Snorkeling in Hawaii

The best thing Hawaii has to offer is its natural beauty. The nightlife and posh resorts are nice, but that experience can be had just about anywhere.

No trip is really complete without getting an up-close view of the myriad tropical fish.

There are, literally, hundreds of places to snorkel on the islands, but one of the easiest to reach for most visitors in Hanauma Bay, on Oahu's eastern shore about 10 miles from Waikiki.The best advice I can give for a trip to Hanauma Bay is to get there early. The nature preserve is invariably crowded during its open hours, and the more people out kicking through the water, the more sand gets stirred up, obscuring your view.

After paying $1 to park and $7.50 per person to enter, there is a mandatory video before visitors can descend to the beach, either on foot or by tram.

I've been to Hanauma Bay several times, and despite snorkeling opportunities elsewhere, it is still worth the cost.

I brought my own snorkeling gear, but there are numerous places to rent it in Waikiki, as well as at the bay itself. The benefit to renting in Waikiki is that you can take it to other parts of the island once you're done with Hanauma Bay.

On my last trip, I swam along the surface as I snorkeled - something it takes some people a while to get used to, as breathing underwater just isn't natural.

With the narrow inlet to the bay, there is really no danger of being swept out to sea as long as you stay close to shore, and the water is shallow enough to stand up in if you get tired.

The fish you'll see the most of are schools of unimpressive silver fish, but they are exciting at first.

After about 10 minutes in the water, I spotted several angelfish, with their tall, narrow bodies slicing through the water as they scurried for cover. I also notices several rainbow-spotted fish, a number of skinny trumpetfish that resemble eels and dozens of other sea creatures.

After about two hours at the beach, the cars and buses brought more and more people, and I decided to head out to another part of the island and get on with the trip.

For more information about Hanauma Bay, visit the official site here.

Photo of the Week: Chinaman's Hat

The aptly named Chinaman's Hat is an island off Oahu's windward coast. It's a great spot for pictures and relaxing (on those days that aren't windy). The island's real name is Mokolii, which in Hawaiian means "Little Lizard," but the locals all know it as Chinaman's Hat.

Photo of the Week: Pacific Coast

This is the view from a typical roadside pull-out on the Pacific Coast Highway (U.S. 1) just a few miles south of Crescent City. Being so close to Oregon, this stretch of California's coast has many of the same characteristics - steep drops and imposing, weather-beaten rocks.

It's a far cry from the beaches of Hawaii, Miami or even Southern California, but the rugged North Coast has its own beauty and charm. The intermittent beaches are frequented by surfers in full-body wetsuits, beachcombers and families out to let the kids play in the sand. Some of the braver (or more cold-blooded) jump into the green-hued waves to body surf, but I'm usually content to throw the ball for my dog and watch the sea.

The towns along the North coast are numerous, and many of them are great places to spend a day or two. Bodega Bay was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, has a supposedly haunted schoolhouse, and even boasts a restaurant that straddles the San Andreas Fault, called the Sandpiper. A fishing village, Bodega Bay is a great place to get fresh seafood, and watch the humpback whale migrations during the season. Camping at the Bodega Dunes Campground will put you close to the beach and a few minutes by car from the town.

Mendocino is another of the towns that tourists should see. Full of quaint shops, a day will probably be enough, but it's always popular and similar to its southerly cousin, Carmel.

Fort Bragg is another fishing village, and the same whale migrations that can be viewed from Bodega Bay can be seen from the bluffs around this small town. Staying at the Harbor Lite Lodge in one of the rooms facing the harbor will give you a good view of the fishing boats as they set out in the mornings and return with the day's catch.

Finally, Crescent City. It feels bigger than the other three, but I'm not convinced it actually is. Another good place to see fishing vessels and the occasional whale, Crescent City's charm centers around its lighthouse, which is built on an island accessible during low tide, when the island becomes a peninsula. At one point, I ran into the painter Thomas Kincaid as he sat painting the lighthouse. Inland from Crescent City are California's famous redwoods, which stretch for several miles down the coast.

A visit to any of those four towns, as well as others I didn't list, will give you a good sample of California's northern coastal living. I've always had luck traveling there in January, as it might rain, but is usually not very foggy.

As much as I like to travel abroad, it's nice to be surrounded by so much beauty in my own state. I spent many fun weekends camping with my family along the coast as a kid, and even now, and I'm happy that I don't have to drive very far to find myself in such a great place.

Lodgings: The Villa Ludovici

One of the benefits of traveling in India is the fact that the value of the dollar hovers around 40 rupees. If you can avoid the tourist traps and indiscriminate extravagances, you can travel and stay for a bargain.

The Villa Ludovici in Goa is the perfect example of excellent service with low costs.

When I stayed there with a friend of mine in December of 2007, five nights - with omelets, papayas and toast for breakfast each morning included - the stay only set us back $100.

We arrived in Goa at the middle of a long day that started when the sun was rising and involved a four-hour taxi ride (where our driver got cited for speeding) and a flight, with the necessity of arriving at the airport two hours early so we could hop on a flight that lasted less than two hours.

Not having researched Goa very much – at all, to be honest – we didn’t really know where to stay. We asked a bunch of travelers in the airport, and settled on the Siquerim Beach area, since it was close enough to the entertainment at Baga Beach to the north and the capital, Panjim, to the south.

Cruising through the Lonely Planet guidebook, I selected Villa Ludovici for its economy listing. A quick phone call settled the rates and reserved a room, then it was a 45-minute taxi ride through beautiful tropical scenery juxtaposed with poverty-stricken villages to arrive at our home for the next five nights.

We were greeted by the friendly owner of what turned out to be not a hotel, but a house. It was actually the first house built on that section of the coast a few centuries earlier. The plaster walls, elegant wood doorways and interlocking clay tiles on the roof all attested to its age. The antiquated electrical work running through the interior struck me as having been original to the 1940s or so.

After dropping off our bags, Deon and I decided it was time to hit Goa’s legendary beaches. As “our” house was right across the street from the beach, it should have been a short walk.

Only it wasn’t.

Not sure about trespassing laws, we hunted and hunted for public beach access until we decided it didn’t exist, and we just walked through a neighborhood, past a construction site and alongside a trash heap to reach the strand.

Turning around, of course, we saw an easy access route we’d somehow missed, but would have allowed us to avoid the hassle we’d just gone through.

After filling up on 85-cent beers and a dinner of fried prawns for a few bucks at a beach shack run by British expats, we headed back to the room for bed.

The mattress was nice and firm, and the blankets were light enough to cover up with and not get too hot in the absence of air conditioning. That’s right, there was no air conditioning. I wasn’t worried about that, as I’ve stayed in condos in Hawaii without AC, and it never proved necessary. The same was true for Goa.

Breakfast the next morning was excellent. I’d slept like a rock, and with absolutely nothing planned for the day except gorging on prawns and tossing back several bottles of Kingfisher beer, I was in seventh heaven.

Deon, on the other hand, was suffering from a plethora of mosquito bites. I made fun of him, and incurred some bad karma that ended with my lily-white skin turning a distinctly reddish hue after the SPF 20 sunscreen utterly failed me during the day (Seriously, it’s all they seem to sell over there. If you need your extra protection, bring your own).

Not wanting to end up with an army of insects feasting on my already-abused body, we asked for, and got, mosquito netting. By the next morning, Deon’s bites were in recession and my sunburn was healing.

That night, it poured. I groaned, lamenting the fact that I’d remembered being able to see sunlight through the roof tiles during the day. Sitting on the patio reading a novel, I knew I was in for a rough night.

And I was completely wrong.

Somehow, the tiles from generations earlier kept the rain out entirely. The restaurant I worked in at home in California had been built seven years earlier, and leaked like a sieve. This house proved far better at withstanding the tropical rain it sees so often.

For the next few days, while eating breakfast, Bessie the holy cow stopped by the gate, always mooing to get in. Cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, and traffic will stop for them if they lie down in the road, but their sanctity doesn’t guarantee their admittance to breakfast. Each morning, after several minutes of gawking, Bessie left.

Paying the bill at the end of our stay, I still couldn’t believe it had cost us each a measly $10 per night. Part of me felt guilty at getting off so cheap, but my rational side won out, reminding me that if it wasn’t profitable, they wouldn’t be in business.

For great value, a decent location and friendly proprietors, I couldn’t have been happier with the Villa Ludovici.

The River Princess

The River Princess sank eight years ago, and has become something of a permanent fixture off Siquerim Beach in Goa, India, as it holds a few mysteries.

My arrival in tropical Goa was refreshing after the chilly weather near Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Something about wearing shorts and a T-shirt in December has a certain allure, even for a guy from "Sunny California."

A 20-minute taxi ride (much safer than this one) brought my friend Deon and I to our hotel across from the beach. As soon as we'd finished the check-in process, we headed to the sand and were met with our first sight of the River Princess.

I was initially under the impression that she was at anchor, but realized she was way, way too close to shore for that. She was clearly sitting on the bottom, and repair crews were all over the superstructure working under floodlights in the setting sun. I shrugged, figuring it was nothing more than the result of a helmsman asleep at the wheel.

Eating prawns at one of the ubiquitous beach restaurants the next day, I asked a few British expats about the massive container ship sitting in 20 feet of water.

"Oh, the River Princess? Yeah, she's been there since 2000, when she hit some rocks near Panjim. They towed her over here to sink."

I was astonished. Though not in the market for a container ship, I could imagine they are fairly expensive. "Why haven't the owners done anything about it?" I asked.

"No one knows who owns it."

"How is that? It must be registered somewhere." To that, the Brits just shrugged and told me an Indian company was working on taking her away, but they weren't holding their collective breath, as that was an old rumor circulating for years.

I took a closer look at the vessel and decided she may have been smuggling arms or drugs - hence the reason no one has claimed it. Whatever the case may be, her presence is definitely altering the currents around the beach, and a small sandbar is forming.

"You know, that would make an awesome night club and hotel," I said.

"Yeah, a lot of people say that," a woman replied. So much for originality.

Whether the River Princess will continue to rust away in the sea or will finally be cleaned up is still up in the air. I hope someone had the foresight to remove the fuel and oil and somehow minimize the environmental damage, since a spill would be rather unfortunate. However long the she does sit there, she will be lamentable to the locals as an eyesore, and of passing interest to tourists who naturally wonder at her mysteries.

Or, perhaps, the Brits were having a joke at my expense, and there is no mystery at all.

Perfect Like a Corona Commercial

Since I’ve never been standing on the dock watching the stern of the ship shrink in the sunset, I’m still of the opinion that most cruise ship shore excursions are a waste of money, since I see the only real benefit being that the ship won’t leave without one of its excursion groups.

Some activities, like riding zip lines or sailing outriggers, can’t be easily done without the crew’s organization and contacts. For the rest, however, I found it more fun and significantly cheaper to go it alone.

Such was the case when I was on the Carnival Glory, sailing into Charlotte Amalie, on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. A late-night bar encounter with a cruise veteran had turned me on to the lure of Trunk Bay, on nearby St. John.

Hustling off the ship in the rush of passengers out to spend as much time as possible ashore, I soon found myself waiting at a bus stop on an ordinary stretch of road surrounded by ’60s era apartments.

After five minutes waiting for the bus to Red Hook, where the ferries to St. John made landfall, an elderly local told me and my family that there was only one bus, and no guarantee as to when it would show up.

Suddenly the $45 per person snorkeling excursion to St. John seemed like money well spent. But it was too late for that.

Fortunately, the woman suggested we take a safari, one of the many pickups converted to carry passengers in the bed. The fare to Red Hook, on the other side of the island, was $1 per person.

Arriving in Red Hook a half-hour later, we found the ferry and paid our $3 per person fare.

Riding in the boat, I felt like I had come straight out of a pirate movie. We sliced through the crystalline waters surrounded by lush islands rimmed in alabaster beaches. The sun warmed my skin through a cloudless sky, and there was even a Jolly Roger flying from the bow and a cigar-chomping skipper.

Upon docking, we skipped the taxi line and opted for another safari to take us to Trunk Bay, for the seemingly standard $1 each. The driver knew what we were there for, and paused at an overlook before descending to Trunk Bay.

Looking past the lush foliage, the white-sand beach stretched out for several hundred yards under a few clouds that had magically appeared from nowhere, and I could see why Trunk Bay was one of the top-10 beaches in the world. The water shimmered as it enveloped an island surrounded by snorkelers. The whole scene reminded me of a Corona commercial, and I jumped back in the safari for the final descent.

Once we reached the beach, our driver agreed to meet us four hours later to take us back to the ship, then we rented snorkel gear for a few bucks each. I put my fins on and sealed my mask to my face as the water gently lapped at my ankles. From where I was standing, I could already see schools of fish 30 feet out.

I swam just feet above brightly colored fish and clusters of coral clinging to the rocks dotting the otherwise uninterrupted white of the sea floor. Just as I was wondering what types of fish I was looking at, I spied a plaque on a rock detailing some of the fish species. Another plaque a few yards farther up identified the coral. I wasn’t sure what to think about the obviously manmade items permanently affixed to an area of such immense natural beauty, but it helped me understand what I was looking at, and that is the ultimate goal.

Once I had my fill of swimming, I ambled over to a shack and bought a sandwich and a margarita. As I sat on the beach having my lunch, a bus showed up and disgorged a group of 60 or so passengers from the Glory. They raced into the ocean like the charge of the Light Brigade and snorkeled furiously.

I finished my lunch, read a chapter in my book, and decided to head back in. By that time, the Glory folks were packing into the bus and taking off. I checked my watch to see that I still had another hour before I had to leave.

We snorkeled a bit more before meeting our driver in the parking lot and heading back to the ferry dock. Once back on St. Thomas, we paid our driver an extra dollar per person to take us the long way around the island, past the world-famous golf courses and within view of the homes of some of the rich and famous.

When we got back to Charlotte Amalie, we browsed through some of the diamond shops and liquor stores. I filled my pants’ cargo pockets with tiny plastic bottles of rum that the ships’ metal detectors wouldn’t find. Once I was back aboard, I searched out some of the people who went on the Trunk Bay excursion to hear what they had to say.

It was all I could do to keep a straight face as they told me a bout their (remarkably short) time at the beach on the (grossly overpriced) excursion. There is, however, something to be said for not having to plan a thing, and perhaps the excursion is worth the peace of mind to some.