An extra benefit from living in Southern California is that you're about 5 hours away from the islands of Hawaii. After Oahu and the Big Island a couple of years ago, this year I decided to spend my birthday in Kauai, the Garden Island.

Kauai is one of the westernmost islands of the Hawaiian archipelago and is rather small but exquisitely varied. There are a few major centers: Lihue near the airport, Kapaa on the East shore is a gateway to the waterfalls of that area, further north Hanalei and Princeville are small towns with multi-million dollar views of the Pacific. On the southern shores, Poipu is a congregation of big hotels and condominiums whereas Waimea and Eleele are the most industrial part of the island. The gorgeous West coast, Na'Pali, is only accessible by boat or by hike from the center of the island.

You usually don't go to Kauai to scuba dive, but since we were there already, we decided to go on two dives with Bubbles Below Scuba Charter and its energetic divemaster & owner, Linda Marsh.

Before the trip, we had made a lot of research on where and with whom to dive in Kauai. It all ended up with Bubble Below = good, the rest = bad. However, it really depends on your dive experience. With nearly 1,000 dives between the two of us, we like to be put on a spot where's there's unusual stuff to see which the DM will take time to show you and not be required to surface after 35 minutes because the DM tells you so even though you still have 1,500 psi in your tank. Based on the review we found on the internet, only BB met all our criteria. Sure other dive operations were highly noted. By beginners. Oh look a fish! Amazing! I've never seen one of those alive! And look coral! Unbelievable! After a couple hundred dives the novelty fades away and you look for more unexpected stuff underwater. Plus we take pictures and I noticed recently that with more than 25,000 pictures underwater, it has become more and more difficult for me to find something interesting (read: that I don't have a hundred pictures of already) to shoot. Hence the excitement last year when the froggy showed up in our backyard. But I digress.

Back to Kauai and Bubbles Below. Bubbles Below is a very small dive operation. It's not for everybody, but it worked great for us. We gave a call two days before and were disappointed to find out there was no dive planned for the day we could go (we had a very busy schedule). They however manage to gather more people and called us back to confirm a 2-tank dive at 7:15am at the pier of Eleele. There, no shop, just a van full of dive gear. I rented a 5mm wetsuit because I did not want to bring my old 7mm and pay the overweight fee. For 10 bucks they rented me a Pinnacle wetsuit that fitted me pretty well. I was surprised by the quality of the gear, I was expecting much worse based on the "van-as-a-dive-shop" concept. Nobody checked my C card, I guess showing up with half my gear kind of qualified me... But the usual waivers were handed out nonetheless. The boat was brought on a trailer and was slightly run-down but I've seen worse there too. It was a 8 diver small catamaran, with enough space for the 6 divers our group was. The organization started a little sketchy, especially when they realized they did not bring enough weight and had to fetch some from somewhere else (I assume their home, since they don't have a dive shop). After that little contre-temps, everything was well taken care of and we were on our way in no time.

Linda, the DM/Owner has been diving the waters around Kauai for more than 30 years. She knows all the spots, even named most of them and she's an avid marine biologist. She also happens to be the only person I have ever met who talks underwater *and* can be understood. Amazing. She had selected two sites for us: one drift dive on a fractured plateau when she had spotted a colony of Moorish idols on a previous dive as well as a family of leaf-fish and other weird stuff whom she named underwater but the name of which I have completely forgotten now that I really need it to fill this column. Anyway.

The second dive site was a turtle heaven when she promised that we would not only see tons of turtles but also see them in different behaviors: hanging out with their pals, swimming around, taking a shower, playing poker, watching TV... etc. She also mentioned white tips too...

On the first dive, the viz was about 60ft horizontal which is pretty good. The reef was not really impressive, it's not Saba or Fiji but it was not the purpose of the dive. We indeed met the Moorish idol colony as well as one fish endemic to Hawaii that you may recognize on the pictures but don't count on me to remember its name. We found the leaf fish where they were supposed to be (just like our local froggy, they don't move much) and other exotic pipefish looking thingy that Linda named underwater (but you know the drill now). I found a nice eel by myself and suddenly realized that I was having hard time breathing. That is never a good sign, especially at 60fsw. A quick glance at my gauge and I noticed something weird, the needle was going up and down. 50 bars idle and 0 when I was inhaling. Really looked like a reserve issue but I was sure the tank was not a J-valve. I showed that to my buddy but since she had been certified in the 2000's, she apparently never dove with a reserve and was not familiar with that kind of issue. But Linda was. My tank was apparently not open all the way, which is weird because I saw her check that before we jumped out of the boat. Anyway we had a good laugh back on the boat when I told her I actually checked to see if the tank had a reserve rod that I could pull before asking for help. By the way, I'm not that old, thank you.

On the second dive we saw turtles. A lot. Turtles hanging out, turtles being cleaned, turtles sleeping, turtles eating...etc. Even with my +1 corrective mask I could not see the harlequin shrimp that Linda promised and delivered. My buddy neither but she took a picture blind and managed to snap a pretty good shot of the creature. Mine was out of focus beyond any hope of salvaging. After an hour down there, I ran low on air and missed the sharks. No biggie. It's not like I've never seen white tips before.

So all in all, a pretty good experience. Bubbles Below did an excellent job at meeting all of our expectations for advanced dives for advanced divers. No stress, plenty of freedom, plenty of cool creatures and plenty of fun. Highly recommended.

Oh and if you wonder why we only did two dives in our 8 day stay on the island, that's because you've never sailed at sunset with whales and 15ft surf, never went to Waimea Canyon, never thought of cruising the Wailua River to see the famous Fern Grotto, never tour the Na'Pali Coast at sunset, never rode a horse on the Maha‘ulelpu trail, never zipline the tall Norfolk pines planted by Cook to provide timber for mast repairs, never dine at Break'a'neck beach, never had a puka dog, never cross a plain where Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones were shot or never flew a helicopter with all doors open to the bottom of Mount Wai'ale'ale. Apart from diving, there are tons of things to see and do in Kauai, so check the pictures below, pack up and go, you won't be disappointed.

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And a few stitched panoramas...

Waimaea Canyon

Wailua River

Fern Grotto

Horseback riding the Poipu Coast

The Na'Pali Coast

The McBryde Botanical Gardens