Day 8: more snorkeling

If you thought we were lazy yesterday, wait until you hear about today.

ABC store bought breakfast on our lanai, then snorkeling & sunning at Kahalu’u Bay.

I love seeing new fish every day. I'll start off with a collection of butterfly fish.

First up; a threadfin butterfly fish

Lined butterfly fish with in the background two raccoon butterfly fish

Ornate butterfly fish

Bunch of different fish hanging out together; there's some yellow tang, convict tang, a crocodile needle fish and a tiny Hawaiian cleaner wrasse.

  

Sailfin tang?

Close-up of the Hawaiian cleaner wrasse ... as the name implies it helps other fish get cleaned up by eating gunk off their scales. This one's slacking on the job a bit.

From the bright colors of the wrasse, next a very inconspicuous individual hanging out on the sandy bottom of the lagoon by the hotel. I believe it's some kind of lizard fish?

Time for some sea urchins. Unfortunately, I can't identify individual species because they're not covered in my book, but the fat red one is definitely my favorite.

  

State fish again. You remember the name, right?

Saw another turtle too.

Time for some more brightly colored fish. The next one is definitely a parrotfish, but I'm not a 100% on the subspecies, my guess would be a bulletheaded parrotfish.

Talk to the tailfin! This one just did not want to have his picture plastered all over the internet. It is a yellowtail coris.

Color is so vivid that you almost question whether it's fake, but trust me, this is a real live fish called a bird wrasse.

Peacock grouper ... one of my absolute favorites to run into. While it looks dull in the picture, underwater the tiny blue spots shimmer like diamonds. Not to worry, this beauty is toxic and won't end up on your dinner plate.

Bluespine unicornfish ... it's hard to tell but it has a tiny horn above its eyes.

Mega school ... I didn't see large congregations of fish often, but it's amazing when you round a corner to find a sight like this.

We walked down all the way to the northern end of Alii drive looking for a place to eat, but in the end we decided on Bubba Gump. Not the best food I’ve ever had, but definitely tasty and the setting couldn’t be beat. Right on the edge of the bay overlooking some spongers riding waves by the setting sun, with on the other end of the bay our own hotel. Of course I forgot to bring a camera, oops!

I finally got to try a Lava flow cocktail. Hmmm yummy!

After dinner we drive down to the Sheraton at Keauhou Bay, where we spot two more hilarious caution signs. First, watch out for people driving golf carts.

Next one's a riot; Caution - unmanned golf carts! Hahahaha.

We stumble around in the dark before happening upon a paved walkway (really, they should consider using proper lighting on such a high end property), that luckily leads us to the overlook where you can see the manta rays.

Two tour boats are out on the water and they’re bobbing on the waves. First we don’t see anything, but other a while they turn on one of the big underwater lights and a dark shape appears. Soon it starts doing summersaults and we can see the white underside of its belly. Yay, we saw a manta ray! It's not very clear, but you can see a dark shape in the water slightly to the left of center between the people on the raft and the bottom of the picture.

Time for another ABC store visit and then it’s already time for bed.