Friday, December 23, 2011

Waiopae Tidepool Marine Life Conservation District

On the southeast end of the island, a twisty sometimes one-lane road takes you through papaya groves and lava fields, past tumbledown shacks and gated new homes (and even a castle, incongruous amid the clumps of sugarcane), and out to the end of the spit and a subdivision called "Vacationland" where a series of lava-formed tidepools have been both incorporated into homesites, giving people their own private thermal hot tubs/koi ponds, and turned into a public park. We'd brought our snorkel gear but the wind was well beyond brisk and the rain squalls frequent, and the wet lava rocks were slippery. We teetered around the edges of the ponds for a bit but didn't go in.



Farther to the west, along the bottom of the island and heading towards the new lava flow from the Pu`u `O`o crater is Alahanui Park, where there's a bigger thermally-heated enclosed lagoon that's a popular swimming hole, and we ended up going in there instead. There were fish in the thermal pool, but not many, though John did encounter a school of small fish that seemed to think he was tasty, and he was nibbled on a bit. I just floated around watching a two-year-old girl laugh as her father carried her around the pool so she could pick up the yellow leaves floating on the water.



The only marine life I saw that day.



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