Up close and personal with turtles...

We just love the beaches close by to where our apartment was located - they are stunning!

Cory with 'flat island' behind him.

Cory checking out the coral at Lanakai.

A short drive from our apartment was a 'secret' little beach, and I'm not going to spill it's location here either. It was told to us by a 'local' after I asked him where the best spot to see turtles would be. He said that spot wouldn't disappoint us. Well, it didn't.
It was amazing.
The experience of a lifetime.

We went to the little beach, and the tide was about half way out. We had our snorkeling gear with us, but we wanted to see what was there before we kitted up. Cory waded out into the shallow water first, and after just a few moments he came quickly back to me and said he'd seen a turtle. He brought me back out to where he had seen it, and we were only up to mid-calf in water. After a short moment I saw one, then another, and another... and so they kept coming along. We must have seen about 20-30 turtles in that short amount of time. It was amazing. At one point there was three turtles about a foot (at most 1.5 feet) from us. Just chillin, eating some lunch. They clearly knew we were there, and at one point I exclaimed too loudly "Cory, look!" and the big guy backed off for a few minutes. But they weren't too nervous about us if we kept quiet and still and didn't advance on them.

I will never forget that moment.

I think turtles are wonderful and amazing creatures and I am excited for the opportunity to see them again sometime.

I will definitely return to our 'secret' beach to watch them again if the opportunity comes up.

There's three turtles together in this last photo - I wish you could see them better.

I only had my little point & shoot camera with me at the time and it didn't do as good a job of capturing the turtles in the shallow water as my other camera would have.