Hawaii: catamarans and sea creatures

We decided to take a catamaran tour of the Na Pali coast since it's so beautiful and we knew we wouldn't have time to hike in to see it. It rained most of our time on the boat, but it was still worth it.















I felt a little sick as we pulled away from the dock, so hanging out in the open air part of the catamaran was my best option. Sailing doesn't make me nervous, but it does make me nauseous.















The stormy seas didn't help much with that.




















But where there's rain, there are rainbows. At least in Hawaii. Maybe not in Detroit.















This alone was worth the price of our plane tickets. How COOL is that? Husband and I also had a dolphin adventure at the last resort we stayed at on the Big Island.

I really like dolphins. I recently watched an episode of Myth Busters where they tested the theory that dolphins keep sharks from attacking people or other creatures just by showing up and hanging around when there's peril. For their experiment, the Myth Buster guys tied chunks of meat and a fake seal to the back of a boat in South African waters and watched as great whites tore after them within seconds. Then they put a fake (by realistic) dolphin in the water behind a new fake seal and new chunks of meat and the sharks nosed around a bit but were remarkably shy when it came to chowing down. The guys on Myth Busters rated that myth as "plausible". They got the idea for this particular experiment from several stories they had heard of people being saved from shark attacks by dolphins. They said that a dolphins might actually intervene in such cases since they are smart enough to be altruistic. How neat! I call them water dogs, because they're so sweet, good-natured, and silly.

Some of the dolphins we saw that day were spinner dolphins. They jump out of the water at random times to spin around like mad, just to be goofy (at least, they can't find any other scientific explanation for the behavior).




















Despite the fact that the dolphins stole the show, the Na Pali caves were pretty cool, too.




















The coastline really is magnificent. The cliffs don't even look that big until you see something else (in our case, another boat) beside them. We just stood on the deck of the catamaran and day dreamed as we sailed along.