Wailea Sights

Laurie had some meetings to do this morning so I took the opportunity to get outside and do some fun stuff.  First of all, I just had to go snorkeling.  It turns out that there is a great place to snorkel right out front of the hotel and I was surprised at how good it really was.  

After donning my mask, the first fish I saw was the Hawaiian state fish, the humuhumu nukunuku apuaa, also know as a trigger fish.  It's such a cool looking fish and it seemed appropriate that this was the first fish I saw today.

The big thrill was swimming with a couple different green sea turtles.  I watched one of them for about 10 minutes and just floated there within 30 feet or so.  A couple times he swam (flew would be more appropriate actually) within 15 feet of me.  WOWOWOWOWOW!  To see them move so gracefully through the water - well, it's one of the most beautiful things to watch.

I snorkeled for about one hour and was a bit chilled by that time.  The water is just cool enough in the winter that staying in any longer than that without a wetsuit is not a great idea.

Then, I went back to the room and grabbed my digital SLR to try to take a few good photos.  It was almost high noon so the lighting was less than ideal but, oh well...

There is a nice 1.5 mile long path right along the ocean so I just followed that to see what I could find to photograph.

On the far left of the above photograph you can see the new (about 2 years old now) wind turbines on the mountainside.

These egret photos were taken from our balcony:

Here's a night shot of the nice water fountains on the grounds: