Day 4: Dive Day! [Maui 2025]
Today is a much anticipated day for AJ. He gets to go diving with NeverDry Divers! He is working towards his advanced diving certification so he’ll be doing 5 total dives this trip. Today is dive 1 & 2 with the goal of buoyancy and navigation. Ayla and I dropped him off at Makena Landing Park around 7am. The sunrise today was beautiful, we hung out by the water for a few before going back to the condo.
Every Friday our condo offers Turtle Talks hosted by a marine specialist from the Maui Ocean Center, so we decided to check it out. It was a 45 minute fun fact presentation about the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles or Honu. Here are some fun facts we learned:
- Out of 1,000 eggs, only one hatchling will make it to maturity.
- 5 hours is longest recorded time a turtle has held its breath.
- The number and arrangement of the scutes (the pattern design on their shell) are different for each species, but the honu has 13.
- Tale length helps to know gender, male have the longer tales.
- Young turtles eat worms, crustaceans, and algae, while adults are herbivores and eat seaweed and seagrass.
- They can live for 70 years or more.
- Fishing net entanglement is the number one reason they are brought to the Marine Institute Maui Ocean Center.
- They are very adaptable and can survive with only two flippers.
- The front flippers help propel and the back help steer.
Ayla did very well listening to the presentation and loved the Maui Ocean Center tattoos she received at the end. The Turtle Talk took place right next to the kid pool so afterwards going swimming was a must. We had about 2 hours until AJ was projected to check in with me, so we swam our hearts out until we heard from him. Ayla insisted we go swimming with her Dad afterwards and asked to wear her swimsuit AND goggles for the car ride. It was super cute; I couldn’t stop giggling at her. However, when we got back to the condo we decided to make some lunch before returning to the pool, so Ayla agreed to at least take her goggles off for lunch.
Once it was time to go swimming, I decided I was going to go workout instead. I haven’t exercised since beginning of October, so I wanted to take full advantage of feeling ready for one. And wow, I needed it. I felt so good during the whole workout, I wanted to keep going, but knew I could easily overdo it.
My workout:
- 12 minute warm up on the elliptical
- Circuit 1: repeat 3x
- Stationary lunges
- One arm overhead press
- Kettlebell side bends
- Circuit 2: repeat 3x
- One leg kettlebell balance swings – front/back & side/side
- Sumo Squat Pulses
- Two arm bicep curl
- Seated knee tucks
- Circuit 3: repeat 3x
- Dumbbell incline chest press
- Dumbbell Skull Crushers
- Cable torso rotations
After my workout, we went back to the condo for a snack and to get ready for dinner. Ayla insisted on having popcorn and playing the game Gentle Rain. If you haven’t played this game before, it is a fun, quick game for all ages. During our snack break I was able to look at all of AJs diving pictures and hear about his experience. He had a major bucket list item achieved today on his dive. He has always wanted to see sharks and today he got to swim with a white tipped shark! He said it was about 2 or 3 feet long just swimming close to the sand below him. He also got to dive through a fairly large tunnel that had turtles and a wide variety of ocean life. It was one of the best conditions for diving he has ever had. His next dive is Monday; he’ll be doing 2 boat dives and one shore dive, can’t wait to show you what he finds.
We then headed to Maui Brewing Company for dinner. We typically love going here; it has a great vibe, well made drinks and delicious food. They are always consistent. But tonight, our server was so bad it brought the whole experience down, and if this was my first time here, I am not sure I would go back. The server messed up our order on multiple occasions, I constantly had to remind her of items we had asked for and didn’t receive, she never once checked on our table, so if we needed something we had to flag her down and when it came time to pay she requested a 25% tip! On the plus side, our drinks were great, I got a coconut pineapple slushy that tasted so refreshing, the beer is always on point, and their pizza had great flavor. The only food item I would skip would be the Caesar salad. It was the smallest one I have had on island (by far) but it was the same price as the other restaurants. Because everything was such a mess we stayed way later than anticipated and by the end Ayla was asking to go home because she was tired. She was asleep in the car before we even got to the main highway.
Tomorrow is Ayla’s highlight of the trip, trick-or-treating! She has been talking about being a spooky ghost since the beginning of October and this year will be her first time going trick-or-treating, we can’t wait to see how it goes!
