Snorkeling at Po'ipu

Po'ipu Beach

On Wednesday we saw another "must see" beach: Po'ipu.  There's a natural kiddie pool of sorts that's about a foot deep and is sheltered from the breaking waves by rocks.  Mario and I thought it was perfect for a toddler, but Windham was unimpressed.  He played in the sand most of the time while I went snorkeling in the adjacent bay.  Mario rented some snorkeling gear for me along with 2 small bags of fish food.

The bags dissolve in the water, slowly releasing the fish food.  I wanted to use them one at a time, but I'd walked a long way to get to the bay and didn't want to mess with my flippers and get out of the water to come back for the second bag.  So I stuffed it in my swimsuit and snorkeled farther from shore. 

The bags began to dissolve releasing pieces of fish food into the water. Several fish appeared almost instantly and came right up and began devouring the food rapidly.  Before I could even think that was cool, several schools of all different kinds of fish--some of them as big as my calf!--swarmed in from all directions, mauling me for the food!  I screamed a muffled underwater scream and tried to wrench the food away from them.  


Then I remembered something I'd read on the fish food bag:  That in the unlikely event that you're mauled by fish, to drop the fish food and swim away.  I dropped the first bag, yanked the second out of my swimsuit, and splashed away from the voracious tropical fish.  I pulled myself together self-consciously hoping no one had noticed and continued snorkeling.  I was rewarded with a very enjoyable experience and saw several schools of really beautiful fish.  The elegant coris wrasse were my favorite.  The needle nose fish were the creepiest.  They swim right at the surface of the water so they're really difficult to see until the last second when they jet in front of your face with their needle noses.

After our beach adventure and an afternoon nap we headed down to the beach in front of our hotel again.  Mario did a photo shoot of Windham and the resulting cache of incredible photos will help us remember our trip forever.