Day 6 in Hawaii was fun as we were now in Kona, ready to start “phase II” of our honeymoon. We had finished with Hilo, and now we were going to explore all around Kona. I mentioned in a previous post that part of my desire for the trip was to experience events that I couldn’t do anywhere else…bucket list items, for example.
The first activity of the day was a submarine ride, cruising around the coast of the Island at about 100′ deep. It’s not exactly the Marianas Trench, but it’s a submarine nonetheless. Of course, it’s designed for tourists and capturing every rent-seeking dollar they can from you, which means they offered the obligatory memorable photo (selfies weren’t really a thing yet) before taking the Atlantis out to the submarine.
In reality, it’s a lot like an underwater bus with windows all the way along and a big glass dome cockpit.
Down the centre ran a long bench, and if there were enough people, they’d probably fill both sides. We weren’t exactly in high season, so you could swing from side to side, depending on which side had the better view.
I didn’t get great shots out the windows with our little point-and-shoot camera, but enough to show fish, a boat wreck with anchor, etc.
It wasn’t as exciting as the helicopter tour previously, but it was fun. If I had one, I think I’d love to just go hang out with the sting rays.
After the morning submersion in the ocean, we went to explore some of the local flora. There was a botanical garden a short drive back towards Hilo, we’d passed it the day before on the way in, and we went to check out the trees, leaves, and flowers. You could wander around and see lots of things, even after a brief rain, but signage wasn’t extensive so hard to identify some of the plants.
Some of the leaves were incredible though. Definitely not Ontario.
We couldn’t identify most of the flowers either.
The submarine was a bucket list item, and I’d love to do it again. The botanical garden wasn’t as exciting as we had hoped, but pretty interesting still.
