Day 8: Snorkeling at Ala Moana beach and fried chicken for dinner

We had breakfast at ME BBQ once again. Gordon ordered the portugese sausage meal and I hadthe cornbeef meal with a large Coke.


After breakfast, we went back to our hotel so Gordon could do his laundry while I played dota. The plan was to go back to the Dole plantation, but laundry took a lot longer than we had expected. Instead, we made today a beach day and pushed Dole plantation to tomorrow.


Today wasn't the brightest or clearest (in terms of clouds) of day, which puzzles me. Why? Because today's water condition was the clearest I've seen since the beginning of our Hawaii trip. I was able to go pretty far out (shoulder deep) and was still able to see to the bottom. I took this opportunity to use my waterproof camcorder/camera. This was a test picture.


I saw holes in the sand with pellets nearby (I'm assuming it was a worm tunnel). There's multiple pictures because I couldn't really see my camera's screen. I was worried that the pictures would be blurry since I was constantly being shifted by the water.

I was just floating/swimming around taking pictures and videos of random pieces of algae and rocks before putting my camera back in my bag (it was hard to move around in the water with it in my hand). Then I went back into the water and started to swim around again. That's when I saw my first fish! It was a boxfish! I quickly and cautiously went to shore to grab my camera. I went back the same way I came from, but couldn't find it again. So I just swam around again (this time with the camera in my hand, recording) and caught the little fellow in a video. Everything before 1:37 is boring barren seafloor, then it's the boxfish (and I lost site of it at 2:00)!! I want to re-emphasize how hard it is to see what I'm filming.

This is another shot of the boxfish (not sure if it's the same one) at 0:18 until the end of the video (I stopped because I thought I lost it), I was able to zoom-in on it (I thought I over zoomed while I was in the water, but now that I'm reviewing it, it looks pretty good).

This is a video of my bringing the camera out of the water, zooming in on Gordon (who's trying to tan), and then a shot of myself.

This one is a video of nothing. Just 2 minutes of nothing, I just noticed that you can hear me breathing.

My first sighting of another species of fish. I think this one is a catfish (of the family Ariiformes or something like that). So exciting!


Once again, because I couldn't see my camera's screen, I didn't know what I was aiming at. These pictures are of the catfish (it was a group of 5). I missed in most of these, but you can at least see its tail (black and white stripes) at the top of the pictures.


Today was the longest I've spent in the water since we've been on Hawaii (it's also the longest I've ever used my snorkel). I was insanely cold when we left (too my info: mucous was DRIPPING out of my nose... a lot of it... lol... luckily I always keep some Starbucks napkins with me). These are pictures of Gordon and I on our hunt for dinner. We went to Ala Moana mall to Foodland (the grocery market that's inside the mall). I had a thing of discounted fried chicken while Gordon had 2 bento-boxes. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of dinner (I was too hungry to remember haha).


In the middle of my blogging, Gordon came back into the room telling me he wasn't very successful in getting work done in the lobby (tv inside our room was distracting him, so he went downstairs). We concluded that his lack of focus was due to the lack of alcohol in his system. To support his efforts, I had a Bud Light Lime (which isn't bad at all, no nasty beer after taste... but I would've liked more lime though) while Gordon had a Heineken. That's how we're gonna end tonight (me especially... I'm not gonna be able to do anything in half an hour).


Ok, "A hui hou" (Until we meet again) murtherfruckers... goodbye and good night. Today was a good day. =)