Haunama Bay

I fear drowning. That is why I really don't like to go on boats, ships, or anything that will allow someone else to throw me overboard. Because of this fear, I forced myself to take a swimming class so I would at least know how to float just in case someone evil did try to throw me overboard. After a semester of swimming classes, let's just say that I can doggie paddle for five minutes before I have to flip over and start floating on my back because the five minutes of doggie paddling left me exhausted.

Anyway, even though I fear drowning, I love to play in the water. I love swimming pools, beaches, lakes, etc. As long as my feet is able to touch the bottom and the water does not go past my neck, I'm okay. But everyone tells me that you have to try snorkeling at least once, especially if you're going to be in Hawaii. Going underwater swimming was hard enough to deal with, but then I have to trust that my body won't sink to the bottom of the ocean, therefore pulling down my breathe sprout so I inhale water instead of air? I think not.

However, my love for fishies overcame my fear of drowning. I dragged my friend, who's also afraid of drowning, to the nearest ABC store and we bought ourselves a set of snorkels and masks. We were going to buy fins too, but decided that we probably won't go very far into the water therefore no fins were necessary. We made our way to Haunama Bay, the underwater aquarium spot for snorkeling, waited twenty minutes in the admission line, watched a ten minute "introduction to the reef" video, and picked out our spot on the beach.

Okay, we spent about half an hour trying to get our masks and snorkels to fit right. We looked like idiots:
Then, once we were comfortable with our masks and snorkels on, we decided to venture out into the water. Once we got to waist deep waters, I stuck my head in and tried to breathe through my mouth through the snorkel and immediately stood back up because the first thing I did was try to breathe through my nose and of course that didn't quite work very well. After several attempts of breathing through my mouth, I finally got comfortable enough to start swimming around with the snorkel. AND IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! And with the help of an underwater camera, I was able to catch these fishies in action:

So many fishies.

Do you see the rainbow fish?

I guess you can say I made my peace with the water. But I was still able to stand up in these waters, so I'm not really ready to tackle deep sea diving. Peace.