This past trip to Okinawa was one of my favorite trips.
We touched down in Naha which for some reason I assumed was a small city.
After being in Tokyo last night, every city would be a small city in comparison, but Naha’s
size surprised me.
Coming from the midwest, this place looks larger than any major city.
This level of development just goes on and on.
We didn’t stay too long in Naha however.
The bulk of our stay was up north in a town called Onna which much more of a resort area.
Our hotel was the Intercontinental Manza Beach and fell in love with it from the moment I
saw it.
It is located at the tip of a peninsula and looks out over a gorgeous bay and the ocean.
It also has something like 7 restaurants in it so we got to try all sorts of food right
on the resort.
It wasn’t a cheap hotel to stay at but I have no regrets at all and if I ever came
back to Okinawa, this place would be high on the list of places to stay.
I loved it here.
This is a look at our room.
Needless to say we were a bit excited by the accommodations and the view.
Suzanne is really good at finding good upgrades that don’t cost that much.
We paid I think $50 more to get a balcony suite and the balcony practically doubled
the size of the room while giving us a 270-degree view of the ocean.
I have a hard time describing the vibe I get from Okinawa.
In many ways it feels like Hawaii, but more exotic.
Obviously the culture is completely different, but just the appearance of the land looks
so wild.
Look at these rock formations right on the resort.
I’ve never seen anything quite like them.
The waves have eroded their base to form all sorts of cave structures and when the tide
goes out, they are completely exposed.
I don’t have a video of it here, but to access the large beach area there is this
walkway that goes through these really cool rain forest caves.
This whole place just invites exploration.
So that gets us into the reef-related portion of this video.
You know I’d get here at some point.
Once we get to low tide, it opens up the possibility of doing some reef walking.
It’s amazing how this… turns into this… every single day.
During low tide, a bunch of fish, corals, and inverts get isolated into little pools
or even totally exposed to air.
When I first saw some of these things I felt really sorry for them.
Coming from the home aquarium mindset, obviously leaving coral and inverts sitting out of the
water for extended periods of time is a great way to kill them.
I felt the urge to save them by placing everything I saw back into deeper water but then it occurred
to me that this is every day for these creatures.
I am about to have a panic attack trying to save them, but for them, it’s just 4-o’clock.
They deal with this every day for years.
Ok, here’s a quick overview of some of the things we saw.
First up was a bunch of different crabs.
There were some tiny hermits everywhere but then we came across this fuzzy guy with red
eyes.
Next were a pair of pistol shrimp.
It looks like they were preparing a den for when the water gets even lower.
We saw quite a few large carpet anemones.
It’s amazing to see so much stuff this close to shore.
This may have been less than 20 feet from the beach.
There were many black cucumbers we saw but I liked this orange spotted one the best.
It wouldn’t be quite right if I didn’t mention any corals.
There were some SPS like Acropora and Montipora but not too much.
This area is very silty so I’m sure that is choking a lot of that out.
If you saw my dive video in these waters, there are a ton of SPS colonies being maricultured.
That farming activity is happening right in this bay area.
It couldn’t be more than a few hundred feet from shore in water less than 20’ deep.
Back on shore, we saw some LPS fully exposed at low tide.
Then we came across this guy.
If it is what I think it is, it’s potentially very dangerous.
I think it may be a cone snail which has a venomous sting.
I told the girls to stay away from that and anything that looks like that.
On Facebook and instagram I posted a picture of these guys and asked if anyone could guess
what they were.
The day before, Erica saw them and showed me a picture on her phone.
She thought they were cuttlefish and from the photo they kind of did.
When I saw them in person though, it was pretty clear they weren’t cuttle fish but rather
huge sea hares which are a type of algae eating nudibranch.
Lastly, this was the most mind blowing thing I saw.
There were tridacna clams everywhere.
Again this is just right off the beach and during low tide these clams get exposed to
open air.
What was surprising was they weren’t even bothering to close.
If you take a clam out of the water at home they close shut.
Out here, they have a fully extended mantle.
So that pretty much does it for my video of the resort we stayed at in Okinawa.
Just editing this video makes me really want to go right back for another trip.
We were not able to stay too long unfortunately which is my only regret when it comes to this
vacation.
The plus side is that it is just that much more to look forward to for a future visit.
Anyway guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
Take care!