Swimming with Honu

One of the bucket list hopes of this trip is to snorkel with sea turtles.  The Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle is called Honu in Hawaiian, and there are multiple places throughout the islands where they will come out of the water and rest on the beach in the evenings.  Poipu Beach is one of those spots and is only a 10-minute walk from our AirBnB.

We went both nights we stayed in Poipu and watched numerous honu slowly come up out the water and rest on the beach. There are a cadre of volunteers that come out every evening to watch over them as they rest on the beach, ensuring an adequate perimeter is maintained from the tourists who would likely try to pet them if they could. Mona learned from one of the volunteers that these turtles have an internal GPS and return to the exact same spot on the sand every time.  

The bucket list hope came true this morning!  We've moved from Poipu on the south shore to Princeville on the north shore where we will spend our remaining nights on Kauai.  We went to Anini Beach which has large tidal pools with small coral reefs in them, and the waves stay quite a bit away from the shore.  The lack of waves made snorkeling easier, but the shallow water depths sometimes made navigating the coral tricky since you aren't supposed to come in contact with it.

Mona and I ended up snorkeling in opposite directions, but both of us had great turtle encounters.  Mona saw two different honu, and I saw a total of four including three that were fairly close to one another.  They seem quite graceful underwater as they glide through using their front flippers to propel them.  They come to the surface to breathe and then dive back down as they continue their journey, pausing at coral areas to eat.

The honu continues to be sacred to many Hawaiian families today.  For some in Hawaii, honu are ‘aumākua, or spiritual guardians.  After watching them on both land and underwater, I understand why.