{"id":2149,"date":"2009-10-31T00:41:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T07:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=2149"},"modified":"2013-03-23T15:27:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-23T22:27:00","slug":"third-times-a-charm-hanauma-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/31\/third-times-a-charm-hanauma-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"Third Time’s a Charm: Hanauma Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HumuHumu\"<\/a>
\nOn my third visit to Oahu, I was finally able to visit Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a beautiful cove south of Waikiki. I was thwarted on previous visits by not getting an early enough start — the popular park fills up quickly and once it’s full, that’s that, you’re not getting in. I had all the odds in my favor this morning — an early start, the low season, and a tough year for tourism.At 830, I was in the water, chasing the wild humuhumunukunukuapua’a, the best named fish on the planet, though hey, you have to give props to the lauwiliwilinukunukuo’io’i, the long nosed butterfly fish.<\/p>\n

Now, all my questions about Hanauma Bay have been answered:<\/p>\n

1. Yes, you can rent snorkel gear down on the beach, no problem. They’ve got it, it’s decent enough gear, and I paid, uh, 13 dollars, I think, for my kit. It wasn’t crappy gear either, it was totally okay.<\/p>\n

2. Yes, there are lockers down there, too. They’re at the snorkel shack. But renting your gear may solve that problem for you — they’ll take your rental car keys for a deposit. Handy. That was actually the one thing I was worried about — losing my keys — and they were in good hands.<\/p>\n

3. Yes, you can totally go alone. If you stay on the beach side of the breakwater, there are lifeguards a plenty and probably, if you’re feeling insecure about your stuff, folks on the beach who will be happy to keep an eye out. I’m a confident swimmer, but I stayed fairly close in because I was alone. With a buddy, I’d have headed further out.<\/p>\n

4. Yes, it’s worth going early, not just because of the crowds, but because the water was much calmer in the early morning. The surf started to rise around 930\/10 am and I could hear it before I could feel it, oddly enough. It was kind of amazing to feel the shift in the water, a push towards the beach, a bubbly low roar, but early in the day, it was little more than a lapping swell. The fish didn’t seem to care.<\/p>\n

5. No, there’s nothing to eat down on the beach. You can bring your own picnic, but if you want to buy food, you’ll have to go back up top.<\/p>\n

6. No, I did not get sunburned! I wore a super lightweight long sleeved shirt when I was in the water and sunscreen when I was out. It was interesting to me that Hanauma Bay doesn’t have a no sunscreen rule like Kaleakakua Bay does — that stuff washes off in the water and isn’t good for the fish.<\/p>\n

7. Yes, there are showers, changing rooms, restrooms, and water down on the beach.<\/p>\n

It was, of course, awesome. There was some good fish spotting, I saw lots of parrotfish, convict tanks, one spectacular angel fish, a few lovely butterfly fish, and I chased the humuhumus around whenever I saw them. That’s one fine fish. Next time, I’ll go even earlier, perhaps with a breakfast type picnic. I packed it in around noon, with the surf up and the beach getting very crowded, it was time for lunch.<\/p>\n

I went for sushi, of course.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: Travel and accommodation portions of my trip were sponsored by the Oahu Visitor’s Bureau<\/a> in exchange for my blogging about my experiences in Hawaii. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Honolulu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my third visit to Oahu, I was finally able to visit Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a beautiful cove south of Waikiki. I was thwarted on previous visits by not getting an early enough start — the popular park fills up quickly and once it’s full, that’s that, you’re not getting in. I had all … <\/p>\n


…read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[491,153,269,642],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aloha-oy","tag-hanauma-bay","tag-hawaii","tag-oahu","tag-snorkeling","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2151,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions\/2151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}