The Kanaio Coast

Or "the Hold on for Dear Life tour...

This was a highlight of the trip for both me and Courtney.  Let me just say that the pictures and description in the brochure were a little misleading.  It looked like calm waters and snorkeling with the dolphins and turtles, wow, couldn't have been more wrong.  Yes there were dolphins

And turtles and fish, but that was only a small part of the story.  Here is how it actually went...

It was early but Court was a trooper, we knew we would be in the water so there was no point to makeup or hair this morning.  We were so innocent and naive at this point.  Then the briefing started...

Here we are after finding out that we would be rafting through one of the roughest channels in the world to get to the Kanaio Coast!

On the way out I took some serene pictures.  This is a whale with the small island reef of Molokini in the background.

And a mom and baby that we encountered on the way out.  The bigger island behind was used for target practice during WWII.  It is uninhabitable as it was shelled and bombed and still to this day is radioactive and they periodically find unexploded bombs and warheads that need to be detonated.  I have flown over it and there is nothing there, what a waste!

Well, I would have gotten pictures of the waves going through the channel, but frankly I was holding on for dear life and screaming like a little girl.  Some of the waves were 15-20 feet high and me and Court were sitting right on the front seats of the boat.  It was a white knuckle ride as the boat captain was hot dogging at break neck speeds through the channel, everyone was screaming and laughing and screaming!

Think of the movie "The Perfect Storm" that's how big the wave felt and looked to us as we rode up one side and got dumped down the other.  There was a lot of wisdom in the warning to "keep your butt on the seat"!

This is the blow coming out of one of the volcanic tubes, the suck the water up in and then blow it out, pretty cool and the captain thought it would be a good idea to get us close enough to get sucked in and you guessed it...blown back out with the pressure!

The formations were very cool, I think this looks like people looking down at the ocean below.  We saw things that looked liked squirrels and pigs heads and even a resemblance of Walther Mathau, but most of the time I was hanging on so I didn't fall out, so only got a few pictures.

 The arches and formations were amazing and beautiful.  This was a very high adrenaline adventure.  If I go back, this is definitely on my list of things to do again.

We did stop going back to snorkel, but it was anticlimactic after the big waves.  We took some underwater pictures that I might post later, the colors weren't very sharp but there are some fun ones and even a turtle and a spotted eel.  Yay for the Kanaio Coast  and Blue Water Rafting!