The Big Island, 1999
Author: Al

My wife and I just returned from our 3rd vacation on the Hawaii, the Big Island. This is just a quick trip report.

Flights: Our preferred route to Kona is to go on United from O’Hare to LA then LA to Kona. This breaks up the flight to two 4-5 hour chunks and avoids the Inter-Island flights from Honolulu. However, since we were using upgrade miles, we ended up on the United O’Hare to Honolulu flight. Happily, there was no baggage delay with Aloha Airlines and we And our dive gear made it to Kona on time. I definitely recommend taking the red-eye out of Kona to LAX leaving at 10:00 p.m. from Kona. This gives you another full day in Hawaii.

Hotel: This was our 2nd stay at the Four Seasons at Hualalai. This is by far the best resort we have ever stayed at. It is not a big hotel; rather it is a collection of bungalows each with 2-4 units. Our room on the lower floor was beautifully appointed and included a wonderful, private outdoor shower. The food was spectacular. The pools are amazing. One of the pools called the King’s Pond has is an anchaline (sp) pool with fantastic snorkeling. It has an amazing collection of butterfly fish, parrotfish, wrasses, tangs, and even 3 eagle rays. It was pretty nifty to free dive and swim with the eagle rays flying in formation.

Diving: We did 3 two tank charters and 2 three tank long-range south charters. We used two dive ops that we have used before: Dive Makai and Eco-Adventures. The water temp was between 75-77 degrees on my dive computer. I used a 3 mm steamer with a 1.5 mm shorty underneath. Although, this was adequate during our last trip in Sept when the water temp was 78-80, but it was too little for me this trip. I was freezing by the end of the 1st dive usually. My wife has a great Bare 4/3/2 mm wetsuit with the 1.5 mm shorty and she was toasty. The dive guides who obviously spend much more time in the water than recreational divers all had at least 5 mm most with 7 mm in the winter months. Kendra from Dive Makai used a dry suit! So, my recommendation is that if one is diving multiple days, to bring more neoprene than you might think. If you need to rent, rent a full at least 3 mm suit, not a shorty. The visibility was good to excellent with 60-100 feet consistently. The current at most sites was minimal, but the surge was brisk on several dives in the shallower depths. The sites with significant surge also had some surface chop. This did not pose any real challenge except for those prone to motion sickness. The diving in Hawaii is very dramatic with stunning lava formations and underwater canyons. Although there is very little soft coral, the hard coral reefs were beautiful. There are vast fields of finger coral, staghorn coral, and plate coral. The fish life is also excellent with many endemic species that are fascinating. A couple of dive sites that really stood out were:
1) Au Au Canyon: Dove this twice-one with Dive Makai and once with Eco-Adventures. It’s pretty far south (south of Place of Refuge) and you will need to be on a long-range charter to dive it. Very dramatic underwater canyon to depths of >250’. The fish life was lush. More unusual finds were 2 pair of teardrop butterflies, 2 Hawaiian lionfish (turkeyfish). A sea turtle gracefully swimming around a pinnacle. No big things though. 2) Desert Delight: Dive Makai. Gradually sloping reef with a vast field of Garden eels starting at about 70-80’. If you were slow in approaching and remained still, they would not duck into their hole. Something very mesmerizing about seeing a field of these elegant eels swaying in the depths. There were several little hard coral outposts in the sand at about 90’. Several of them had beautiful cleaner shrimp. One had about 6 –10 bicolor anthias (in my mind the most beautiful fish). A great dive. No big things. 3) Kealakekua Bay. Dive Makai. A beautiful marine park next to Captain Cook’s monument. Wonderfully protected with very little surge and minimal current. Done as a free boat dive as I guess there has been some grumbling about other boats using the day-snorkel tour boats (I think Fair Wind?) mooring. This was fine, as there was no current or surface chop. Vast fields of pristine finger coral. Fantastic visibility. Several Hawaiian cleaner shrimp with my wife’s hand being cleaned by one. A 6’-7’ whitetip reef shark cruising below us at about 70-80’. A tame moray that tolerated petting named Oscar? 4) 3 Room Cave: A nice easy wide open, minimal silt cave with many species of lobster, crabs, nudibrachs, and shrimp. A lot of Bigeyes and squirrelfish. Other dive sites that were a lot of fun were Coral Dome, Paradise Pinnacle, and Arch of the Pyramids. One site that was not so great when we were there was Turtle Heaven. Not that many turtles (one) and the vis stunk (<20’) in the shallower water near the mooring. This is compared to a dive site we did in Sept called Turtle Pinnacle with about 12 turtles many of them being cleaned by tangs, etc.

A couple of words about the dive ops: Dive Makai is excellent because of their amazing people. Lisa, Tom, Kendra, Alexa, Kate, Amy, and Mark have a near encyclopedic knowledge of Hawaiian marine life. They are amongst the easiest going, pleasant, friendly, and dedicated dive guides you will ever meet. They use steel 72’s which is a nice as they do not become positively buoyant as they become empty. They approach each dive with eagerness and energy. They have great pre-dive briefings and often find the hard to find critters that make Hawaiian diving unique. The only downside, and it’s a minor one, is that their boat is a bit cramped. Also, they do not yet offer nitrox, which for us is a downer. However, two people on one of our charters got nitrox tanks from Eco-Adventure to use with Dive Makai. I’m not sure how comfortable they were with this. Eco-Adventures has always been very good to us. Everybody that we have met has been friendly, accommodating, and professional. Mike, Amanda, Mark, Bob, Pat, Jan, and Max were excellent. They are a much bigger operation than Dive Makai, but we always had superb personal attention. Their boats are bigger and more comfortable. They offer nitrox and have a good setup to test the O2 content. We can’t pick one over the other and wholeheartedly recommend both. If we were forced to choose, we would go with Dive Makai for the 2 tank charters and Eco for the 3 tank charters to be able to dive nitrox for 3 tanks. We find that nitrox makes a huge difference for us in terms of fatigue after diving-maybe it’s a placebo effect, but for us it’s real. We have also heard very good things about Aloha Dive company from Dive Makai. Also Jack’s Diving Locker has an excellent reputation. We have not dived with either Aloha or Jack’s.

Hope this helps someone. Email me if you have any specific questions.

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