More Parks and Gardens in Hawaii

 There was another park I wanted to stop and see while we were wondering around the island. I can't get enough flowers and trees and greenery from a tropical place. It was hot and muggy, and there were lots of people, but still a pretty place to spend the afternoon.

We did come across a snail that was huge (it's my husband's hand in the picture with the snail. He's 6'5. It's a big snail). I still believe dinosaurs are roaming somewhere along that island. 

Sea Turtles

I'm on a kick where I'm really into turtles. I don't know why, but I love turtles. I was rather excited to learn there are lots of sea turtles along Hawaii. 

Sadly the only way we could find to see them was to pay to take a boat ride, that would then stop out in the ocean where you can swim around and hope you see some turtles. 

Swimming in the ocean with 100 other tourists trying to see a turtle, which are probably running the other direction once they see the crown, was not something I really wanted to do. Plus it was really really expensive to do these 2 hour boat tours. It just didn't seem worth it. But I still want to see sea turtles.

While we were out on the boat to see sharks, one of the divers had mentioned that she saw turtles all the time. 

There was a beach she would go to after work all the time that no one was every at, and there were always turtles. I was rather excited and she was nice enough to give us directions on where to find this magical place.

The location is definitely not a tourist location. It was a smaller, less nice public beach that only the locals would know about. 

It's not as nice or picked up as the tourist areas are, and the beach is not huge or the greatest. There is also a section that is a hard rock shelf of volcanic rock. 

Needless to say most visitors are not going to jump to go out to this beach. (But really they should. It was never very busy so you could enjoy the beach and waves to yourself. Just not the best view of the island).

She described where to go to see them. It took us a while to find the spot, and neither of us were convinced we were in the right place.

We watched and waited and looked around for about 10 minutes until my eagle eyed husband saw then fighting the current in the water next to the volcanic rocks. The diver didn't like. There were turtles. 

We came back to this place 3 different times to watch them fight the surf and eat under the rock shelf. There were never more than 1 or 2 that we could see (and they are hard to see as they blend in really well to the rock surrounding), but every time we went we saw turtles. 

It is illegal to touch the sea turtles, and where they liked to hang out is not a place I would really want to get into the water. But because this rock shelf sat out over the water, we could stand on the edge and see them close up - as in they were only a few feet below us. 

I took a ridiculous amount of pictures and videos. I could easily hang out there all day every day, but my partner wasn't really sold on spending all his days on the Island watching turtles in this spot.

What can you do?

But I got to see my turtles. I was SOOO happy. And I will not tell anyone where we went to see them. As soon as word got out, tourists would rush to this spot. We all know people are jerks, so the habitat would be littered, destroyed, and of course there will always be those idiots jumping into the water to touch them and just be obnoxious. I'd rather not be a cause to decimating their nice little area away from the world. Plus, someone would turn this into a tourist spot and charge a ridiculous amount of money for people to even get into the beach area to see them. 

Let's just avoid that whole scenario and you can enjoy my pictures. My zoom lens on my camera is amazing in situations like these.