We arrived just before opening, and were among the first people inside.
The coffee was lovely, and the acai bowls delicious. I had the "Moana Acai Bowl", with granola, banana, mango, and lilikoi sauce.
Comfortable and casual seating in the courtyard of the mall.
I had read that Black Rock - located just a bit north up the beach from our resort - was a great location for snorkeling, so after breakfast we gathered our snorkel gear and walked up the beach.
Along the way we stopped to admire a lovely full rainbow.
Black Rock juts out into the ocean from the beach, creating a bit of a protected coral area at the base of the cliff just off the beach. It didn't take much swimming to find a multitude of larger fish.
Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
Humu and a Parrot Fish from above
Trumpet Fish - perhaps one of the oddest looking fish we encountered this morning.
I followed this school of Yellow Goatfish for a bit
G snorkeling with her underwater film camera.
There are five fish in this shot, going counterclockwise from the upper left corner:
Humu
Yellow Tang
Convict Tang
Brassy Chub
Butterfly Fish of some kind (difficult to tell as it is facing the camera, so the side marks are hard to match to my guides.)
A school of convict tangs
The fish were easy to find in relatively shallow water.
I had read that sometimes snorkelers hear a "sizzle" sound in the water, which is attributed to the shrimp which live in the rocks, or fish grazing on the coral surfaces. Throughout my snorkeling I could hear several layers of "sizzle", from the fish to fellow snorkelers, to the sound of people plummeting from Black Rock down to the ocean near by. After a short while I noticed my snorkel vest seems to be low on air, so I sat up to add some air through the tube, and continued on my way. The second time I stopped to add air, I realized that the most prominent "sizzle" sound I was hearing was the air escaping from my vest from a tiny hole. It was not a bad enough leak to put me in any danger, however it did concern me enough to decide I should replace the vest with something else after this outing.
After about an hour of swimming about, we decided to swim back to shore and take a leisurely stroll back down the beach to the condo. Once we were all free of the salt-water coating, I gathered my camera gear and we headed south to Lahania to find lunch.
The town of Lahaina was extremely warm this day (it was later that we discovered "Lahaina" means "Cruel Sun") One of the restaurants we were interested in was not open for lunch, so we meandered to a lower level of an outdoor mall and decided to give a walk-up called "Down the Hatch Tacos" a try.
I found a table in a shady spot, where a lizard observed us from a nearby plant.
The tacos were rather bland, and though it wasn't necessarily a bad lunch, we all decided it was not worthy of returning to.
While waiting for our lunch, I set to work to research places that might carry a replacement snorkel vest. It turned out that inflatable vests, while handy for packing, were not particularly popular for area stores, and nobody in the vicinity carried them. One snorkel store offered a one week rental of a snorkel belt for $20.00, the shop was located within a mile of the condo, so that seemed like a good solution, though I was skeptical having never used a belt.
Our appetites satiated for the time being, I loaded up my gear and we walked a few blocks down the street to Banyan Tree Park.
Planted in April of 1873 when it was just 8 feet tall, the Banyan Tree in Lahaina now measures 60 feet high and has stretched outwards, producing a dozen major trunks in addition to its core, and shades over 2/3rds of an acre of land. Throughout the day the park's benches are filled with people taking refuge from the baking sun. In the evening the branches are teeming with flocks of Common Mynas, a local bird, making a racket worth of a Hitchcock movie.
I began with my vintage Kodak Six-20 balanced precariously atop my tripod. Although it does have a tripod mount built into it, the tripod mount is not flush with the camera body, so extra care needs to be taken to get a flat horizon line. I am not always successful with this.
The primary center of the Banyan Tree
A section of particularly interesting expansion trunks.
This section of trunk looked like a giant squid to me.
I was having some difficulty getting the Six-20 to shoot properly, specifically the shutter release kept sticking. I suspected the humidity was affecting the mechanism (it is, after all, an 80-or-so year old camera) though the shutter fired just fine if I clicked it manually rather than using my cable release. I had intended to exclusively use the cable release to ensure camera stability, but after a few frustrated attempts, I gave it up and stuck to the "hold your breath while you trip the shutter" method of shooting. This, combined with the 95 degree heat and repeated swapping of cameras on the tripod, became very tedious very quickly.
My other film camera for the trip is my P.120 panoramic pinhole camera. This camera worked like a dream, humidity be damned! The massive tree structure was the perfect subject for my 120 degree camera view, giving me endless options of images to frame.
This extensive trunk is supported by posts along with its own root extensions.
Looking up into the green canopy and the blue sky above.
From the center trunk looking out and up, the tree stretches ever-onward with lazy vines hanging in the breeze.
On our drive back to the condo, I sketched this impression of the center of the Banyan Tree.
We stopped at the nearby snorkel store on our way back to the condo to pick up my snorkel belt rental. The belt was essentially a large piece of black foam, round in the middle with narrow sides to wrap around the waist, and an adjustable nylon belt and plastic buckle for attaching. It is not for keeping your head out of the water, like a life vest, but rather it keeps your mid-section floating so that you can put your face in the water without worrying about sinking. Being overheated from the Lahaina outing, and excited to give the belt a try, we hopped down to the beach in front of the condo to go for a swim.
The belt was exceptionally more comfortable to wear than any snorkel vest. Floating face down was a fearless breeze, and if I tried to sit upright the belt kept my head and shoulders just above the waterline like a buoy. I wondered where has this been all my life?
G and I took turns trading the belt for her snorkel vest and both agreed that the belt was far superior in comfort. Having achieved a state of refreshingly water-logged, we all cleaned up and began to discuss dinner. None of us had a desire to get in the car again, so we put our names down for another restaurant in the mall, Monkeypod.
(the exterior of Monkeypod, photo is from their website)
The menu at Monkeypod ended up being rather limited for me, and I discovered I could not drink the mai tais due to their special "lilikoi foam" which contained egg. I'm thankful they listed that right on the menu, but a bar handling egg foam is a bar I don't want to order a drink from. Most of the preparations of fish included sauces or breading I am allergic to, so to be safe I opted for the simple Margarita Pizza.
While waiting for dinner, I sketched my impression of a Humu. Thus far I had seen one every time I hit the water.
It was a decent pizza, but not one of my favorites.
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