Hawaii

December 25th, 2010 Saturday Honolulu, Oahu.

Melakinikiaka--Merry Christmas in Hawaiian!

I woke up to a Christmas package from Santa Babs. She got me a set of children's story books on DVD. We ate breakfast and then we got our suitcases to get off the ship. It was hard getting all of our suitcases outside to the taxi line. Mom kept dropping her luggage and people were helping her get along. We had to stand in a long, hot line to wait for a taxi. We finally got one and he drove us to Enterprise Rental Cars by the airport. We drove to our hotel called Waikiki Ahona(family) West. We had to wait 3 hours to check in, so we left our luggage, went shopping and then ate lunch at Chili's which is connected to the hotel. After we checked in, Barbara and I got in our swimming suits and walked a few blocks to the Waikiki Beach, were we joined hundreds of others swimming in the Pacific Ocean. We started walking out in the water. Someone told us we could walk out 1/2 mile and the water would still be waist deep. So, we started walking out, just to be deterred by lots and lots of big lava rocks. I kept stubbing my toes, so I stopped walking and went back to the shore to sit. Barbara walked out quite a way before she was turned back by the rocks. The rest of the day, we walked around in downtown Waikiki. Every place we went was open. We went to lots of gift shops. We even found a marketplace across from our hotel that had tons of little stands selling lei's, jewelry, sarongs, clothing and lots of different souvenirs. We had dinner at Burger King, showered and went to bed.

Hawaii

December 24th, 2010 Friday Nawiliwilli, Kaua'i. This morning we got up at 6:45 a.m. to go on a tour called The Directors Cut Tour. We were on a tour bus with a t.v. screen at the front. The bus driver would drive to different locations and then show us clips from different movies and show the exact pier or mountain or rock or place that the movie was shot. We also had a sing-a-long of different songs from the movie "South Pacific". Among the songs we sang were Bali Ha'i, I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair, and There Ain't Nothing Like a Dane, Happy Talk, A Wonderful Guy, Rocka Hula Baby, Moonlight Swim.

The movies that we saw clips while seeing the location in the movie and stop to take pictures. We saw so many movie locations, it was hard to keep track of. Among the movies we saw locations for were: Donavan's Reef, Dragonfly Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, 6 Days and 7 Nights, South Pacific, The Wackiest Ship in the Navy, Beach Head-Tony Curtis, Uncommon Valor-rice fields.

We also saw really cool landmarks like: Mt. Waliwali-the wettest mountain on earth, Puff the Magic Dragon Mountain in Hanalei, and Lydale State Park where Blue Hawaii with Elvis Presley was filmed. We stopped at a Pier where several movies were filmed and there was a man selling hats and bowls he had weaved from coconut leaves. I asked him how much the hat was. He said $7 so I went back to the bus to get money and when I came back to buy the hat, he was weaving a bird. He gave it to me for my hat. It made it so cute! It is on a long stick. It made us laugh and laugh. I was so happy all day wearing that silly hat.

We stopped at a Marriott Hotel for lunch. They fed us Mahi Mahi fish, Teryiaki beef, macaroni salad, white rice and coconut cream pie for dessert. After lunch we walked down to a beautiful beach and played a while. We got back to our cruise ship with just enough time for the last boarding at 1:15 p. m.

Barbara and I ran to the Mardi Gras Theatre to get in on the last Hula Lesson. Then we went to our room to change for our Hula performance at 3:00 p.m. We put on Sarongs and kukui nut necklaces. Then we went to the craft class and learned how to weave four strand lei's with four strands of grosgrain ribbon. At the performance we danced four hulas. They were: This is how you do the hula, Going to a Hukelau, The Little Grass Hut, and the Tahitian Roll. We got certificates of graduation after the performance.

At 5:15 p.m. we went out on deck as we passed the D'Nali coastline. It was breathtakingly beautiful. We saw lots of whale spouts and tails in the distance. We ate dinner at the Aloha Cafe and then we went to our room to pack. Mom went to a Christmas program.

One Hawaiian word I learned was:

opala-trash

Hawaii

December 23, 2010 Thursday Nawilliwili, Kaua'i. Nawillwili is the port and Kaua'i is the island. This is the purple island. Each island has it's own color. This morning we got on a shuttle bus at the pier to go to the Wailau River and Fern Grotto excursion. The bus driver 'Damian' learned everybody's name and where they were from. He used their names a lot. He reminded me of Brad in that aspect. We drove and took a big barge up the river to the fern grotto. Along the way we had Hawaiian musicians and dancers perform for us. They asked for any requests and I said the haukilau. We saw the beautiful fern and bamboo forest. We walked up a short path to the grotto. When we got there, the musicians sang the wedding song for us. They say it is a tradition for people to come to this place and get married, because it is so beautiful. On the bus ride back we stopped at a beautiful waterfall and our bus driver told us about the trees and animals we passed. We saw mango, kukui nut trees, papaya, guava and macadamia. When we got to the ship we lay down for a rest.

This evening we went to a Luaukalamaka. We went by bus. Only 650 people from our cruise ship went. It was a huge open air building. We got to see lots of different hula dances and some really cool fire dancers. The food was good. The pork tasted ok. The poi was purple paste made out of taro tasted yuck, mostly tasteless and bland. Kinda like wallpaper paste, potato salad, rolls chicken, salad, banana cream pie and rice pudding. We met a man, his mom and daughter at our table that are from Old Mesilla--crazy huh?

I learned that all Hawaiian words end in a vowel Some of the words I've learned are:

Aloha- hello, goodbye, and I love you

Mahalo-thank you

wahine-woman

kane-man

We got back to our stateroom and went straight to bed.

Hawaii

December 22, 2010 Wednesday, Kona, Hawaii-The Big Island. Today we got up at 8:30, ate breakfast then went to the Pink Champagne Bar to see about getting Tender tickets to go ashore. The coast at Kona is too shallow for the cruise ship to dock, so they have to anchor about 1/4 mile off shore and take us by Tender boat to shore. It is a covered speed boat that holds about 60 people-it was very squished and took about 5 minutes to get to shore. We waited in line for our turn to go ashore. When we got there, we had two hours to wait until our snorkeling adventure. We walked around the shore and shopped a little while we waited. We got on a small catamaran with 15 passengers plus 2 crew. Mike was our captain and 'T' was his shipmate. The drove us 12 miles towards the protected coral reef. On the way they spotted a 40 foot spotted shark whale that was right by our boat. So to got my underwater camera and started to to snap pictures. I got a picture of the side of it! Then Mike asked if any of us wanted to get in the water with the whale and I said YES! So he told me and two others to grab snorkels and jump in, and as quick as I could, I did. I started looking underwater for the whale, while hanging on to the side of the boat, but I didn't see it. I got back into the boat, and Barbara and several others were going to get in, we waited awhile to see if we would spot it again. When it became apparent a while latter, we left to go to our snorkeling spot. When we got in the water, we weren't allowed to touch anything or go on shore, but it was beautiful and we had about an hour to swim around and look at all of the fish and coral reef. It was beautiful to see the fish and reef close up. I got lots of pictures with my camera.When we got back on the boat, our crew had fresh cut pineapple, sodas, chips and cookies for us to snack on. Barbara was one of the last ones to swim back from snorkeling, and Mike started throwing cookies close to her, and the fish would swarm up right by her and she would scream. The more Barbara screamed, the funnier that Mike thought it was and he kept tossing cookies out close to Barbara and saying "I love it when they scream!" He was getting quite a kick out of scaring her. On the trip back to our ship, we stopped at several locations to see interesting things. We saw lava holes, sea caves, a home owned by Oprah, next door to one owned by Tiger Woods. We saw Parrot Cave and a place that looks like the eyes and nose of a woman with long hair. In the olden days, natives would put fires in her eyes and nose to scare off people that came by. As we were heading back, we got caught on the tail side of a hurricane and it rained really hard for about 30 minutes. It was raining so hard it made us get the giggles. Barbara put on a snorkel and we started laughing even harder. As we got closer to our cruise ship, we started to see some dolphins. Mike said to us "Do you want to see something really cool?" We all said yes. So he started steering the boat in circles as fast as he could and the dolphins started jumping in our wake. It was so neat. What a fun experience. We got back on the tender, then when we got back to our stateroom we showered and went and ordered salads from the Cadillac Cafe to take back to our room. We relaxed in our room and watched t.v.

Hawaii

December 21, 2010 Tuesday Hilo, Hawaii--The Big Island

Last night at 6:00 pm we sailed from Maui and got into Hilo this morning. I ate scrambled eggs, bacon, juice and a roll for breakfast, along with with a bottomless diet pepsi :o). We went on a helicopter ride over the coastline of Hilo. We flew over the volcano Manaloa. It has been constantly flowing since 1983. I learned that Pele is the Goddess of Fire and hoholoa means extremely angry. I was expecting to see the Hollywood version of a tall volcano with red lava spewing out of the spout. What we did see was lots of dark lava with a few red hot spots-magma. It was beautiful. We also flew over Rainbow Falls and saw our cruise ship from the air. It was an awe inspiring experience to fly over Hawaii in a helicopter.

We came back to the ship and ate lunch at the Cadillac Cafe. Then Barbara and I walked up to the 12th and 13th decks to look around. At 3:00 we went to our hula class. I got to see and learn the hukilou that I have sort of known since when Brad and I were newlyweds and learned it at a Ward Party. Then at 4:30 pm, Barbara and I went to the craft class and made a lei out of fresh purple orchids. They were easy and beautiful. After dinner, we took Mom with us to see a show called Murray the Magician. He was phenomenal. After that show, we went to a program called A Tribute to Broadway where a man sang a bunch of show tunes. Then Mom and I went to the Champagne Piano Bar and listened to a woman sing and play Gershwin tunes.

At 9:45 pm we all went out on on deck as our ship passed the volcano Manaloa that we had seen from the air during our helicopter ride. It was again beautiful from the ground. We saw the red hots spots dotted here and there. As we rode along, our Cruise Director told us about Pele the Goddess of fire.

Hawaii

December 20, 2010 Monday Maui, Hawaii

At some point we realized that we had accidentally gone on our whale watching excursion a day early, so we didn't have a shore excursion planned for today. After a little confusion and failures to communicate, we got a bus excursion to the city of Lahaina. It was mostly a day to shop and walk from one end of town to the next. We played in the ocean a little bit and ate lunch at Bubba Gump. When we got back to the ship, Barbara and I went to a craft class and make a kukui nut necklaces. We had missed the Hula Dance class that day.