Following our memorable diving in Truk Lagoon
and Bikini Atoll we flew on around the world to our next port of call
- Hawaii. We only had three days there and due to the de-fizz requirements
forced upon us by flights we could only carry out one day's diving.
As you might expect Hawaiian diving is run by Americans - Hawaii is
an American state after all - but what a consumate cluster f*ck these
guys are making of it quite frankly. Don't get me wrong, they are
efficient and very friendly but we felt it was both expensive and
in many ways, amateurish. We carried out our first dive in a streaming
current and unimpressive visibility on one of their "premier" wrecks...
if the Mahi is a premier wreck then I wonder what they would make
of Scapa Flow... it would probably blow their minds! Anyhow the surface
interval between the two dives we had booked was just 30 minutes and
I would hardly call the second dive a dive at all it was so shallow.
No... they charge the earth for a so called "two dive day" and you
are back at your hotel before lunch... most unimpressive, especially
in view of the weighty $100 plus price tag.
The Mahi was a minesweeper and she lies in twenty some
metres quite close in. She is relatively intact and there appeared to be
some good swim through possibilities however the PADI dive guide expressly
forbade anything but a potter around outside the wreck - not that that actually
stopped us completely but we were most dissapointed after the extensive
penetrations we had been carrying out in Truk and Bikini the previous few
weeks. Anyhow, only the sighting of a solitary Eagle Ray and a Frogfish was
anything worthy of note on an otherwise indifferent wreck.
No, I can't see us going to Hawaii again...
it was over priced and over rated quite frankly... in a word, charm
free...
But that was two words...
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