Haunama Bay Snorkeling

Haunama Bay is a state park and Nature Reserve. It is THE most popular Hawaiian tourist attraction (based on no polls but my rather my personal opinion). It’s been on my bucket list, but it’s logistically difficult to achieve, even for a local. You have to reserve tickets, which become available two days in advance. They only allow 1000 guests per day and are only open Wed to Sun. The parking lot is small and fills up quickly and costs $1 for military/local or $3 for tourists. The actual park is free for Military/local or $25 for tourists.

My friend and I hopped online a little before 7am, her on her phone and me on the computer. I had heard the trick was to aim for an off time, like 11:10am or 12:10am, so we tried those. I ended up getting us two tickets at 12:10AM. If you are military/local, you can go in any day without a reservation between 7a-8a.

The parking lot is small, so Erin and I headed over early to make sure we had time to hover for parking. We didn’t have to, and instead enjoyed walking the park a bit and enjoying the beauty of it as a whole.

Anyway, on to the fun part. After watching a 20 minute video putting the fear of God in you that you might be swept out by riptides and that you need to know how to swim, you make your way down a long pretty steep driveway to the bay. The fish were HUGE and there was a wide variety, so I saw a few I hadn’t seen in Lanikai. I could not believe how big they were, and then how close they’d get to us! The bottom left I didn’t capture fully because he was actually too close!

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Erin realized she had heard the name of the Hawaiian State fish somewhere before (pictured top right, the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a fish) and it turns out it’s a song in High School Musical 2. As a going away present, she bought me a small fish identifier card. I don’t have it with me, but when I get back maybe I’ll label the fish above.

We had an awesome time.

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It was definitely murky because we’re getting into rougher water season and it was high tide. So I guess in the future I’d like to pick a calmer day, but it’s hard to be choosy with the logistics as they are. Here are a few miscellaneous pics from the adventure.

I think this next one puts into scale just how much reef there was to explore.

Afterward, I was evaluating the pros and cons of Lanikai vs. Haunama snorkeling. I definitely would go back to Haunama, especially with Brian, but I have to say that for the logistics as easy as they are in Lanikai, we have a great advantage. However, it is highly photogenic, especially with two beautiful ladies.

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