Under the Sea Just You and Me...and 62 others

On Monday morning the rain let up a little, so we walked over to our local beach - which happens to be one of the top beach spots on Oahu, Kailua Beach - for a bit of paddling in the sea. We toughed it out for an hour till the weather overcame us. Dr Mom stood in the edge of the waves in her rolled up jeans and green anorak, looking properly British. The other three pranced in and out of the waves, getting steadily wetter and wetter. When the rain started to pour again we retreated to the house to clean up.

At 11:30am, we got in the car and headed over to Honolulu, for the day's adventure: lunch at Benihana's followed by an underwater trip on the Atlantis Submarine. It turned out that we should have left a lot more time to get there. Half an hour turned into an hour in the snarly Honolulu traffic. In fact, our overall impression of Honolulu was of a fairly average looking city with rather more palm trees than usual, terrible traffic, and a lot of hotels. We didn't feel inspired to visit again.

We arrived at Benihana's with only 45 minutes before check in time at the sub; so our leisurely lunch, with chef entertainment, didn't quite come off. In the end we gobbled down our food in about 15 minutes and raced out of the door into the pouring rain. I think our jolly chef didn't quite understand why we weren't more receptive to his jokes (which he clearly thought were pretty funny).

At the pier, we took the Atlantis boat out to the sub loading area, about 10 minutes, on a fairly choppy sea. We looked for whales but didn't see any. At the sub, you climb off the boat onto the deck of the sub, then down a vertical ladder comprising about ten rungs, into the seating area. We were on the sixty-four passenger sub, which has bigger windows. Every passenger gets their own window, pretty much. The Japanese family of five next to Dr Mom began to throw up into their little white bags as soon as they were on board. It was, admittedly, rather bouncy as we waited at the surface. Hubby says he was feeling quite green at this point. Then the sub dived, eventually reaching a depth of 110 feet. We spent 45 minutes working round several artificial reefs - two sunken ships, an airplane, some concrete pyramids, etc. I have to confess to being a little disappointed by what we saw. There was a school of eagle rays that was undeniably impressive, but other than that the fish seemed a bit thin on the ground...or should that be water.... The kids were impressed though.

The Japanese family continued to throw up noisily throughout the voyage, reaching a climax as the sub resurfaced to return us to the boat. At this point, Dr Mom was unable to resist the sensory pressures any more and also had a small, but perfectly contained, barf into a little bag. The trip back to shore was uneventful. We rewarded ourselves for a job well done by having giant ice creams before going back to the car.

Guess what - it was bucketing down with rain again.