Day 8, Wednesday February 17, 2016
By now we had figured out that the movement of the ship was enough to keep me awake most of the night, so I took a Benedril (allergy pill) that I had brought along to knock me out and it worked well. I slept through the night and, as a consequence, so did Debbie. We arrived at Kona at 7:00 a.m. Unlike the other ports, Kona didn't have a deep harbor and we were unable to dock there. Instead, we dropped anchor in the deeper water just outside the harbor and skiffs (actually a few of the motorized lifeboats) shuttled us back and forth to the town pier.
Kona is a town on the south side of the Big Island known for Kona coffee. They brag about how Kona coffee is served in the White House. This isn't necessarily because it is better coffee, but because it is a government administrative body and they have to use domestic sources whenever possible. Kona is the only coffee plantation in the United States large enough to supply the government.
Today's itinerary had us taking the Atlantis Submarine down to look at the reef in the morning and was wide open for the afternoon.
It was a relatively quick transfer over to the submarine, which was moored in the harbor. We took the skiff to the town pier, assembled at the gathering point for the submarine and then took a small boat back out to board the sub.
Our Atlantis Submarine with the cruise ship anchored outside the harbor.
Immediately we were amazed at how clear the water in the harbor was and understood why this was a good place to offer such an excursion (note how blue the water is in the picture above). Never the less, when we got down to the reef, I was surprised at how much it lacked color compared to the reef I snorkeled around in Aruba 25 years earlier. The tour guide explained that we were 80-feet down and that things begin to lose their color at that depth. We saw plenty of small fish (most not particularly photogenic) and eventually came upon a wreck. This was an old World War II Higgins Boat (landing craft) that had been converted as a work boat by some private owners and a winch was added. It sank in a storm.
Stern of the Higgins Boat wreck.
The winch mid-ship with a curious fish. Note the waving skeleton on the crossbar of the winch. This had been placed there as a joke by some divers (and the current actually caused the arm to wave at you as you go by). The guide told us a story of how the first skeleton broke apart and washed up on the beach, triggering a major (for Kona) investigation as to the identity of the body and where it came from.
The tell-tale ramp at the bow of the Higgins Boat. Many a soldier stormed a beach off the front end of these boats.
Further along and 20-feet deeper (at 100-feet) we came upon the wreck of the Crazy Lady, the only other wreck at the bottom of Kona lagoon. The Lady was a yacht sailed from Alaska by a couple that intended on retiring on the boat. The husband was out of town (I think he was still working) and the wife was decorating the ship when she tipped over a candle or something and set the thing ablaze. Long story short: After making it across the ocean all the way from Alaska, the Lady went down in Kona harbor.
Trigger Fish and the Crazy Lady
The Trigger Fish is the Hawaiian State Fish.
In Hawaiian they call it the "Humu Humu Nukku Nukku Apu A'ha."
Now I know how to sing the song:
"I want to go back to my little grass shack in Hawaii,
Where the Humu Humu Nukku Nukku Apu A'ha go swimming by."
After the submarine we decided to take a walk along the Kona waterfront. The Kona Brewing Company had been recommended by 2 tour guides (on 2 different islands) as the place to go. Once we realized it wasn't on the waterfront, we pulled out our iPhones and located it about a mile inland.
Native fruit at the Farmer's Market on the Kona waterfront.
It was about 1:00 p.m. when we reached the Kona Brewing Company and it was packed. The hostess estimated a 45 minute wait (which would mean lunch at 2:00 p.m.) We didn't think we could wait that long and used the restrooms before heading back down the hill to the waterfront. While I was in the bar waiting for Debbie to come out, a couple at the bar got up, so I immediately took their spot. (like most places it's open seating in the bar). Needless to say she was pretty psyched when she came out and found I had landed us some seats at the bar.
Monstrous Cuban Sandwich at Kona Brewing Company accompanied with their White Ale.
After lunch we made our way back to the ship and decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing by the pool with our books and some drinks. It was the first time since the cruise started that we actually chose to relax on the ship and enjoy the amenities there.
The ship pulled out of Kona at 5:30 and we were underway for a trip back across the island chain to Kauai. Since the band had wrapped up at the pool deck we made our way down to our private balcony and relaxed with our books and drinks before dinner. We were still amazed at how blue the water was as the ship steamed out of port.
We had a reservation at the on-board Italian restaurant for our Anniversary where they brought us a cake and several of the wait-staff gathered at our table to sing an old love song for us. From there, we headed to the Mardi Gras night club for a live Newlywed Game. Although we put our names in (it seemed appropriate for our 20th Anniversary) we weren't selected. Had we been selected, we're confident we would have won.
Every night the Cabin Stewart would leave us a little animal made out of a towel (along with the next day's schedule of activities). Our favorite came on our anniversary when we returned to the cabin to find this frog, complete with coffee creamer eyes:
Day 9, Thursday February 18, 2016
Because of the long sea journey from the Big Island, we didn't reach the pier in Kauai until 10:00 a.m. We had enough time to walk laps around the ship again, grab breakfast and a shower before today's excursion. Once again I had taken a Bendaryl to knock myself out and it was so effective that this would be my routine on any night that the ship was scheduled to move (and on the overnight flight back to the mainland).
The oldest of the islands we visited, the Kauai mountains were also rugged since they had millions of years of erosion to carve them out (like Oahu and Maui). This is Nawiliwili where we docked.
Through the cruise line, the only thing we had scheduled for the day was the Luau at 5:00 pm, but we decided to go online and booked a back country tubing trip down a river for our day time activity. It turned out that the ship was offering this same excursion, but they were charging twice as much. All we had to do was get a taxi to drive us the 20 minutes to the warehouse where each expedition would gather up.
The tour was offered by Kauai Back Country Adventures (who also offered zip-lining). Like the irrigation channel that we followed on Maui, there is a long (and much wider) canal on Kauai that was used to water the sugar cane plantations years ago. These started in the high ground near the center of the island and flowed downgrade. Along the way there are 4 tunnels carved out of the mountains for the irrigation river to flow through, two of them nearly a mile long. The whole network had been dug by hand 200 years ago. Thus, hard hats with headlamps are required along with swimsuits (because you float with your butt in the water) and gloves. Because it was guaranteed that we'd get wet, we had to leave our camera phones behind (and use some pictures from their web site to give you an idea of the trip).
Geared up and ready for some underground tubing!
The second half of the drive was a bumpy off-road trip toward this extinct volcano. I don't remember the name of it, but it is the crater that formed the island of Kauai. In it's last eruption the whole side of the cone blew out. That gap shows the side of the mountain that blew out ala Mount St. Helens. Inside the crater is (what they claim) the rainiest spot on earth, getting over 350" of rain every year. The swamp there drains into the valley and gets channeled into the agricultural canal that we will be tubing down.
Floating downstream.
The guides were charismatic and ensured we had a good time, including the front of the caravan singing "My Girl" once we got into the good acoustics of a long tunnel.
We took a taxi back to the ship where we got showers and changed into dry clothing for the Luau. This was an organized tour excursion and consisted of no less than 4 tour buses shuttling people to the Luau location up the road in town. The Luau was a buffet dinner while the performers put on a show retracing how the King in Tahiti chose to travel the 2,700 miles by ocean to Hawaii and, once he got there, sent for his daughter to be brought on a later boat.
Nothing like a good lae and a drink after an adventurous day!
Opening scene: Everybody parties on Tahiti!
Obligatory fire jugglers. I think they represented evil spirits.
The cast at the end of the show.
Deb with the King and his son-in-law.
Me with the young studs!
Oh yes, and proper "Shakka" shows the back of your hand, not the fingers. Learned that a little late.
Although it was a good time and the quality of the production was top-notch, there were over 700 people there to see the show. We envisioned a luau to be more intimate than that.
Day 10, Friday February 19, 2016
Our last day of the cruise. The ship would be shoving off at 2:00 p.m. so we could get a scenic "drive by" of the Na'Pali Coast; only accessible by air, sea or hiking in. Because of the tighter schedule today's only excursion was a tour bus ride up to Waimea Canyon, the "Grand Canyon" of the Pacific. People online raved about the place, but I've taken a helicopter into the Grand Canyon in Arizona, so I was expecting the boasts to be a little overblown.
It was a 2-hour drive out to the canyon, with one stop at a tourist trinket shop (aka bathroom break) along the way. The tour guide/bus driver was a grumpy woman who'd been an island native all her life, worked everywhere and complained about how all of the industry has gone away and tourists have taken over (even though we're providing her with a paycheck). In little doses she would have been amusing, but after 4 hours with her I was ready to pull my hair out.
About a half hour out from the canyon we pulled over to a roadside scenic overlook for pictures. The driver emphasized that this was the valley and not the canyon. I posted it to Facebook calling it the "Waimea Canyon teaser." The colors were fantastic!
Azalea's at the trinket shop on our way to Waimea Canyon.
We reached the canyon after ascending a winding road where the bus parked and we got to spend about 30-minutes on the canyon lookout. I lived up to its billing and, although not as large as the Grand Canyon, the colors of the soil made it that much more spectacular!
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
Panoramic view. The waterfall is seen as a white sliver dropping from the top cliff on the far left.
Whoops. Someone lost a hat!
It was worth the ride and putting up with the grouchy bus driver, but we didn't tip her.
Back at the ship we pondered the rest of the day. We'd be passing the Na'Pali Coast at around 5:00 p.m. so we started the afternoon back up by the pool with a few drinks before, once again, moving down to the tranquility of our private balcony.
Maneuverable pilot boat sending us on our way (viewed from our balcony).
Did I mention how blue the water is?
We were at sea for a little more than an hour when I noticed that we had land on our side. That was unusual. According to the map, we'd sail out so that the port side could get a view of the coast, then return so the starboard (our side) could get a view. It was too early and we were too far away for this to be the Na'Pali Coast. A little further along, the Captain came on the ship PA System and announced that we had a life-threatening medical emergency on board and that the ship had to turn around and return to Nawiliwili for the patient to be evacuated. There wouldn't be enough daylight to justify returning to the Na'Pali coast, so we would be heading straight for Honolulu once the patient was on land. Although we were a bit disappointed, we could appreciate the seriousness of the incident and supported the Captain's decision.
We blew off our last dinner reservation, opting to be a little more spontaneous on our last evening. Pink's jazz lounge had become a favorite hangout of ours to unwind at the end of each day (a glass of wine and some jazz to settle down). We started at Pink's and then headed for the Hollywood Theater for the formal "send off" show which featured a Frankie Valley & The Four Seasons impersonator group. They were terrific and, of course, all of the retirees on board loved it. The ship had shows and entertainment in the theater and Mardi Gras night club every night, but typically we were in bed early getting ready for the next day's activity.
After the show, we grabbed a bite to eat and then made our way to the Mardi Gras for a stand-up comedian who was really funny, followed by another "couples bonding" game show for entertainment. We'd been trying to stay up for the 80's throwback night in the club, but by 10:30 we were getting tired and still had to finish packing and get everything ready for morning check out.
Day 11, Saturday February 20, 2016
We'd picked up our bag tags the night before and left them in the hallway. From here on out, everything we took with us had to be carry-on for the flight home. When we first departed Honolulu, we still hadn't decided what to do on our last day. The ship would dock at 7:00 a.m., we had to be off by 9:00 and our flight out wasn't until 10:30 p.m. The original plan was to take a taxi to the airport, drop our bags and then taxi again back to Honolulu until someone told us that the airline wouldn't take our bags that early. Instead, we opted for another rent-a-car.
I went online (the wonder of iPhones) from our stateroom balcony before we got too far from shore and lost our signal, intending to book a car from the Enterprise office a couple blocks from the pier, but opted to just book from the airport to avoid the destination charges (which made the price double if we picked it up by the pier and dropped it at the airport). When I asked about being picked up at the pier, the girl for customer service said that they "didn't offer that service from the airport location." What? Isn't this Enterprise "we'll pick you up?" So, I opted to pay the extra one-way charge to pick up by the pier.
We picked up our bags and wheeled them for two blocks to the Enterprise office where we found 2 people working the desk and a line 12 people long. It took an hour just to get our car. While in line, some one said that they saw the Enterprise shuttle picking people up at the pier (like they had done in Maui). This would warrant some kind of complaint when I got the time to fuss about it.
Another activity we missed out on while planning the trip was a whale watch. The Humpback whales migrate to Hawaii to mate and have their babies from December to March, so it was peak whale-watching season. Several of our fellow "cruisers" had gone on Maui and said it was great. I contemplated going out in a small rubber boat with an outboard motor, but that would mean leaving Debbie behind and I was still being cautious to avoid sun poisoning. Going out on a boat like that for a few hours would not be a good idea. So, we were able to find a larger boat that offered 2 hour whale watch cruises out of Honolulu if we found that we had time to fit it in.
Another gentleman in line at the Enterprise counter (who was on his 9th trip to Hawaii) said his favorite thing was touring the King's Palace. We found that on the map and chose to park in a strategically located parking garage across the street from the palace that was only a few blocks from the pier where the Whale Watch would depart from.
Spectacular Banyan trees behind the King's Palace. Although technically not as big and spread out as the one on Maui, these were the tallest and most prolific we'd seen. They looked very much like Fantasy trees.
When we looked into taking a tour of the palace, we were told that it would be 2 hours before the next available tour. They only allow 20 people in at a time and each tour runs a half an hour (thus, we had a bunch of people ahead of us). So, we opted not to hang around for the tour and headed for the waterfront where we grabbed lunch and were able to buy tickets for a noon time departure.
The King's Palace in Honolulu.
The more impressive building across the street (complete with a statue of King Kamehameha) was Hawaii's judicial building, which had been the King's palace before the construction of the newer, less ornamented palace.
Protective Fort beside the King's Palace. You can never be too careful!
Hydrofoil that would take us on our Whale Watch.
Diamond Head. Waikiki Beach, where we stayed when we first arrived is off to the left.
No sooner had we cleared Honolulu harbor when we came up upon a pair of Humpbacks churning along headed for the open sea. The ship slowed up while everyone oogled and awed. I was hoping this wasn't going to be it- I'd seen this plenty of times before in the Gulf of Maine years ago. The crewman narrating the cruise on the intercom commented that another ship reported a mother and calf further out ahead of us, so while they continued to sit alongside the pair of adults I trained my binoculars on the horizon just in time to see a full-sized whale jump completely out of the water and come crashing back down. Although I'd see one "breach" before a long time ago, I don't recall the whale getting that much air and it was at a great distance without binoculars.
Enough people on the boat saw it that the captain decided we'd get a better show further out and we went in search of the breaching whale. It turns out this was the mother and her calf. The mother didn't breach again, but it appeared she was teaching the calf how to breach because every time she came to the surface for air, the calf attempted to leap out of the water (usually getting about halfway out). We followed them and witnessed about a dozen leaps before time was up and we headed back in. (Sorry, no pictures. I have some film footage but it appears I can't get the videos to run when posted on this website).
Horses made out of dried leaves and branches adorn the lawn of a downtown office building.
Back at the pier, we walked back to the car and headed for the National Cemetery for a late afternoon visit. The "Punchbowl" is an old crater right in the middle of Honolulu with good soil that became the burial ground for American service men who died in the Pacific. Although most are from World War II, there are also sections for the casualties in Korea and Vietnam. It is the "Arlington Cemetery" of the Pacific. We went through in the tour bus last week, but the buses aren't allowed to stop, so we were able to visit with the rental car.
This is "Columbia" who stands in the middle of the arched Memorial on a hill overlooking the cemetery. The quote is from a mother who lost a son in the Pacific in World War II.
Turning around, this is the view back across the cemetery. You can't see the thousands of graves here because they are all flat, marble or granite slabs with the soldiers name, dates of birth and death and their home state engraved upon them. To either side of this stairway are small courtyards that list the names of the missing whose bodies were not recovered. I looked for the name of a sailor named Landry, whom my brother said was the first casualty from his town in the war. He was on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Landry's name was among the names of the missing, meaning his body still lay with the ship beneath the Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
Courtyard of one of the temples of the missing looking out into the cemetery.
Of course, being atop a volcanic crater in the middle of Honolulu offered some great views of Diamondhead and the western side of the city.
Panorama shot of Honolulu taken from the top of the "punchbowl."
We dusk coming, we made a circle around Diamondhead (got there too late to actually walk around), then headed for the airport. It turns out that the Enterprise rental car return at Honolulu airport didn't have a sign (while all of the rest did), so it took a second lap around to find it. This reminded me of how unhappy I was with them this morning and I went over my list of grievances with the counter clerks, who laughed. It came across more as a "guess what kind of day I had" story than a customer complaint, but that's fine, these poor sods had nothing to do with it.
There was a Kona Brewing Company at the airport, so I looked forward to a great burger, even if it meant weathering the freezing cold air conditioning. The burger came and it was a burnt hockey puck, so I sent it back. "Really? How do you mess up a burger?" Debbie convinced me to keep cool and not talk badly about the cook (even though it took forever to get said hockey puck). When it came out again, this time it was seared on the outside and raw on the inside. I debated sending it back again or, better yet, going back and cooking it myself. Maybe I could teach the kid a thing or two. Never the less, I ate it and hoped it wouldn't lead to any stomach issues on the 11-hour flight home.
We took off for Seattle at 10:45 p.m. Coming from Hawaii, this is the way to do it, as we'd land at 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning and depart about an hour later. Had we departed Honolulu earlier in the day, we would have arrived in Seattle around midnight and had to wait at the airport for the first flight out at around 6:00 a.m.
I couldn't sleep. My stomach was getting all wishy-washy so I made my way to the rear of the cabin and asked a Stewardess for a nip of Scotch. She asked if I wanted it on the rocks, with soda or whatever and I just said, "No, I'll take it like this" and shot it down. From there, once I felt my stomach settling (killing off all of those nasty raw hamburger bugs) I took a Benadryl and conked out; waking up as we were on approach to Seattle. From there it was an 8:10 a.m. departure and a 4:10 p.m. arrival in Baltimore.
It had been 12 days. I'd left my winter coat waiting for me in the car. Our cat sitter did a great job taking care of the kitties, who sincerely missed us. It was a great trip, but it was good to be home.
Kitta guarding the suitcases. "No more trips without me!"
No comments:
Post a Comment