Notes from Our Vacation - Nawiliwili, Kauai

Our arrival at the gorgeous island of Kauai proved beyond any doubt that it was indeed the rainy season in Hawaii ... rain, driven by high winds, was so heavy we couldn't see across the pier from the ship to the passenger terminal. We had booked a special tropical flower and waterfall tour, but when we swam out to the terminal to meet the bus, we learned that our tour (and many others) had been cancelled because of flash flooding across the island. Aaarrrggghhh!!!

Well, we were in Hawaii and didn't feel like sitting on board the ship, so we caught a ride to the local Hop-On-Hop-Off bus, bought tickets for the day, and set out on our own.

We hopped off first at Lydgate Beach Park. There certainly wasn't any swimming to be done (as you can imagine from looking at the surf in the pictures below), but it was a beautiful place nevertheless ...

While at the park, we made the acquaintance of many of the local inhabitants ...

The island is overrun with feral chickens - our bus driver said there were about 700,000 of them, although I'm not sure how anyone could come up with a number more accurate than "bazillions." There are apparently no significant numbers of predators to keep them under control*.

We were starting to despair of visiting any of the tropical gardens we'd wanted to see, because the bus operator's radio kept crackling with a litany of all the locations that were closed because of flooding, but we lucked out when one of the sites decided to open just as we were driving by ...

The area was well-saturated and we spent a few hours avoiding huge puddles while gawking at the glorious tropical scenery. In this picture, you can see the local feature known as the "Sleeping Giant" - the mountain line on the horizon looks like the profile of a sleeping man lying on his back ...

Of course, we did the usual touristy thing of trading cameras with other visitors to get pictures of both of us together ...

The gardens were full of tropical birds who flocked happily around all visitors ... they long ago learned that people buy bags of seeds at the entrance and are good for a snack. Agnes had a large following that included one of the many peacocks, as well as ducks and the usual chickens ...

The smaller birds will happily eat from your hand. Some less-wary visitors tried to get the peacocks to eat from their hands ... which they will do, but the result can be painful when the larger beaks meet the smaller and softer hands!

We made a stop for a late lunch at Gaylord's Restaurant at the Kilohana Plantation. The location was gorgeous, the service mind-numbingly slow ("island time," dontcha know), and the food fantastic. I had delicious chicken crepes and Agnes had a caprese salad and fish tacos. This was my salad - Ahi Poke, a wonderful tuna ceviche with plantain chips served in a coconut shell on a bed of salt ...

By the time we were done with lunch, it was time to head back to the ship ... although we seriously considered just staying in Nawiliwili, rain and all. The day ended with a spectacular sunset ...

And we sailed majestically on to our next stop, which we will visit tomorrow.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* We learned on some of the other islands that the inhabitants had imported mongooses (mongeese?) to help control the rats that had arrived on ships. It didn't work - the mongooses are active during the day and the rats came out mostly at night, so they never tended to meet up. Now they have problems with both mongooses and rats.

Notes from Our Vacation - Hilo, Hawaii

We sailed from Los Angeles the afternoon of Wednesday, February 22nd, and arrived at our first stop - Hilo, Hawaii - shortly after 8:00 AM on Monday, February 27th. As I noted yesterday, we quickly learned why we'd gotten such a good price on the cruise ... it was the rainy season in Hawaii. Fortunately (being experienced travelers who have endured previous drenchings), we'd had the foresight to pack our brightly-colored rain jackets*.

Our first stop was at the Hawai'i** Volcanoes National Park, one of those places that Mr Trump's budget approach would probably consider useless and providing no return on investment. Our bus drove us up from the harbor into a lush, dense rain forest

eventually coming to our first stop, a lava tube created by previous volcanic eruptions

Yes, it was a very steep descent to the entrance along very slippery paths through very beautiful rain forest landscapes

It was difficult to get good pictures inside the lava tube, which was damp, dimly lit, and irregular, but this gives you a bit of an idea what it was like inside ...

 Leaving the lava tube, we proceeded on and made a brief stop at a very interesting and scary area where, in July of 1974, a sudden four-hour flow of lava had created a weird landscape of black lava rock and bleached tree trunks ...

I thought this picture was pretty eerie, with the dead tree in the center looking like it was desperately crawling away to escape the lava ...

From there we went on to the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum, located at the rim of the Halema‘uma‘u Crater***. We were only able to get as close as a mile from the rim of the crater, which was fine with me, as the smell of sulfur^† was strong enough from where we were. 

There was real volcanic activity going on, although it's difficult to see in the pictures we took. In this photo, you can see the flare of orange fire peeking over the edge of the rim near the right-hand edge. A fellow who had a tripod-mounted video camera with a powerful telephoto lens let us all get a closer look, and we could clearly see the molten rock shooting up from the depths of the crater. This picture also shows another feature of the park - steam vents. There are a number of random places around the island where steam just shoots up out of the ground ...

... making it necessary to keep gawky tourists at a respectful distance ...

After spending some time at the park, we proceeded on to the Nani Mau (Hawaiian for "Forever Beautiful") Botanical Gardens for lunch and a stroll through the lush tropical flowers and greenery ...

I didn't remember posing for this figure, but it's a pretty good early-morning likeness ...

The gardens were so beautiful and peaceful that I figured I'd apply for a job. They said they'd get back to me ...

And then there's the mandatory happy snap of Agnes and I, shot by an accommodating fellow tourist ...

Our last official stop of the day was at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut center, where we drove through 2,500 acres of macadamia nut trees (bordered by huge pine trees planted as windbreaks to protect the nuts) to the visitor center and the factory where the nuts are prepared for sale. There really wasn't much of anything worth taking pictures of, although we enjoyed the free samples of nuts, the big scoops (sadly, not free) of vanilla macadamia nut ice cream, and the ability to stock up on all sorts of macadamia nut products (which are ridiculously expensive here at home). One thing I was surprised (and distressed) to see among the array of flavored nuts was ... no kidding ... Spam-flavored macadamias. I'd heard that Hawaiians and many other Pacific islanders had developed a love for Spam when they were introduced to it during World War II, but the idea of using it as a flavor for otherwise delectable macadamia nuts seems somehow sacrilegious.

On the way back to the ship we stopped briefly at the absolutely beautiful Liliuokalani Park and Gardens on the edge of downtown Hilo. I could look at these glorious colors all day long ...

And that, Dear Readers, summarizes our visit to some of the sights of the beautiful "big island" of Hawaii. We didn't get to spend as much time anywhere as we'd have liked, but my travel journal is now full of notes on all the places we'd like to go back and see again when we have more time to spend.

Have a good day and come back tomorrow, when we'll visit the island of Kauai. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Bright yellow for me and bright red for Agnes. They not only keep us dry, but help us find each other in crowds!

** There's an old linguistic joke about whether the state's name is pronounced "ha-WYE-ee" or "ha-WAH'ee" (with a little glottal stop at the penultimate syllable). A group of tourists in a Honolulu restaurant were arguing about the correct pronunciation and asked their server, "How do you pronounce the name of this place?" The server looked at them strangely and replied "mak-DAW-nalds." 

*** Interesting factoid: it's called a "crater" if it's less than a mile in diameter, and a "caldera" if it's more than a mile across. You're welcome.

† Sometimes called "brimstone" by those who think of hell in terms of "fire and brimstone" rather than a Trump presidency.

Notes from Our Vacation - Honolulu, Oahu

Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, was not our first port of call in Hawaii, but it's where I thought I'd start my commentary on our visit. It's a good choice because, if for no other reason, the weather was good (we learned too late that the reason we got such a good deal on the cruise was that it's the rainy season in Hawaii!).

This was my first visit to Hawaii, and I'd always wanted to see Pearl Harbor and the related historical sites. Here's a Bilbo's-Eye view of just a few of the things we saw ...

First stop was the national monument that encompasses several major memorials ...

The visit to the USS Arizona Memorial is a three-step process. First of all, there's a short film about the attack on Pearl Harbor, beautifully and hauntingly narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis. From the theater, one goes out to the dock to board a Navy launch with a uniformed Navy crew for the short trip out to the memorial itself. This picture was actually shot after we left the memorial, but was the best one I got because I was seated in the extreme rear of the launch as we departed.

This diagram shows how the beautiful white memorial spans the wreck of the Arizona, much of which can be seen under the clear waters of the harbor.

According to the "Legend of the Arizona," the ship cries black tears for those who died in the attack ... the "black tears" are the oil which leaks from the ship's tanks at the rate of about five quarts per day. According to the legend, the ship will continue to "cry" until the last survivor passes away; however, since there are five known survivors of the Arizona still remaining, and about a half-million gallons of oil still in the ship's bunkers, it will probably continue to "cry" for a very long time.

1,177 Sailors, Marines, and Airmen were killed outright when the Arizona exploded, and most remain entombed in the wreck. The shrine wall in the memorial lists all their names.

Over the years, many survivors of the attack requested to be buried with their shipmates when they passed away. Their cremated remains are placed in urns, which are placed into the wreck in a solemn ceremony, and their names have been added to the shrine.

The USS Oklahoma memorial is another interesting and moving memorial. The battleship Oklahoma was also sunk at Pearl Harbor, but the wreck was raised to recover the bodies of the crew and to salvage as much of the ship's equipment and weaponry as possible. The Oklahoma was sold to a California salvage company for scrap, and sank at sea while being towed to Oakland, California in 1947. The memorial at Pearl Harbor consists of more than 400 white marble pillars arranged in rows, each inscribed with the name of a crew member who died ... the design represents the way in which a ship's crew dons their dress whites and lines the decks when a ship sails into harbor ...  

I was also able to visit and tour the battleship Missouri, which is moored at Pearl Harbor and serves as a museum. The ship is vast, and I was glad that the self-guided tour route was clearly marked - otherwise I'd probably still be there, trying to find my way out. The most interesting spot on the ship was this plaque embedded in what's known as the "Surrender Deck" - it marks the spot on which the Japanese surrendered to the allied forces to formally end the Second World War.

Another ship that's open to visit was the World War II era submarine Bowfin ... a very interesting display that is NOT for the claustrophobic.

There were other locations we visited in the full-day tour, one of which was the Pacific Aviation Museum. 

It was interesting and well laid-out, but a bit of a letdown for those of us who have regular access to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and its Udvar-Hazy Annex here in the nation's capital. One of the most interesting displays was a Japanese "Zero" fighter, displayed with the markings of the force that attacked Pearl Harbor.

We finished the day with a bus tour around the Honolulu area, seeing many of the sights, if only briefly. As fans of "Hawaii Five-O" (both the original and the new series), we were delighted to see the statue of Hawaiian king Kamehameha that appears in every episode ...

And that was our whirlwind visit to Honolulu, a place we definitely want to visit again ... although the traffic is hideous. I think we'll just surf from place to place.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we visit the actual island of Hawaii and see real volcanoes.

Bilbo

Musical Sunday

I'm in the mood for some apocalyptic music - how about a little Uriah Heep?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when the vacation highlights posts return.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Welcome to Cartoon Saturday or, as some would call it, "wire-tapping."

Mr Trump accused the Obama administration of wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, and has tried to walk back the accusation in view of the total lack of evidence*; the Trump administration has issued its proposed budget, which guts virtually every part of government except defense, homeland security, and veterans' affairs; Secretary of State* Rex Tillerson, on a trip to Asia, says that US "strategic patience" with North Korea has been exhausted, and military options are on the table; Israel has attacked targets inside Syria, and the Syrians claim to have shot down an Israeli aircraft - an allegation Israel denies; German Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited Washington, after Mr Trump used her and her policies as a punching bag during the presidential campaign; and a New York City emergency medical technician was killed Thursday when a man stole the ambulance she was driving, then ran her over.

As the Trump administration continues with its policy of outright lies, exaggerations, denial of facts, and general craziness, I thought a collection of obliquely topical cartoons might be appropriate ...

What's left of the State Department approves this message ...

Okay, this one's not political. But it's cute ...

Talent contests in the Trump era ...

This cartoon has been in my collection for decades and it never seems to go out of style, particularly in the era of #resist ...

The rest of the world used to look up to us. Now, not so much ...

Okay, here's another non-political one. I surely do wish I'd had this app over the years ...

As far as the GOP is concerned, guns need to be allowed everywhere. Except, of course, in the halls of Congress, at the Republican national convention, and in similar venues. Imagine that ...

Perhaps Mr Trump would be happier here. I know I'd be happier if he were there ...

There's a reason why a lot of people still support Mr Trump ...

Conan and Mr Trump use the same approach to the media ...

And that's it for this week's Cartoon Saturday. I hope you enjoyed it.

Here in NoVa, the past week's snowstorm is gradually melting away, and is being replaced with rain and slowly rising temperatures. I'd like to be able to work in the yard, but I think it'll be a week or two before I can start facing up to that challenge. In the meantime, I'll just concentrate on other important things like housecleaning and minor repairs. Ugh.

Have a good day, and come back tomorrow for Musical Sunday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* Of course, that means nothing to those who worship the quicksand he walks on.

**  The State Department ... you know, the one responsible for managing our relations with the rest of the world ... the one that the Administration wants to slash by nearly a third? Yes, that one.