Friday, January 31: Our limo picked us up from the loft at 7:15am, zipping us down to the airport in about 15 minutes. We checked in and headed for the plane, boarding right on time. The flight was a bit over 5 hours long and relatively uneventful, except for the hoards of kids on board (is there a Disneyland in Hawaii?). It's amazing how many parents think letting their kids run up and down the aisles is a good idea. Landing in Hawaii at the Kona airport is pretty wild, since it's built on top of a lava flow. Looking out the plane windows you see acres and acres of black lava, all folded and wrinkled. It's like landing on the moon!
After a short drive from the airport we arrived at our hotel, the Royal Kona Resort. Our room was on the top floor, looking out over the ocean and the waves breaking against the lava rocks onshore. We walked along the main street which runs parallel to the water, buying a few T-shirts. We checked in with Jack's Diving Locker where we would be spending the next few days getting scuba certified. Then we drove down to Kealakekua Bay to look at the ocean and maybe see some dolphins. The dolphins never showed, but it was a nice drive any ways. We had dinner at the Beachcomber restaurant, the food was good and we sat right by the water. After dinner we went back to the room and spent about 4 hours reading the first three chapters in our dive books, answering all of the quizzes.
Saturday, February 1: We got up early, headed down to the hotel restaurant and had breakfast, then headed across the street to the dive shop to start our class. We had a total of 12 people in class. 3 of us were doing all 4 days in a row, the others were doing 4 consecutive Saturdays. We went over the first chapter, then piled in a large van and headed for the dock, were we did our first "closed water" dive, practicing basic skills. That afternoon back in class we went over the second and third chapters. Our instructors Bob and John kept things fun and the afternoon went by quickly.
We had dinner at the Martini Beach Club. The food was great, though we only sampled one of their Cosmos since we had studying to do later. Back in the room we had to finish chapters 4 and 5 in our dive books, fortunately, that was the end of the reading for the class. Afterwards we fell asleep quickly to the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks outside our hotel room window.
