looking nitrox you've ever seen)
- "Why are your fins all black?"
- "What's the middle tank for?" (She was given a full explanation on what a scrubber, o2, and diluent was) "OH Neat!"
Two Step is so named for the two naturally forming steps in the lava along the shore. It makes for easy entry and exit for most folks. This popular spot is right next to Pu'uhonua o Honaunau (Place of Refuge) which is national park with ancient Hawaiian ruins. I'm not huge on touristy historical places, but this is maybe the coolest tourist spot on the island that isn't actively spewing lava. The deal with this temple and the surrounding grounds is that if you broke any forbidden Hawaiian law (kapu) and you were able to reach the temple at Honaunau you would be absolved of your wrong doings by a few nice priest type bruddahs. Of course you'd have an army of pissed off Hawaiians chasing you on the way there. A serious game of tag with a holy homebase.
I find the diving here to be a little boring compared to other places. You really have to travel quite a ways to see any interesting structure. And I've become a structure addict. There is a good sized reef in 5-15 feet of water along the shore. Then a long coral covered slope that goes down to about 70 to the sand. Traveling along the bottom of the slope at the sand south leads to about 100 or so. Beyond that are a few other reefs at technical depths.
The three other folks I was with were all in a rebreather. I was the only noisy OC person. We planned for a shade under 2 hrs of bottom time with max of 90 feet. I carried my stage full of 32 just in case we wanted to cruise around a little longer but I didn't need it. We stayed shallow enough toward the end of the dive that I managed to squeak out just a hair over 2 hours. Even with a wool lined hooded vest under my busted up 3mm I was getting cold toward the end of the dive.
Of all the dives I've done recently this was one of the most relaxing. I real vacation from my brain. It helps to be diving with people you can trust and that are all on the same team minded page. I didn't see much interesting under water except for some very rare longfin anthias (which we knew were there). I was pretty psyched to be in some really great viz for once. Puako has been super stirred up lately. I guess it's that time of year. I hear that the viz wasn't as great as it could be but I was pretty psyched.
I took a bunch of photos for heck of it knowing that without a strobe they'd basically suck. It was still fun to document the dive even tho I won't be entering my pics in any contents. Pretty much none of the photos of fish came out but that's cool. I've got some video I'll whip together that is more interesting. Once the other shutterbug sends me the photos she took (with her death star) I'll post those as well. I think there are some really dumb photos of me grinning like a cheshire cat.
Gerard near the cinder block ALOHA:
Fishy!
Cruising:
Oh yeah.. I have a light with me:
This is the only photo of the entry that came out. You can sorta make out a guy in a rebreather sweating his ass of waiting for the snorkelers to get out of the way.
Wild blue over yonder:
I thought it was a girl in a bikini... but I think I'm wrong. This was taken from about 70 feet down:
Click click flash flash:
Rolling hills of coral on lava:
I'll post the vid when I get some more time in front of my computer to edit it.
Aloha hard,
-Eric
