1 hour and 18 mins to go until we bid “aloha a hui hou aku” to Hawaii and get back to the bay area. Picture above shows our plane being prepped for takeoff. Weather today isn’t as sunny and warm as it was for most of the last 2 weeks - hence the altocumulus looking clouds in the picture.

First thing I’ll be doing once I get home? Log onto WoW of course

Had an awesome time on this trip. Will definitely miss Honolulu, the weather and the wide variety of possible activities once I get back to the Bay area. Also met some great people along the way that I’ll be keeping in touch with. Can never have too many good friends

Hit Hanauma Bay yesterday with Shaun and Faraaz for some last minute snorkeling and then later on in the evening managed to squeeze in a night dive off magic island and saw a sleeping turtle and lots of other sleeping marine life. Was my first night dive and I was a bit nervous at first..felt weird being out in the ocean in the darkness, but once inside the water all the usual training/thought processes kick in and just feels like another dive. Felt like I was diving inside a cave because of the lack of sunlight from above…was an awesome feeling.  Will post a pic of the sleeping turtle once my divemaster/instructor emails me the pic. Until then here’s some pics from some older dives on the YO-257 shipwreck and horseshoe reef

This pic was taken at the point where the mooring line of the boat was attacked to the buoy of the shipwreck. You can see a chain in the background that we used to guide ourselves down to the wreck. Site was full of schools of yellow butterfly fish as well as other fish. Was my first shipwreck dive so I felt like a lil kid experiencing something out of this world for the first time.

In this pic I’m checking my depth gage. Maximum depth on this dive was 100 feet.

Side view of part of the YO-257 shipwreck

As you can see in the pic above, the YO-257 is thriving as an artificial reef. The ship was bought by the Atlantis Submarine company about 20 years ago for $30,000 and then the company spent around $300,000 making it suitable to use as a artificial reef. Now the site is popular among divers, tourists who visit the site on the Atlantis submarine tour and tons of marine life. In the last 20 years, the Atlantis submarine company has sunk a few more ships (one of these ships is the Seatiger ship I mentioned in a previous post that I also got to dive down to) and aircraft to create more artificial reefs and has worked with groups in Japan and the University of Hawaii on additional artificial reef projects.

Picture above was taken by me on the submarine tour of the same shipwreck that I had dived down to the previous day.

Looks like its time for me to check out and head to the airport. Will post more pics soon and write a bit more. Happy new years everyone!

Been a while since the last entry from Hawaii. Just haven’t had the time (and at times access to the net from laptop - could have used phone but I prefer to use a normal keyboard for long entries :)) to write much and been waiting on some pictures that were taken on some scuba dives I did here on the south of Oahu. Still don’t have the pics (should have em later on today hopefully) so will have to post em next time.

First up…Woooohooo I completed my Advanced PADI scuba certification a few days ago! Got to check out two different shipwreck sites namely the Sea Tiger and the YO-257 sites that . Also did some reef dives (horseshoe reef). Wow what a difference it is diving in Hawaii versus California. Water temperature in California is typically around 53 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celcius) whereas here the water was around 74 degrees Fahrenheit (23 degrees celcius)!  Then on top of that visibility is much nicer (around 30-40m visibility in hawaii versus 1-2m visibility off the shore of monterey bay in california). Lots of cool tropical fish to see around here along with some sea turtles, some large octopuses, a huge string ray (around 2 metres in width). There was a diver in our group that was complaining because he was comparing the diving here to Thailand and visibility there is much better, but compared to cold water diving in Northern California, the diving here was incredible and I’m glad I took up the chance to complete my advanced certification at such an awesome location.

Also went on a submarine tour that visits the YO-257 shipwreck site. Was excited about seeing the same site twice but this time without being wet, but for some reason didn’t enjoy it even half as much as when I dove down to the site. The submarine just seemed to go by too quickly to get a good look at all the marine life and at the same time there was no feeling of wonder and excitement and a bit of nervousness that I felt jumping off a boat and diving down a 100 feet into the water. It (the submarine tour) felt no different then watching a shipwreck site on tv

Did some hiking and caught some sweet views of the island. Aside from that explored the cuisine of the island, checked out touristy spots like Waikiki beach and also snorkeled off other sites besides Hanauma bay (that I mentioned in my last post).

Cool volcanic formations on the east side of Oahu

View from a hiking trail on the east of Oahu. That island on the right of the pic is Rabbit island (looks more like a turtle then a rabbit to me)

View from the USS Missouri battleship. This is the ship on which Japan surrendered to the US and its allies and ended the WWII.

Thats Diamond Head volanic cone on the right. The city of Honolulu is towards the left of this pic (but not visible).

Now onto the power outage I mentioned in the title of this post - entire island of Oahu lost electricity around 6pm-ish yesterday including the President-elect Obama’s rental property on the east side of the island where he has been vacationing since last week. Wasn’t too bad because I was still connected to the net on the iphone and the 6-7 of us gathered around some candles and made the most of it. Woke up this morning to find that the electricity was still out in this neighborhood (power was restored to the west coast of the island around 6am) so a bunch of us drove to the nearest Safeway store to stock up on food and as soon as we paid for our purchases the power came back on So now I have a bunch of food stocked up that I need to finish in the next few days before we fly back to California.

Enough for today. Will write more once I get the scuba diving pics

Update Jan 6th: Looks like I accidently deleted this entry Can’t remember most of what I wrote here but part of it was about doing a shark cage tour (pic) below. Think I also wrote about some other stuff I was up to during that same time period….too bad the entry is lost now

Yeah yeah I know..been a while since I’ve written anything on my blog. First was busy with the new WoW expansion and then once I got my mage to lvl 80 and then got super busy with work. Didn’t even know if I’d be able to go on my planned vacation to Hawaii until around 11pm the night before I was supposed to fly out!

On day 3 of the trip and so far its been a blast! Staying at a hostel opposite University of Hawaii and the awesome thing about hostels (besides being cheaper then hotels) is the awesome people you come across Let’s see there’s Rick, the former bio-chemistry researcher now turned trumpet player, from Palo Alto. Then there’s Eva, the Biology professor, from Texas who let me use her waterproof camera today to take pics underwater when we hit Hanauma bay earlier today. Sean the green peace dude and damn can’t pronounce or spell her name… marketing PHD student from Ohio. So yeah…interesting mix of people.

Temperture here is perfect. The bay area was freezing when we left on Wednesday morning (highs of 52 degrees F) and here its been between 72 and 80ish even though it rained a bit early yesterday morning. Skies were clear and sunny afterwards and today the overcast conditions were perfect for the evening hike to the top of diamond head .

So far highlight of the trip was swimming with a turtle for what felt like good 10 mins or so at Hanauma bay. Other stuff I came across (both fish and coral) in the water today kinda paled in comparison to what I’ve seen in Fiji waters. Was really hoping I’d see I’d see a turtle and was swimming back to shore after searching for 20 mins on the second attempt of the day when I saw this lil dude that’s in the pic below.

Okay getting hungry so this will be it for this post. Will try to write another entry tomorrow.