Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2010

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.


Saturday, 22 November 2008

Amsterdam

Cory came over for a visit, and we decided that we'd try and cram as much into the two weeks as possible... so, we start with a couple days in Amsterdam!

It was fantastic!

I am so glad we went... we had perfect weather and I just loved the city! I would highly recommend it to anyone, and will jump at the chance to go back again in the future - maybe when it's a little warmer would be nice!

There were a lot of hi-lights of Amsterdam, but one of the things that tugs at the heart strings was our visit to Anne Frank's house. To see where and how they lived during that terrible time, and to just listen to the story of the Frank family is a real eye opener. To just think that this was not all that long ago, and it's not the kind of thing that could never happen again... it makes you realise that we have to be very careful in this world to not fall into the same situation again...

Here are some pics from Amsterdam :)