My Greatest Vacation Moment: Maui Sea Turtle Encounter

Snorkeling with a wild sea turtle at Kaanapali Beach on Maui in Hawaii was truly my favorite vacation experience of all. Seeing a wild turtle was one of my biggest goals for my Hawaii vacation. I had been to a turtle farm in the Cayman Islands a few years earlier, and that was cool, but I really wanted to see a turtle in the wild. On some cruises to Acapulco, I had seen quite a few turtles swimming along the surface of the Pacific Ocean... but I was up on the balcony of a cruise ship, not down there in the water swimming with them. On several Caribbean cruises, I had taken shore excursions to snorkel sites where I did see wild turtles... but those were always in big groups of cruise ship passengers where there were so many people all trying to see the turtles at the same time that it was just a crowded mess of snorkelers all bumping in to each other. In Hawaii, I had planned to do some snorkeling on my own, and I wanted SO BAD to run in to a turtle without a bunch of other people being around. I heard that Kaanapali beach was a place where you could almost always see turtles, so once I got in the water, I snorkeled back and forth from one end of the area to the other looking for a turtle, and didn't see any. Eventually, I just gave up, figuring it was not my day for a turtle encounter, and I resigned myself to just shooting video of the fish. And that's exactly when the turtle came swimming right at me! It was an experience I don't think I'll ever forget. Music credit: "Acoustic Guitar 1" by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artist: http://audionautix.com/ Please note: This is version 2 of this video. I decided that the original version, without the narration and the music, didn't do a good enough job of conveying the joy of the moment. I hope you enjoy this improved second attempt.