Tag: kayak

Water World Part 2

On By StevenIn Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

 

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Yesterday morning we set off on our second water adventure. Sue booked us an ocean kayak and snorkeling trip. We decided to drive to the tour company rather than have them pick us up as the drive home from the white water rafting included about an hour extra to drop off the other rafters. This way, we figured, we could drive to Quepos, the town where Iguana Tours has its offices and then when were done with the kayaking, we would wander the town.  We arrived at 8 a.m.  for our tour (yes, on vacation Sue booked us early morning activities every day so far) and were pleased to find that we were the only ones going. A driver took us to the beach and we met Alex our tour guide. A quick lesson on how to paddle, a safety lesson (stay in the kayak) and off we went. The water was beautiful: clear, calm, a bit of wind, but nothing that made paddling hard. We kayaked for about a mile, which took us about an hour. When we reached the snorkeling spot, we tied the kayaks together (ours and Alex’s), he tied them to a buoy, and we hopped into the water.

IMG_20190326_103022745_BURST000_COVER_TOPThe snorkeling was great, huge schools of small, colorful fish were all around. It felt like we were swimming in a tropical fish tank (which I guess we were –just a very large one!). Unfortunately, I forgot my GoPro, so I didn’t get any pictures/video of the fish. We snorkeled until we had our fill, hopped into the kayaks and beached on a nearby peninsula for a snack of fresh pineapple (which Alex cut up in front of us), cookies and lots of water. While we were relaxing, we had a visit from a troop (or barrel) of monkeys.  They hopped from tree to tree eating the leaves.  One of them had a baby on her back, while another small one seemed to be trying only very long (and scary) jumps.  Alex said that once we left, they would come down and eat the remains of the pineapple (and if they didn’t, the iguana’s would).

Once we were done, we hopped back in the kayaks and paddled our way back. All in we spent about 3 hours on the water. They tour company provided us with lunch in Quepos (typical food!).  After lunch we wandered through the town for about an hour and were ready to leave.

We walked back to our car and found to our dismay that it wouldn’t start. Luckily,Alamo, whom we rented the car from, was next door. We walked in and let them know we were having a problem.  After about 20 minutes the mechanic came out and walked over to our car.  He took one look, grabbed a new battery, and we were on our way. Whew. If you have read our blog before, you know that we have had car trouble on several trips and have been extremely lucky each time. Fingers crossed that streak holds.

 

Oh The Things We Will Do & See

On By StevenIn Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

We (read Sue) did quite a bit of planning for Costa Rica this weekend.  Usually we try and organize quite a bit of our excursions before we go, or at least we sketch out what we are doing.  For this trip, we decided to plan what we wanted to do but then pretty much try and book on the day or the day before.

The first few days we are staying near the Manuel Antonio National Park. While there we will certainly go white water rafting on the  Upper Naranjo river.   We found a company call Pro Rafting Costa Rica and plan to book through them.  Some other things we are thinking about doing are:

Nighttime walking or boating tour in the National Park. The nice thing about the walking tour is we will be right in the ju03ngle, so close up to what ever we find. On the other hand…we will be close up to what ever we find!  The boat tour sounds more leisurely, but that isn’t usually our style.  Either way, it should be fun–in the jungle, at night.

Mangrove kayaking. There are lots of mangrove swamps and kayaking through them looks like it will give us a daytime view of the jungle at a safe distance from the land-based wildlife.  Sue tells me that the alligators don’t usually eat people as long as they stay in their kayaks. Hmmm: Could she be planning something?  One of the tour operators offers this at night, too.S o alone in a swamp, that is in a jungle, in a foreign country, where we don’t speak the language (Hey, I have been doing Duolingo for 64 days and can say useful things like: Do you work in a factory?) and separated from man- human- (?–yes, human, unless you think they are trained to eat only men) eating animals by a few millimeters of plastic. Sounds perfect.

Ocean kayaking/snorkeling. This tour takes us out into the ocean to kayak and then do some snorkeling.

Segway tour. Segway tour?  Really, going all the way to Costa Rica to ride a Segway?  Well, there is some history to this one.  Before started our blog, we traveled to Morocco (BTW: fabulous trip, fabulous place, a really great vacation for anyone with a small amount of adventurous spirit). For my birthday, Sue organized a Segway tour of Marrakech.  Unfortunately, the tour guide no-showed on us.  Needless to say, it is all Sue’s fault and she owes me a Segway tour.  Maybe we will do it in Costa Rica.

cano-island-costa-rica-scuba-300x216Scuba Diving.This is a long shot.  Sue didn’t really love diving when we did it in Hawaii, but perhaps she will give it another try.  (I said I would. I was just cold and seasick from the boat fumes.) One of the downsides to it is that there is a 10-mile boat ride to the island and she gets seasick (a very terrible feeling) so we will see.

Hiking.We will be going hiking, in the park, near the park, and anywhere else we can find.

Enough for today.  We will write about the things we will do near the Arenal Volcano for our next post.

Last Day, Great Day

On By SusanIn Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Thursday was our last day in Hawaii 😦 As usual we were booked. First, we did a kayak and snorkel tour through Holokai Kayak & Snorkel Adventures on the windward side of the island. We were supposed to go to Gilligan’s Island, but alas, we ended up shipwrecked on Horseshoe Reef because there is construction around Gilligan’s (Coconut) Island and it kicked up silt so the visibility was bad.  We got towed part of the

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way out to the reef and then paddled the rest of the way. Apparently, Steven and I are speed demons because we were first to the boat. After my initial reluctance to get into cold water (not cold for normal people–about 71 degrees–but cold for me) we snorkeled around the reef with Kevin from the tour group as our guide. The coral and fish are beautiful. Some of us saw a turtle, but we did not. That’s OK, we saw them during our Scuba trip.

On the way back, we learned what “windward” means when the gusts picked up. Kevin towed us to a spot where we could paddle downwind. It was like a water roller-coaster –thank you scopalamine patch. Once again, Steven and I beat the crowd back to our launch site at He’eia State Park, where we had a barbecue lunch (I had chicken, ribs & corn -yum!).  They even had a veggie burger for me. Yay!Attach15810_20180503_130746

After the trip, we did spend about an hour chilling in the hotel (no, really, we did).  Then it was off to Moku Kitchen to see our new friends Dominic and Mo, whom we met at Opal Thai and happen to work at the restaurant where my cousin made reservations. Mo made us some off-the-menu delicious drinks (Great drinks – no idea what they were) and Dominic was very hospitable. They are just two really good guys. I hadn’t really spent any time with Carol, as she was born around the time I graduated from college (boy, am I old –35!), so that was great too. You can never have too much family (that lives in Honolulu). Oh yes, the food at Moku was delicious. Fresh fish cooked to perfection. Not that Steven would know since he doesn’t eat fish. I had pepper steak – it was great!

IMG_20180503_151222045Oh, I almost forgot: We made it to the beach. Kind of. We stepped on the sand at the beach right outside our hotel. Can’t go to Hawaii without hitting the beach.  Cool thing about Hawaii – all the beaches are public and they have lots of access paths, so you can always stroll along the beach. 

The Booking Elves

On By StevenIn Relationships, TravelLeave a comment

Well, the booking elves have been busy (read Sue, as she is our official booker).   (I found this out accidentally, when Steven said, “Did you book that? You’re the booker.”) We broke down the trip by day and then started to work through our list of possible adventures.  Some of them we don’t need to book–hiking, visiting Haiku/Paia, driving the road to Hana, etc., but for others, it was time to pull out the iPad and laptop and start to make reservations.

There are a few things we had to be aware of when we started planning.

  1. We have only 2 full free days on Maui, 2 days we have work events (one dinner & one breakfast).
  2. We can’t go up Haleakala and scuba dive on consecutive days as it isn’t safe.
  3. We can’t fly for 18 hours after a scuba dive.
  4. Most trips on Maui seem to start early (7-7:30 am)–especially the ones on the water. (I don’t like the morning, especially on vacation.)

This is our schedule before we started booking things. (Get used to spreadsheets; Steven LOVES them. This hardly counts.):

Day
1 Arrive on Maui at about 5 pm
2 Work dinner at 7 pm
3 Work meeting (Steven only) 9 am
4
5
6 Flight to Oahu 1 pm
7
8
9 Flight home 1 pm

 

Sunrise on Haleakala and then a 23-mile bike ride down the mountain

WOW!  This starts really really really early–can’t they reschedule sunrise for a more reasonable time?  We are on vacation!  We need to be at the departure point at 3:30 am.  UGH!  After a little discussion, we realized that Maui is 5 hours behind our home time zone and figured that if we did this trip the first morning (Day 2), our bodies would think it was 8:30 am.  So we booked it–I will let you know on the day if we are fooling ourselves on this one. (Steven neglects to mention that he then told a friend/work colleague that we would have drinks and dinner with him and his wife after we arrive in Maui. So, late night, early morning given that we won’t get to the hotel until 7ish.)

Kayak to Molokini

I emailed one of the places to understand how hard a 3.5-mile (each way) kayak trip would be.  The reply came back: “It is really good for triathletes.”  I am more of a “try athlete”–you know I try to be an athlete, but not really hard, because then I sweat and might spill my drink.  We pass.

Sunset kayak tour

We could only find one place that did this and not on the days that we were available…strike 2 for kayaking.

Scuba

After poking around for a while, we found a dive shop on Oahu that looks good.  Only 6 reef piratespeople per dive, two-tank discover diving trip, they have their own boat, and they have lots of good reviews on TripAdvisor.  But more importantly, they have a great name & logo – Reef Pirates – which any real diver will tell you is the right way to pick a dive shop.   We booked this for the afternoon of Day 7.

Kayak trip to Gilligan’s Island

This is a four-hour tour (of course, it would be more apropos if it were a 3-hour tour)…plus travimagesel time to and from the north side of the island.  Officially, it is Coconut Island–but it is where some (all?)(at least the pilot) of Gilligan’s Island was shot.  If you are too young to remember the show….Boy did you miss one of the truly great quality high art television events.  A true tour de force with nuanced and carefully planned plot lines and characters (Ginger or Mary Ann? The Professor or ???)….you absolutely should find some reruns of it.

Anyway, we decided to book this on Day 8, our last full day in Hawaii, so if we are shipwrecked and can’t get off the island for three seasons, we won’t have missed any of our vacation.

paul ryan

(Total aside: I Googled fair use Gilligan’s Island images and this appeared.   No comment.) Perhaps more of a comment on Google’s search process rather than a political comment.

 

 

Aloha

On By StevenIn Relationships, Travel1 Comment

indexWe leave on an April 26 flight to LA and then to Maui; we arrive at 5 pm.  We are staying on Maui until noon on Tuesday, May 1, when we fly to Oahu.  We are in Honolulu until noon on Friday, May 4; then a stop in LA and finally to Chicago at 6 am on Saturday.

Since the airfare and hotel are paid for by my company we have to do a little bit of “work stuff.”  We have a meet & greet dinner on the first night. (I am not looking forward to this. I will have to be on my best behavior. Boo!) and then I have a breakfast meeting the next morning for 90 minutes.  (Read: Sue sleeps late.) Other than that, we are on our own.  I am very excited about this trip–especially since it is snowing this morning (April 9; Cubs home opener postponed).  We have created a short list of potential activities and will need to figure out which ones we have time/energy/inclination to do:

  1. Watch the sun rise on Haleakala and then a 23-mile bike ride down the mountain
  2. Scuba (try dive for Sue)
  3. zip lining–yes, Steven, who is petrified of heights, thinks this would be fun.
  4. Hiking on Haleakala
  5. Hiking on the Acid War Zone Trail
  6. Drive the road to Hana and hike along the way
  7. Visit Haiku and Paia
  8. Kayak to Molokini
  9. Sunset kayak tour
  10. Some other kayak tour
  11. Surfing!
  12. Kayak trip to Gilligan’s Island! – wonder if it will be more than a three hour tour (a three hour tour)
  13. Hiking on Diamondhead
  14. Visiting with Sue’s niece (actually my second cousin’s kid) who lives in Honolulu
  15. Relax? – probably not, but figured I would put it in anyway
  16. Avoid Steven’s colleagues

A couple of interesting points.  Seems like everything starts early in the morning especially the kayaking.  Haleakala is about 11,000 feet high and the sunrise tour starts at 3 am, so it will be cold.  The kayak trip to Molokini is 3.5 miles each way and since neither Sue nor I are real kayakers, we have no idea how hard that would be. (How hard could it be???)  Sue is not interested in surfing (I have trouble balancing on firm ground.), but I don’t think that will stop me.  I am a certified Scuba diver, but Sue has never done it, so maybe we will try and fit that in to see if she likes it.

When we decided to start up this blog, I did the only thing reasonable –I went out and bought a new toy–a GoPro camera.  (I helped the purchase along when he was dithering by suggesting the blog.) Now I am trying learn how to use it and will hopefully master it before we go. (Hmmm, I noticed this is I and not we. Where’s my GoPro?)   I’ll post some videos before we go so you can see the learning curve (which hopefully isn’t too long) on my new favorite toy.