We took our first snorkeling cruise on the Fair Wind forty-three years ago on our honeymoon. It was my first visit to Hawaii, even though Bruce had visited a dozen times already and he couldn't wait to bring me along. His parents had a condo here on the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii so he always had a free place to stay when he came. He already knew about the Fair Wind snorkeling cruise that takes you to one of the best snorkeling locations on Hawaii's Big Island since 1971.
They take you to a Marine Life Conservation District, the only underwater state park on the Big Island. There are no roads that lead to it so the only way you can go snorkeling there is to go by boat or by hiking. Last year, we actually took the hike to get to the bay, called Kealakekua Bay.
It is a 1.8 mile one-way hike with a 2,000 ft elevation, so it was a bit of a work out coming back up but we could handle it. Needless to say, there are not a lot of people on this trail since it is a pretty steep way of getting to the bay.
But the snorkeling is worth it. Once you get to the bay, there is a huge monument in memory of Captain Cook.
Captain James Cook was a British naval commander who was the first westerner to land in the Hawaiian Islands on Kauai in 1778. One year later, he was killed here by the Native Hawaiians and the remains of his body were buried at sea right here at Kealakeua Bay.
It was fun to hike down to the bay because we had never actually been on the land here since we always took the Fair Wind to the bay. But this year, we took the Fair Wind once again. We'd almost forgotten how fun it was.
The fish are the best here, so abundant and colorful. After snorkeling we floated around in old-fashioned inner tubes just soaking in the sun. The boat also has a high dive and some young people were doing different types of jumps off it and Bruce and I would bob in our inner tubes and give out scores from 1 -10. They liked playing that game with us. They also have a couple of water slides. Bruce had to go down at least once, of course; he couldn't resist.
The Fair Wind is the only boat that can anchor in this bay, as they have some kind of special license with the coast guard so we are here several hours. We see lots of boats come and go while we're here. So, it's nice to have a lot of time.
The other boats stink of diesel fuel as they come and go which is very unpleasant when you are in so much natural beauty but the Fair Wind runs on biodiesel fuel so it doesn't stink of diesel. Bruce talked a lot about this with the crew since he worked with biofuels at his job. They said they get their sunflower seed oil right here from Hawaiian islands where it is turned into biofuel. Over the years, they have worked hard to become more environmentally friendly by not using single-use plastics and now they have changed their barbecue lunch to an all vegan menu. I was so impressed.
I talked with the crew about their recipes and they said that during the pandemic, they had a lot of time to develop their own recipes. Their "pull pork" sandwich is made with jackfruit and their "tuna salad" sandwich is made with chickpeas. Bruce thought it was real tuna fish but I said it can't be because everything is vegan. He was so confused because, really, it all tasted like a conventional meal.
You did not see anybody turning away the food at all because you couldn't tell it was vegan. That's the kind of vegan I like. They served (all you can eat) homemade sweet potato chips that were better than potato chips and I'm not a real sweet potato fan but I loved these. They were thicker than potato chips and full of flavor besides just salt. Their recipes are on their website so I am eager to try some of their recipes. For dessert, they served us homemade vegan cookies; molasses ginger and chocolate chip/macadamia nut. Again, it was basically all we could eat because we didn't have a full boat on this day so there were a lot of extra. The crew are so fun to talk to and so accommodating. We saw a lot of whales on this day and they had a naturalist on the boat who talked about all the whales that we saw. It was almost like a whale-watching cruise, too.
I've never seen whales so close up even though we stayed the required 100 yards away. We saw them flip their tales twice. I'd never seen that before, either. Some of the crew put a microphone down into the water so we could hear them singing. The naturalist explained about whale sounds but we didn't hear any singing so the crew played back a recording from last week. It was so cool.
I would have to say that the Fair Wind has really upped their game over the past 43 years. Yep. Times have changed, but for the better. How can you not want to protect the environment when being in so much natural beauty and the Fair Wind is doing such a good job at it. After that, I hate to tell you what we did when we got home. We barbecued big fat ribeye steaks. And they were so good! We are not vegans, obviously, but I totally admire the Fair Wind’s philosophy. Vegan is very popular in Seattle and easy to follow because of so many restaurants and vegan choices available. And after building Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle that is a zero carbon arena, it can be done. We are not ready to switch to a vegan diet but I am very interested in how they make recipes taste so good so I want to experiment at home. Who knows, maybe someday. It really is not a sacrifice in taste at all if you know how to do it right. And in Hawaii, so many things are done right. Aloha!
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