Obechi

From the department of “time waster”…

http://www.bored.com/game/play/150788/Obechi.html

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Jungle Falls and the Na Pali coastline

Last Hawaii post, I promise.

On our last full day in Hawaii, we signed up for a shore excursion called “Jungle Falls by kayak”.  I enjoyed the smooth-as-glass water.  Once again I had my digital camera in its snazzy DiCaPac case.

We had been told to wear closed toe shoes.  I assumed we would be kayaking by a waterfall which was not the case.  The kayaking lasted about an hour and then was followed with a hike to the waterfall and a return hike where a sack lunch was provided.

Then we got back on the ship which sailed by the Na Pali coastline during the daylight hours.  It was a little hazy due to fog/rain… but still beautiful.

And finally, aa couple of sunset shots to end our day.

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Waimea Canyon

During the overnight hours, our ship traveled to the port of Nawiliwili Kauai.  We rented a car and decided to do the Waimea Canyon.  Its basically Hawaii’s version of the Grand Canyon.  This was the only day we had rain to contend with… which makes sense since Kauai is one of the wettest spots on the entire planet.  We also traveled from sea level to an elevation somewhere between 3000 and 4000 feet.

I had been warned about the red dirt but didn’t quite believe it.  They use one pail of Kauai red dirt to dye 500 Red Dirt shirts.  Our socks had to be bleached when we got home due to the new pink color they obtained.

Waimea Canyon

Chickens in Kauai

We finished the day off with a couple of waterfalls.

Wailua Falls

Opaeka’a Falls

And finally, two shorts videos.

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Captain Zodiac

We woke up on Wednesday in Kona, Hawaii.  We didn’t have anything planned for this day, but quickly signed up for another snorkeling adventure since we enjoyed it so much the first time.  This experience was entirely different and was chartered through Captain Zodiac.  We were with about 13 other people on a small raft.  We bonded with first mate Katie because she was from Blaine, MN and took good care of us as fellow Minnesotans.

For the tech nerds, the word wiki is Hawaiian for fast.  The Zodiac raft travels wiki-wiki.  As it travels, you place your foot under a rope on the bottom of the raft and hang on to a rope on the side of the raft. This is a photo of the next group that went out after we got back.

The Alaskan humpback whales were just returning from Alaska and we were fortunate to spot two of them while we were heading to our snorkeling destination.  In general, whale watching is a little boring because it means getting super excited for 1 minute and then scanning the horizon for the next 20 minutes waiting for them to come up for another breath.

We also saw adorable spinner dolphins.  When they are born, they are the size of a football.

We spent an hour snorkeling at Kealakekua Bay which is the site of Captain Cook’s monument.  I got up enough courage to ditch the noodle and had better luck with the camera because I wasn’t bobbing up and down so much.

Kristopher’s photos are here.  We shared my camera again.  Here is about 10 seconds worth of video.

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Volcanoes National Park

The ship traveled to Hilo, Hawaii in the overnight hours.  As usual, we got up early, had breakfast buffet, and then waited in line for the free shuttle that would take us to our rental car.  I remember the lady handing the keys for our mid-size rental to Kristopher and telling us to go pick it up under number 11.  As we walked across the parking lot towards number eleven, all I can remember blurting out was “NO WAY!  NO WAY! NO WAY!”.

This was our car.

A Dodge Challenger. In Red.  A muscle car. 92% owner satisfaction rating (higher than Prius).  GOD BLESS AMERICA.  It even had this awesome feature where it would automatically lower the windows of the car one inch when you opened the door and would raise the windows back up when you closed the door.

We drove 45 minutes to Volcanoes National Park.  First stop was the visitor center where a wonderful park ranger helped us plan out our next five hours in the park.

At the steam vents, my camera took a pretty good blast of steam when I wasn’t paying attention and leaned over the edge with it on my arm.  No harm done.

On to the Jagger Museum to view the Halema’uma’u Crater.  The air quality was very poor.  Lots of visitors coughing.

Then we traveled the Chain of Craters road.  Its 45 minutes one-way… but takes a lot longer because you constantly pull over to check out the lava formations.  The lava is no longer actively flowing in the park.  It has made its way outside the park onto private property.

See the little plume of steam off on the far right?  That’s America’s maternity ward flowing out into the sea.  We would float by it later that evening on the cruise ship.

Took this picture for Ranger Nathan.  The Hawaiian Nene goose.  I thought it was endangered but Wikipedia tells me its “vulnerable”.  At one point, there were only 30 in existence.

The shot I waited for all day long.  Where lava flowed over the road and closed it.  It was a long, warm, hike to get to this spot.

Two videos.  A 360 pan of lava from a look out point and flowing lava from the cruise ship.

Kristopher’s photos can be found here.

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The Molokini Crater

One of the things I was most looking forward to about our trip was snorkeling… something I had never done before.  My husband didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.  He was more on board when he realized that prescription snorkel goggles are a common thing.

On our second day in Maui we signed up for the “Molokini Snorkel and Dolphin Adventure” shore excursion.  At 7am we hopped on a bus that took us to our boat, the Quicksilver.  After signing waivers, we hopped onto the boat and enjoyed a light breakfast while we were ferried to the Molokini Crater.

This photo is shamelessly thieved from the interwebs.  It shows the crater from above.  Its a half moon shape which makes for a perfect home for marine life.  As you can tell by all the boats in the picture, its an extremely popular snorkeling spot as well.

Of particular hilarity was how they highly recommended everyone spend $10 to rent a wet suit.  We figured we were from Minnesota and could handle it.  Only one other couple declined the wet suit (and it felt like there were between 60 and 100 people on board).  It was a wise decision… I’ve taken a shower in water that was colder than that.

Anyway… now I have to stop mid post and take you back to the Saturday before we left for our trip.  I decided that I wanted to experiment with underwater photography.  Check this puppy out…

Did I mention that it also costs over $300 which is WAY more than my three year old camera is worth!

So I took a huge risk.  I spent about twenty bucks on the DiCaPac underwater case for my camera.  Yes, you are correct, it is like putting your expensive digital camera into a zip lock bag with velcro and saying a Hail Mary.  I had to spend ten extra dollars to have it express shipped so it would arrive in time.  We experimented in the bathroom sink and it seemed to do OK.

We listened to the captain’s introductory snorkel lesson and then got into the water.  Our first five minutes in the water did not go well.  We both proceeded to hyperventilate for three reasons.  1.  There is zero opportunity to stand on the ground and ease yourself into it.  They have “guards” on surfboards that prevent you from getting near the crater itself.  So, you get dumped into an area that is approximately 25 feet deep.  2.  You are not wearing a life jacket.  This is not an issue because you bob like a cork in the salt water… but growing up in the Midwest it felt like certain death to be without one.  I never could adjust to it and had to carry around a noodle with me.  3.  Its tough to not breath through your nose.

And then we looked down and were absolutely awe inspired by the view.  Crystal clear water.  Fish EVERYWHERE.  Then we relaxed and had fun.

I’m proud to say the DiCaPac experiment worked fantastic.  You be the judge.  Some photos were taken by Kristopher… namely the sea turtle ones because our boat took us to Turtle Bay as a second stop.

Here are 5 videos that I took.  These are bouncy because of the noodle.  They will play one right after the other.

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The Road to Hana

I’m back to my Hawaii posts after getting my photos uploaded to my new Seagate hard drive.  Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Our ship traveled from Honolulu to Kahului, Maui in the overnight hours.  We had made a really sweet deal on a rental car through Priceline.  The process of getting to our rental car was super easy on all the ports because all the major rental agencies provide free shuttles from the cruise ship pier.  Our car ended up being a respectable Ford Fusion with a sunroof.  Our cruise ship wasn’t going to leave Maui until the following evening so we did not have to rush ourselves.  Our only time constraint was getting our rental car back by around 9 so we could still catch the last free shuttle back to the ship.

The road to Hana was our activity for the day.  It is truly about the journey… not the destination.  Anyone who travels to Hawaii will tell you to get the blue books.  Its a set of books about each island that get updated once every two years.  The locals despise the books because they inform you of all the off-the-beaten-path treasures that aren’t always on public property.  Ron and Liz kindly lent us their blue books for Maui and Kauai.

Generally, the drive went like this.

Marie (reading aloud to Kristopher who is driving): At three tenths of a mile past mile marker sixteen, there will be a phone pole with a barbed wire fence and a pull off.  Walk a half mile over the hill and you will reach a waterfall.
Kristopher: What?
Marie: Repeats the above.
Marie: Slow down!
Kristopher: What am I looking for again?
Marie: It must have been that pull off we just drove by.  Oh well.

There is absolutely zero room for error.  There are no shoulders and few places to pull the car over to admire the scenery.  There are over 600 turns (no lie) in the span of 28 miles.  There are countless spots on the road that are one lane only and you have to yield or stop to let the oncoming traffic through.  I ended up getting carsick from the combination of trying to read the book to Kristopher, the constant turns, and the constant acceleration/deceleration.  Did I mention its all on a cliff where you’ll fall to your death?

We did see amazing scenery in two spots.  The first was the Garden of Eden.  For $10 per person, you can spend time in an amazing botanical garden.

The blue book led us horribly astray at a state park.  We walked through a lot of mud before finally giving up on finding a hidden waterfall.  Our shoes were CAKED with mud.  This is a photo of Kristopher’s shoes after we cleaned them off… twice.

The second awesome place was Wai‘anapanapa State Park.  It had a fantastic black sand beach that I fell in love with.  The black color is from pulverized lava.

Kristopher’s photos…

• Ho’okipa Beach
• Miscellaneous road to Hana
• Garden of Eden
• Wai’anapanapa State Park

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The Pride of America

The name of our cruise ship was the Pride of America run by Norwegian Cruise Lines.  As such, it has Americana decor everywhere.  It is the only cruise ship that sails under the US flag and therefore you are not forced to visit a foreign island or have to carry your passport with you everywhere.  About 970 people work on the ship.  It has 1,065 staterooms that are all double-capacity or greater.  Our cruise had about 100 people under the age of 21.  Kristopher jokingly referred to it as our floating nursing home.  For the cruise that will be sailing this week, they will have 1,200 people under the age of 21 because all the kiddos are on Christmas break.

The moment we stepped on the ship they had champagne in our hands.  We only had two bad experiences while on board.  The first negative moment came while we embarked the ship.  We checked in fine, but the moment I opened the door to our stateroom I knew something was wrong.  There was someone else’s stuff strewn about the room.  We walked down to the front desk where they apologized and explained that we had been reassigned to a different room.  We got our cards for the new room… opened the door and discovered that it hadn’t been cleaned.  It took another hour for the situation to get resolved, but they apologized and compensated us with a free bottle of wine.  The second negative aspect was the buffet.  The entire buffet was wrapped in cellophane so you could not serve yourself.  Each item you wanted required a separate plate so it became a massive juggling act to get your food and find a table.  I think the ship was being extremely cautious due to an outbreak of the stomach flu the week prior.  By Thursday they had given up on the cellophane and you could once again serve yourself like a normal buffet.  I assume they either got so many complaints they had to give in or they figured if we weren’t sick by Thursday we weren’t going to get sick at all.  I loved everything else about the cruise.  The crew, entertainment, and ship were all top notch.  The food was middle-of-the-road.  It wasn’t cafeteria food but it wasn’t restaurant grade either.

It is extremely difficult to explain a sense of scale in these photos.  The ship is massive (and its not considered a large ship by cruise ship standards).  See those little ’small’ orange lifeboats in the photo above?  They easily hold 110 people each.   In an emergency situation, you can fit 150 people in them.  Incidentally, I took this photo in Kona, which is the only day we had to tender to shore.  There isn’t a pier large enough for cruise ships in Kona so they dock in the ocean and ferry everyone to shore.  You can see a tender boat loading with people in the center of the photo and one that is returning from dropping people off in the far right.

Back to that sense of scale thing. See that circular piece of satellite-type-wizardry straight above the tender boat that is being loaded in the photo above?  Same thing in the upper right corner of this photo.  Notice how an entire pool, dining area, 2 hot tubs, and a hundred sunbathers can fit into this area… and its only a fraction of the top deck.

The NCL triangle on top the ship was easily bigger than our house.

Our room.  The only thing I missed was an alarm clock.  Had to use the alarm on my cell phone.

Left and right sides of our small bathroom

For Kristopher’s cruise ship photos (which are better than mine) visit this link.

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Pearl Harbor

The time change between Minnesota and Hawaii is four hours.  That means we were up “early” every single day.  Since we had until 6pm to report to the cruise ship, we decided to spend the day at Pearl Harbor.

Before the trip, I had arranged for VIP transit to pick us up at the hotel and drop us off at Pearl Harbor (and then pick us up again at 2pm).  Fortunately, the hotel was willing to hold our luggage so we didn’t have to figure out what to do with it.  I was nervous as to whether VIP transit would be able to find us (the hotel takes up an entire city block) and if they’d remember us at all.  Fortunately, they showed up right on time at 8am.  They had other people to pick up and drop off so we got to Pearl Harbor around 9am.

I did not realize that Pearl Harbor was under so much construction.  A new visitor’s center is being built… check out its price tag…

Our first step was to get tickets which required a quarter mile walk.  I wasn’t sure how crowded it would be.  There weren’t many people there so our ticket times for the tour (free) were for 9:30am.  We also purchased tickets for the USS Bowfin ($10 each), a submarine at the ticket area.  The USS Missouri is dry-docked and will not reopen until the middle of January so we were unable to do that.

I had read in my travel book that the audio tour is worthwhile.  So, I shelled out $6 each for the audio tour.  I would advise the audio tour if you are stuck waiting around for your tour to start… but since we didn’t have much time before our tour began it wasn’t worth it.  (We had to make the hike back over to the visitor center.)  There are interesting outdoor displays near the ticket area.  The most interesting item was the captured Japanese Kaiten they had on display.  It is a suicide torpedo manned by one person.  I encourage you to click on the link and read more about it on wikipedia.

We both agreed that the most interesting part of the tour was the half hour movie that you begin with.  It goes into detail about what brought the US into WWII which is information that my generation really doesn’t know about.  Following the movie, you proceed out to a ferry boat that takes you to the USS Arizona.

And then you reach the monument which rests over the sunken ship.  It is wide open with no windows, just large holes.  To this day, the USS Arizona continues to leak oil at a rate of a quart per day which floats on the surface of the water.  Pearl Harbor survivors refer to these as “black tears” that will continue to weep until the last survivor dies.

At the rear of the memorial is a marble wall with the names of the fallen soldiers.  On the left you will see a small marble box.  It contains the names of Pearl Harbor survivors who wished to be buried with their shipmates at their death and cremation.

I recommend you view this aerial image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DN-SD-06-09336.jpg

Kristopher has also posted photos here.

Tomorrow:  The cruise ship

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Honolulu, Hawaii

We recently went on a 7 day cruise in Hawaii.  I’ll share my thoughts and photos in blog posts over the next few days.  My hope is that anyone who decides to go on the same cruise can find some tips.

Neither of us trust the major airlines to get us to our destination on time, so we allowed one buffer day prior to the cruise departure in case we had any trouble getting to Honolulu.  We booked our cruise through Priceline because they were willing to provide two perks.  If we upgraded to an Oceanview room instead of the cheaper Interior stateroom, Priceline would give us each $30 of onboard credit and they would provide two nights free in a hotel.

There was a catch with the free hotel.  It was basically a $140 voucher where you could name your own price through Priceline’s website.  This was a pro and a con.  Pro:  We were only staying one day (not two) so we could apply the entire $140 in one shot for a luxury hotel.  Con:  We still had to pay $30 worth of taxes and fees.  After orientating ourselves with how Priceline’s “name your own price” feature works with hotels, we decided to stay in Waikiki because that is where the luxury options are.  We placed a $141.00 bid on a luxury hotel.  The $141 represents the $140 voucher and a $1.00 bid so they’d have our credit card.   We were quickly informed that our bid was accepted by Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort Beach and Spa.

We opted to book a direct flight to Honolulu.  We had all our electronic devices charged up and our travel books in our carry on gear because the flight takes about 9.5 hours.  To my surprise, each seat had its own screen and remote control.  We plugged in our ear buds and enjoyed complimentary movies, music, and video games the entire flight.  I watched Transformers 2, Four Christmases, the Time Travelers Wife, and an episode of Big Bang Theory.  We were served a meal of teriyaki chicken.  It was an awesome flight.

A recurring theme of this trip will be how to get from one place to another.  This map indicates the places in Oahu we would need to get to in the next 20 hours.  The first issue was how to get to our hotel which was about a half hours drive south of the airport.  Oahu has an excellent public transportation system ($2.00) but it doesn’t allow luggage.  We opted to go with the standard Robert’s Hawaii shuttle.  It is the only state-authorized shuttle to run out of the airport.  It is easy to find and accesses all of the hotels in Waikiki.  Cost: $9.00 per person one way.  It was especially handy since rush hour was still in progress.  Took about an hour and a half but we were very glad not to have to drive it ourselves.

People go to Waikiki for two reasons.  1.  The beach.  2.  To shop.  We were there for neither of those reasons.  By the time we finished eating our Cheeseburger in Paradise it was 8pm and the sun had long since set.   We walked on the beach anyway and called it a night.  Our hotel gets a thumbs down rating from me.  It was a cozy room… but it was tiny, had no continental breakfast, and charged twelve bucks for one day’s worth of internet access.

Tomorrow: Pearl Harbor

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