We woke up around 5am to start our day of snorkeling adventure! Prior to arriving in Maui, we booked an all-day snorkel tour with Molokini Wild Side Eco-Adventures through the Pacific Whale Foundation. We want to speak about this tour and tour company for those that are potentially interested in doing a similar trip, but feel free to skip down to the adventure if you’d like.
There are plenty of tour groups that do similar trips out of Lāhainā, but we HIGHLY recommend this specific tour company. The Pacific Whale Foundation is a non-profit organization that takes 80% of the ticket price (all proceeds) and puts it towards research and conservation aimed at protecting our ocean through science and advocacy. We LOVE supporting companies that give back to our community, and particularly the environment. Once you land with this company, you’ll see all the different boating tours they offer…there are even a few different tours to Molokini Crater. Their basic snorkel tour to Molokini Crater is called the “Molokini & Turtle Arches Snorkel.” This tour brings you to the famous crater, along with one other stop (dependent on weather and current). We opted for the “Molokini Wild Side Tour” which includes a drift dive on the backside of the crater. It’s an additional $20, but the depths of the backside allows larger reef (and even white tip sharks) to thrive. In addition to the location differences, we were also told that the basic tour could have nearly 100 people, while the Wild Side tour will never have more than 40. Based on past tours, we’ve found that smaller groups end up having better experiences…and this was no different. Our small group of 15 snorkelers (including us) allowed the boat captain to be flexible with the snorkeling spots and time spent at each.
Back to the adventure! Our tour was scheduled for 7:30am, but they asked us to be there by 6:45am. The office/shop is conveniently located the Maui Harbor Shops along with the Maui Aquarium and other great storefronts. They provided us with pastries, fresh fruit, Hawaiian juices, coffee, and even a really nice frittata! We never recommend eating too much before a snorkel or dive, but you always want to make sure you have enough energy for a day in the water and out in the sun. Just before 7:30am we had a short briefing about the plan, plus a few safety measures, and we made our way to the dock.
The ride out was calm and gave us stunning views of the Maui coastline (Haleakala included), along with the neighboring islands of Lanai and Kaho‘olawe!
Our first stop on our snorkel adventure was a spot our captain dubbed “Honu Heaven.” Honu is the Hawaiian word for turtle and we soon found out how this spot got its name. This area is home to a “cleaning station” reef that sits at about 20ft below the water. Here we found dozens of Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles using local juvenile parrotfish get their shells cleaned! We learned that it’s a symbiotic relationship, as the turtles get a much-needed algae cleaning, and the juvenile parrotfish get a nice meal. The sight was absolutely magical.
In our experience diving/snorkeling, we consider ourselves lucky if we see one or two turtles…but being able to see this many in one location absolutely took our breath away! We ended up spending about an hour with the magnificent creatures before boarding the boat and heading off to the next spot (though we felt like we could’ve spent the entire day there and been content).
The next stop we went to was at the southernmost point of Maui, just off the shore of the famous Makena Lava Fields. The ride alone was amazing…giving us up-close views of the formidable Haleakala Volcano, in which all of the land was formed from. The seas became rougher the further we travelled from the harbor of Maui, but we ended up setting anchor in a calm little cove called La Perouse Bay.
La Perouse Bay is named after a mapmaker who was actually the first European to make a map of Maui. Though he was the first, he was not the most accurate. He excluded one of Haleakala’s major lava flows in his map, which led to almost immediate revisions by his successors. This bay was really unique because it showed us the three major levels of lava flow (pillar/columnar basalt when the molten lava meets cooler water, the smooth pahoehoe middle layer, and finally the uppermost a’a lava layer characterized by a rough and jagged edges).
We hopped out of the boat and into the water, but not before our guides gave us a recommendation to look out for an octopus! We initially swam toward shore to check out the reef, and saw so many beautiful reef fish and even the state fish, the humuhumunukunukuāpua’a! After spending some time near shore, we went out to deeper water (20-30ft) and spotted an octopus!
After an hour or so swimming around the bay, we hopped back in our boat and made our way to the Molokini Crater. By this time, we had already had one of the best snorkeling experiences and we hadn’t even gone to the highlight spot yet!
On our way to the crater, our captain and guides made the decision that the water was calm enough to do the backside drift dive. The backside of the crater is 300+ feet deep and has a pretty strong current, so you have to be a decent swimmer and (more importantly) be comfortable not seeing the bottom of the ocean. It can be a little unsettling, but boy was it worth it. The visibility was incredible and we even saw a white tip reef shark swimming at about 30 feet!
Because it was a planned drift dive, we only stayed on the backside for about 20 minutes before heading to the inside of the crater. By the time we got to the inside of the crater (around 12pm), we learned that most of the tours are at the crater from 8am-12pm and noticed that most of the morning tour boats had already headed back to shore. Our captain intentionally planned our itinerary to avoid the morning crater crowds, so we ended up having the entire crater to ourselves! We wasted no time and jumped right in. We were immediately met with SO many triggerfish swimming at the surface of the water…most of which seemed to be eating the algae off of our catamaran!
After about an hour of swimming around the crater’s interior reef, we made our way back on the boat to have lunch. Our captain and guides set up a delicious BBQ meal for us…grilled hot dogs, kalua pork, grilled chicken, and all kinds of local sides! After a long day out in the sun and on the water, this was exactly what we needed. Needless to say, we ate a little bit of everything…and even had seconds! After lunch we began making our way back to the harbor.
We’ve snorkeled at a lot of different places around the world, but we can confidently say that this was one of the best trips we’ve ever done. When we arrived back to dry land, we got back in our campervan and made our way back to camp to get some rest…the sun and saltwater really kicked our butts! We made a quick stop at Olowalu Juice Stand foodtruck right across our campsite to have some refreshing fresh fruit smoothies! Keeshia got a mango and dragonfruit smoothie and Joey got a lilikoi (passionfruit) and guava smoothie!
We relaxed at camp for a bit until dinnertime when we decided to head to one of our favorite Hawaiian spots, Monkeypod. There are a few Monkeypod restaurants on the Hawaiian Islands…one on Oahu and two in Maui…and though a bit pricey, we can attest to their great food and even better drinks. Since COVID, they’ve discontinued reservations, so we expected to wait a bit. Luckily they have a check-in system in which they will text you when your table is ready. Also their Lāhainā location is conveniently located in shopping center called “Whalers Village” so we were happy to walk around and pop into shops while waiting for our table. They initially said our wait would be about 45 minutes, but they ended up texting us in less than 20!
When we were seated we ordered their famous Mai Tai, along with the spottieottiedopalicious. For food, we took our servers recommendation of fish and chips (hebi fish) and bulgogi beef tacos. It really is some of the best food and drinks on this island!
We finished dinner right as the sun was setting, so we decided to head back to our van to grab beach chairs and our camera. Catching the setting sun on Kaanapali Beach wasn’t planned, but was definitely a highlight of the trip so far.
After the sun went down, we packed up our things and made our way back to camp. When we got back to camp we indulged in the banana cream pie that we saved from Leoda’s to cap off such an amazing day and wonderful night. Tomorrow we’ll begin our adventure to the famous town of Hana on the even more famous Road to Hana…so stay posted!