The Providers

Air Canada (http://www.aircanada.ca)
United Air Lines (http://www.united.com)
Alamo Rent a Car (http://www.goalamo.com)
ATR Condos (http://www.konacondo.com)
Kona Aggressor (http://www.konacondo.com)

Summary

We went to the big island of Hawaii.  The first week was spent on land
with no diving.  The second week was spent on the Kona Aggressor with
nothing but diving.

The Travel

It was a pleasant surprise to see that there were direct flights from
North America to Kona.  We thought we would have to go to Honolulu and
puddle jump.  Our itinerary was Toronto - Los Angeles - Kona, all in
one day, and then Kona - Chicago - Toronto coming back.  Kona to
Chicago was an overnighter.

Getting ourselves and our luggage there and back involved a bit of
luck.  Our ticket and itineray showed a departure time from Toronto of
noon.  However, we checked the Air Canada website the night before and
noticed that our flight was scheduled to leave at 10 am.  The website
info was correct.  Good thing we checked.  Coming back, I'm not sure
how it happened, but we managed to book flights with a 35 minute
layover in Chicago.  Normally I insist on at least 2 hours.  In any
event, our flight arrived in Chicago on time and we managed to make it
to our departure gate on time to board our flight.  We had our
boarding passes printed up in Kona.  Then the airplane broke and it
took about 90 minutes to fix it.  About five minutes before we finally
left, we heard a thump.  Patti said, "that's probably our bags being
loaded."  I'm not sure if that was the case, but our bags were among
the first that came onto the converyer belt in Toronto.

The Non Diving Week
Staying in a condo was nice.  Ours was called the Royal Kahili.  We
bought groceries and had breakfasts there, but went out for lunch and
dinner.  It was a relaxing week.  We made a road trip to Volcano Park,
took an airplane ride around the island, and did some snorkelling.
The airplane ride was expensive, but money well spent.  It could have
been more expensive but we aggreed to go to a time share presentation
in exchange for a discounted flight.  That was also worth it, we saved
$150 per person.

The first place we snorkelled was right across the street from our
condo.  It was more of a surfer's spot than a snorkelling spot and we
didn't see too many fish.  We did see three turtles though.  They were
just off shore, eating the grass off the the rocks.  Another spot we
snorkelled was on the north side of the island, at Hapuna State Park.
Once again there were turtles just off shore eating the grass off the
rocks.  Just to the north was the Mauna Kea Resort, which had a coral
reef wall just offshore.  It would make a good shore dive.  The
visibility was not that good for snorkelling when we were there - the
top two feet had a freshwater saltwater mixture which makes the water
look scaly.  I don't know if it's like that every day.

The other place we snorkelled was at Kahalu'u Beach Park, a bit south
of our condo.  This place was like swimming in an aquarium.  The water
was anywhere between one and five ft deep.  There was lots of coral
and tons of fish.  Plus, there was a reef to stop the waves so there
was very little surge.  The second time we went there I even took my
camera.  I only got a couple of good pictures though, photography on
snorkel is incredibly difficult, at least for me.

One thing about going snorkelling.  Our rental car keys were all
hardwired together, including the keyless control - which you don't
want to bring into salt water.  We had to cut the wires in order to
free up a key I could put in my bathing suit pocket.

The Kona Agressor

The boat is described on the Aggressor website so I won't repeat that.
It is a roomy and comfortable boat for the most part.  The dive deck
is a bit cozy.   However, we only had 11 passengers and I don't think
we ever had more than eight or nine on any one dive, so it wasn't as
cramped as it could have been.  The crew was cheerful and the food was
really good.  Something I had never seen on a dive boat before was
draft beer.  All the other boats that served beer had bottles.

On some previous liveaboard trips, the boat's photo pro would take a
bunch of pictures and there would be a 35 mm slide show at the end of
the trip.  Then we would be given the slides of us.  While the boat
captain said that the Aggressors have been doing this for awhile, what
happened on this trip was a first for us.  The photo pro took a bunch
of pictures, made dvd, and our slide show was done on the television.
That was nice, but fairly normal.  The really nice part was that each
passenger was given a cd that contained all the photos in that slide
show.  That means that non-photographers still end up with some rather
nice fish pix.

The Diving

Hawaii has a reputation of being all lava and no coral.  There might
be places like that, but we didn't dive them.  Our dive sites had lots
of hard coral and many colourful fish.  The reef is not as colourful
as some other places because there is not much sponge and no seafans,
but the fish make up for it.  Yellow tangs and butterfly fish
abounded.  We didn't see much big stuff.  The local peacock groupers
are a decent size but they were the only fish more than a foot long
(except trumpetfish of course).  We saw one spotted eagle ray off in
the distance, and that's about it for big stuff.  There were lot's of
small fish though.

The visibility was in the 100 ft range most days and the water
temperature was 77-79 F.  Most of the dives were in the 40 to 70 foot
range, with the top of the reef at 20-30 ft.  There was a bit of surge
in the shallows, but less than I remembered from my previous trip
(1989).

Kona's signature is the night dive with the Manta Rays.  One of the
local dive shops has installed some lights on the bottom.  The
combination of these lights and the diver's lights illuminates the
plankton and some manta rays come up to feed.  The way the Aggressor
does this is to wait until the divers from the day boats have been in
the water for half an hour or so, and then send their divers in.  This
leaves just the Aggressor divers in the water for most of the dive.
Sounds good in theory, but you just can't trust those wild animals.
There were no manta rays the night we went.  There were lots of
schooling fish feeding on the illuminated plankton, but no manta rays.
For those of us on the Aggressor, it was oh well, time for a hot
chocolate and Bailey's.  However, there were six day boats out there
as well.  Imagine how the divers on those boats, who paid extra for
that trip felt.  Jack's Diving Locker for example, charges $145 for
that trip.

All in all, a great trip.
Dan Bracuk
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.