Day 9 - Kona Beach, Humpy’s and Night Dive with a Manta Ray.

We had to slow the pace down a bit. This holiday is exhausting! We took our time getting up. Now we are up at 8:00am (from 6:00am). We decided to go back to Kahaluu beach. This time Jen and I went out on our own. The kids wanted to go to a surf beach - wha wha wha! We took lots more photos and then took the kids back to the condo where they could hang in the pool. 

A turtle was right up at the beach. Jenny almost stepped on him.

I think we are getting the hang of the camera.

Kona Isle Condo (our home for the past five days) - Beachfront Gardens

We were saving our energy for our big adventure - a night snorkel with Manta Rays! First we had dinner at Humpy’s - a beach bar in Kona. To our surprise there was a hockey game on. The Stanley Cup Final! Wow, I had no idea it was still going on. We were able to watch the final minutes of the final period of the final game and really, at the end of the day it was like fast forwarding to the end of a murder mystery movie. Look at the hours we saved by not watching a single game!

Sunset on our cruise out to the Mantas

Anyway, after a huge burger , fries and a couple of beers at Humpy’s - a great idea before snorkeling - we headed out to the marina to meet our boat. It took about twenty minutes to get out to the area where the Mantas feed. They use huge lights to attract krill and the Mantas eat the krill - usually. But tonight, alas, no krill and no mantas.
Wait a minute. That’s not all. Here’s how it went. We cruised out to the spot to see about a dozen other boats packed with divers and snorkelers. We put on our wet suits, the kids doubled up and wore two wet suits, and hopped in the water (after watching the sun set). Six of us in total held on to a boogie board raft and our leader, Tim, towed us out to the middle of the pack. The boogie board had about eight powerful flashlights aimed down into the water so we could see the bottom as we were towed along. We were taken to an area called the 'campfire’ a large cluster of lights set up on the ocean floor pointing up to attract more krill. It was surreal, like something out of Close Encounters of The Third Kind. Lights everywhere, divers with flashlights, schools of fish and tons of people BUT NO MANTAS!

A blurry image but you can get an idea of what it was like

In the water heading to the 'campfire'.

We paddled around for about thirty minutes and then Tim said ‘Sorry no krill, no mantas. Let’s try again tomorrow?’ WHAT! We are off to Maui tomorrow! We headed back to the boat, heads down, dejected and dropped Ryan, Jemma and Jen off as Ryan was getting cold. Tim said he would take the three of us back out if we wanted even though there was little chance of seeing anything now and what do you know, a single manta showed up and saved the day. It could have been a diver in a manta suit but I didn’t care, I got to see a manta. It was sad that Jen and the kids missed it. I had the camera on record pretty much the whole time.Here’s the link to the website to see what we should have seen konaoceanadventures.