Friday, October 28, 2011

Molokini and Turtle Town

We took a boat tour over to Molokini and Turtle Town with a group of friends and family from the wedding. Molokini is a crescent-shaped partially submerged volcanic crater about 2.5 miles off the coast of Maui. This site is a popular snorkeling destination for most people visiting the Island. Our group did the AM tour with the Pride of Maui. The boat's crew was very friendly.

I'm not sure if it was because of the time we arrived at Molokini (around 9am), or where the Pride of Maui has to moor, but the snorkeling wasn't the best; there weren't as many fish as I remember from past trips and the coral seems to be dying. I couldn't see any colourful coral. The snorkeling at our resort was much more interesting than this stop.

After Molokini, the boat took us over to Turtle Town and during the ride over we got a BBQ lunch. The food was good, though it was a little rushed by the time you got through the line up for food, ate and arrived at Turtle Town.

Just as the name indicates, Turtle Town has an abundance of turtles, as well as other colourful fish and marine life. The turtles here are the protected Hawaiian Green Sea turtles. These turtles can be very large and I got to see one here. I was feeling somewhat tired from the first snorkeling stop (not a very strong swimmer), so I decided that instead of going on a finding turtles adventure to head back to the boat and hang around there instead. Z continued on his quest to find turtles and ended up seeing three or four. Back around the boat, one of the crew was feeding the fish and so it was amazing to see the number of fish frantically chasing after the food. It was really cool to see.

The trip itself was a lot of fun because there were so many people on board that we either knew or had just met a couple days prior. Snorkeling Molokini is not what I remember it being, so a disappointment there - a lot of people were of the same opinion. Turtle Town was great and worth the trip.

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