Let the Islands Come To You ... Cruise Journal

You can go to the islands, or you can let the islands come to you. In November of 1970, I went to the islands. This year was my chance to try letting the islands come to me and I rather liked it. You go back to the ship in the evening, have a nice leisurely dinner, go see a show, wander into the lounge to catch at least part of the party, then you go to bed. In the morning when you wake up, there’s another island arriving in front of your floating hotel. How cool is that?!

But a decent trip review has to start with basic flight information, so here goes (with periodic thanks to CruiseCritic posters who gave me sound advice to make things go smoother). There was just the two of us, me and my 14-yr old daughter. We flew Continental, and the first leg was from Cleveland to Houston. That involved enlisting the services of a saintly neighbor who got up early enough to get us to the airport at 4:00 a.m. We were both too excited to be tired, but would be paying the price for that before the long day was over. We breezed through check-in and wandered the relatively deserted concourses until they boarded our 6:00 a.m. flight. It was a smooth flight and they even included breakfast en route (cereal and milk). We got into Houston a bit early and wandered the concourses waiting for our next flight. It was an hour late, so we ended up with a lay-over of over 4 hours. That short night was starting to take its toll by the time we boarded. But our non-stop to Honolulu was a very nice 767. There was a packaged blanket and pillow on every seat and a TV in the back of every headrest. We had a choice of several stations, including a few movies, some music stations and 10 video games. They also served 2 meals en route. It wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but those people that write those nasty reviews complaining about cruise ship food ought to consider what they got served on their pre-cruise flight. It was edible, but hardly memorable. The first meal was served about an hour and a half after we left Houston. The second meal was served about an hour before we landed in Honolulu. It was a nine-hour flight. Do the math. I was ready to eat the seat cover in front of me (but the lady in that seat would probably have been annoyed).

But nothing can compare to the excitement we felt when we landed in Hawaii. I had booked this trip on a whim, not really sure it was going to be possible to take it. And I hadn’t told my DD about it until the night before we left. Frankly we were both amazed to find ourselves in Hawaii. En route to baggage claim, we stopped at a kiosk and bought leis for each other and had a little “aloha” ceremony before we proceeded to claim our bags. Roberts Shuttle was easy to find (Thank you CCers) and I paid $15/ea for round trip transfers. Within 20 minutes of reaching the bus, they were loaded and we headed for Waikiki. Ours was the first stop – the Hilton Hawaiian Village for 3 nights pre-cruise. We left our bags with the bell service at the taxi drop-off area and proceeded to check-in. My recent membership in the Hilton HHonors program (Thank you CCers!) qualified me for the line with nobody in it. So check-in was quick and we were in our room in short order – Tapa Tower, ocean view, 20th floor. Within 20 minutes, our bags arrived and we could begin to relax. The view was amazing. I probably shot a dozen photos from the balcony before we headed off to wander the grounds a bit prior to going to dinner.

We walked to the Kobe Steak House right around the corner. I had decided that I would go to a Japanese steak house in Honolulu, rather than try the one on the ship. On board you have already paid for your meal, so a $25/pp surcharge seemed pretty steep to me. We had a wonderful meal at Kobe. Since I had the entertainment book, the bill ran under $50, including 2 drinks and tip. The chef put on a good show, including some bits I’d never seen before. He really did a good job of playing to the little boy that was in the other party at our table.

We called it an early night and went to bed when the sun went down.

Thursday

The next morning, we were up very early, so we headed for breakfast at the Wailana Coffee House. (Thank you, CCers!) Good meal with prompt, friendly service at a decent price. I got the 5.75 special and DD went for the steak and eggs (9.25). Then we headed back to change into swim suits to hit the beach. I had heard plenty of stories about crowded conditions on Waikiki Beach, so I was a bit confused as to where all the people were when we got there. I would later discover that (a) the beach is much more crowded on the weekend and (b) the beach is wider at the HHV and the Hale Koa next door. In the middle of Waikiki, the beach is much narrower, so it takes fewer people to make it crowded.

We wandered down the beach to get the lay of the land and decided to try those aqua cycles at Prime Time Sports behind the Hale Koa. It was great fun. We were out there for about a half hour and it cost $15. Next I went to sign up DD for surfing lessons. Prime Time charged $45 for a shared lesson. She was the first one signed up for the 11:30 slot, but by the time it rolled around, they had filled all 6 slots. They have a very professional organization and before they allow the students in the water, they take great care to make sure students know how to get up, get back down, and how to stop the board. I paid an extra $20 for one of the teachers to tow her out and back. (I did those lessons in 1970 and I knew how tiring that paddling can be.) I watched them paddle out to a spot behind the Royal Hawaiian, but from the shore you really couldn’t tell who was who. So I went to Subway and got myself a sandwich to wait for her return. When they came back, she was so pumped. She is an instant surfer now. She did very well and she has the pictures to prove it. In what has got to be one of the most enterprising moves, these guys station a photographer on a surfboard in that surf and he photographs the students going by. They are instructed to ignore the guy, since he will supposedly get out of their way. The end result was 50 incredible up-close shots that they burn on CD and you get for $24. Well worth it to me!

We headed back to the HHV for some lunch for DD and then spent some time first in the Super Pool and then in the Tapa Pool. If you use either of these pools, use the stairways for entry and exit. Slipping in from the side wouldn’t be recommended. I thought the charming stone edges were rather rough and would lead to some painful scrapes. We ended the day by wandering down to Waikiki Central for some window shopping at the International Marketplace. Of course, DD saw something she had to have! So we were lugging bags by the time we went for some dinner. Then it was back to the HHV for another early night.

Friday

We went to the Wialana Coffee House again for breakfast. You just can’t beat the value. Then we headed for Pearl Harbor. There was a long line when we arrived at 7:30 and there was a fine mist falling. The line moves steadily, but it’s a slow go, especially when you are getting a bit wet. We finally got under cover and received tickets at 8:10 for Tour 7. That meant a one-hour wait. DD found a spot to sit and I squeezed through the small, rather crowded museum. I found it very impressive. I hadn’t been able to do this on my last trip to Hawaii and it was on my list of top five things to do this time. I knew quite a bit about the attack; it was the subject of my 11th grade research paper. I may have forgotten a lot of details since I wrote that paper 50 years ago, but the impact the event had on me has never gone away. It was sobering to be there finally after all those years. That event changed the lives of nearly everyone in this nation and it was a powerful experience to visit the site. There were no surprises for me in the movie. I knew the history so well. The launch that took us to the memorial was a relatively quiet ride. I handled the whole thing pretty well till I was standing in front of that wall with all those names. I mourned for the families of all those young people who never came home again after that day.

But you break away and take a deep breath and walk out into the sunshine (which had finally come out) and you re-board the launch to return to the dock.

Once the launch docked to drop us off and everyone stood up, I realized that the young man sitting next to my DD had a bright orange T-Shirt that proclaimed “Cleveland – a drinking town with a football problem”. (If nothing else, we Clevelanders can generally laugh at ourselves.) So I had to stop him and greet a fellow Clevelander. He was visiting his mother who had transferred to Hawaii for her place of work. In one of those amazing coincidences, I found she used to work with my adult DD back home and they knew each other. Small world. They headed off to visit the Missouri and we headed back to Waikiki for lunch.

Special note to those with coin collectors on your Christmas List: They offer some very striking commemorative coins in the gift shop.

We had lunch at The Shorebird. It offered a nice buffet and a salad bar, although for $1.00 extra we could have had a better salad bar at Duke’s. We returned to the HHV in time for hula lessons. This event was well attended. The early arrivals got handed grass skirts to tie around their waist. I hung back till all the skirts had been dispensed, so I got to skip that little touch. I might have been interested in years past, but mother nature has not been kind to me in recent years and I would have looked like a pillow tied around the middle. We had a one-hour class taught by a lovely Hawaiian lady who didn’t seem to be enjoying the hour. I suspect other things were on her mind, but she would have been breathtakingly beautiful if she had managed to smile. The students all managed to have great fun, despite our solemn teacher and the sprinkling of husbands and boyfriends in the peanut gallery gave appropriate encouragement.

We decided to finish the afternoon on the beach playing in the surf. Now I know that people who have never seen the Great Lakes are under the impression that we Midwesterners don’t get to see much surf. The fact is that I have always lived in this area and have never seen Lake Erie when the surf wasn’t rolling in. The difference is that when we get as much surf as Waikiki gets on a normal day, they post small craft warnings, they close the beaches and the Coast Guard puts extra personnel on overtime. In Waikiki, folks sit with cool drinks in rented beach chairs under rented umbrellas and send their 4-year-olds to the ocean’s edge to get thrown around by mother nature.

Fun Fact: All that sand on Waikiki Beach isn’t naturally deposited there by the ocean. They periodically bring in sand to replenish the vanishing beach. (Source: Hostess at Duke’s Canoe Club)

I don’t know if the tide was coming in that afternoon, but I do know that the surf was a blast. We tried sitting on the sand and the surf would slam into you, spin you around, roll you over, or push you back. If you tried to scoot back to the starting position, the next wave slammed you before you could make it. Then if you resisted being dragged back into the ocean, the returning wave busily dragged back all the sand around you, leaving you in a bit of a hole. It also deposited a considerable quantity of that sand into every portion of your bathing suit. We slipped out to the deeper water from time to time to try and rinse out those sandy deposits. We had so much fun that afternoon. When it was time to finally call it quits we stopped at the fresh water shower on the beach to rinse off the grains of sand still clinging to our legs. This didn’t begin to address the issue of the amount of sand still in our suits. So we headed up to our room to shower.

I have to believe that all the major hotels have to keep a roto-rooter guy on staff. As we showered, it was clear that we had hauled several pounds of sand from the beach, which subsequently rinsed down the drain (and you thought the sand the authorities haul in was to replace the stuff washed out to sea by natural erosion).

Properly cleaned up, it was now time to go sample Duke’s Hula Pie. We walked down the beach and waited only about 15 minutes before they seated us at Duke’s Canoe Club. We told the waiter that we wanted to order only one dinner since we’d been warned that the hula pie was big and we had to have hula pie. While we waited for the main course, my DD had a couple pieces of bread while I did the salad bar. Our waiter was an absolute prince. They split the dinner in the kitchen and brought us out two beautifully presented plates that each had half the meat, but I suspect the full order of fries. The meal was wonderful. And afterward, they brought us a piece of that famous hula pie. It was to die for (Thank you CCers!). What a wonderful way to end our pre-cruise stay in Waikiki!

Final note: when our waiter came to clear the dinner plates, we quickly snagged those lovely orchids from the plates to take them back to our room and we noted to him that only the ladies must do that sort of thing. He told us that the guys just eat the orchids. We thought he was kidding and he assured us that the orchids are edible. I’m not including this in my fun facts. I still don’t believe it. You guys don’t really eat those, do you?

We headed back to the HHV and arrived shortly before the evening show at the pool. I had decided earlier that day that I wasn’t going to pay for pool-side seating. They wanted $20 each and if it was rained out (weather had been iffy all day) they simply issue you credit to use on the grounds during your stay. Since we were checking out the next morning, this wasn’t an attractive option. So we tried to find a good spot to see the show. There were a few, but they were crowded and it was too hot to stand around, so we returned to our room. We got to see some of the fireworks from there, but the hotel obscured part of the view. However, it wasn’t on the priority list of things to do, so it was no great loss.

Please post some more! I am getting some awesome ideas for our time in Waikiki.

The operative motto here is “Don’t mess with success.” So we headed back to Wailana Coffee House for breakfast again. This afforded us the opportunity to take another round of pictures of the sculptures at the entrance to the HHV. If you get the opportunity to walk past these sculptures, do yourself a favor and stop to read the plaque that gives the story of each figure. Experiencing Hawaii goes beyond hanging out at a few beaches and attending a luau. Hawaiians are a proud and intriguing culture who revere the land and respect the forces that created it. You will glimpse an indication of that in the facial expressions of each of the three figures here. Take the time to stroll the gardens of the HHV and you will find similar sculptures – each of which has its own story. After breakfast we headed back to the room to finish closing up our suitcases.

I had been looking down at the wedding chapel from my hotel balcony and I suggested we walk over there to see if they would let us peak inside. They did better than that. A very gracious young lady took us on a tour. It is incredibly beautiful inside. They were getting ready for a wedding within the next half hour, so there were plenty of fresh flowers to enhance the elegance of the chapel. The view of the big windows behind the altar was breathtaking. We thanked our tour guide and slipped out just as the bride and groom were coming down the path. Given how close we timed it, I’m really surprised they accommodated us.

There are electronic check-in kiosks at the HHV that can also be used for check-out (although the signage is not clear about that at all of them). If you use them, check the bill it outputs very closely. They had tacked on $24/day for parking. I had to head to Registration to go through the process of having the bill modified. The first attempt at modification subtracted the charge and put it right back, so check the modification bill as well. The second attempt was acceptable, but I await with anticipation my credit card statement to see what kind of charges and credits it will display.

We had arranged for a noon shuttle with the concierge and it arrived on schedule. We were put in the van with a family that was heading back to the airport after a family wedding. Interesting enough, the honeymooners were to be on our ship. We were given their names in case we stumbled across them, but we never did. I soon lost interest in the conversation the moment I spotted the ship. This is always an exciting moment for me. Maybe if I cruised more often that once every two years, I would get jaded. But it is still a big deal. The ship is so big and so striking. There is always this electric charge that goes through me as I revel in the moment that I have pulled it off again and we’re about to embark on an incredible vacation on one of these floating hotels.

The van driver dropped us off and went on his way. We turned to survey the scene and determine where we were to go. This isn’t a really slick passenger terminal like some I’ve seen, but it serves the purpose well enough. There are enough NCL folks on hand to point you in the right direction as you move from point to point. The Latitudes cruisers really speed through, but they were a very small percentage of the cruising population. It took about an hour to get on board. The worst moment was shortly before I got to the actual check-in and I read the sign that very clearly states they are expecting you to have a passport. My heart started thumping, because I hadn’t expected to need it and it was back in Ohio. But they happily accepted my driver’s license and I could relax again.

We proceeded up the escalator to the gang way. There is a moment when you can get a picture just before stepping onto the gang way and I highly recommend it. You get that great graphic along the ship’s side as a backdrop. I think NCL does such a great job of setting the mood for fun just by how gaily their ships are painted.

Then we boarded and somebody handed me a glass of champagne to celebrate the moment. The champagne thing is kind of nice, but you’re rather encumbered by the carry-ons, so it looses a little bit of the impact of the moment. We stepped over to the table (right by the stairs) where they were selling the drink stickers. I asked about the Teen Drink Pass and she reached under the table and produced them. This turned out to be one of the best deals going (Thank you CCers), but you will have to ask them about it. They don’t really push it.

Then we headed to the Skyline Dining Room and had a very nice leisurely lunch. (Thank you, CCers) We were seated by the window so we were able to look out on the harbor and watch the activity. This was the nicest environment I’ve ever had for that luncheon on boarding day. The buffet is such a free-for-all with stressed folks hauling carry-ons and jockeying for available tables. I am amazed more people don’t take advantage of this. There were only a few dozen people in the dining room.

By the time we left the dining room, they were starting to call the decks that were ready for occupation. Ours was Deck 8 and they called it at 2:20, so we went to our cabin to check it out and dump off our carry-ons. I love the bright colors that greeted us when we opened the door. Yes, it was a bit smaller than I’d had on my last cruise, but it served our purposes very well.

We left our carry-ons and headed off to explore. The teen lounge was on the list of things to check out. My DD was terribly intrigued by it and very impressed by the schedule of activities for the week, but in the end, she never participated. We were too busy doing things together.

We wandered along the pool deck and then went to see the lounge and the theater. We stopped in each stairwell to check out the plaque identifying the mural on each landing. By the middle of the week, we were making a game of trying to see if we could remember all of the American landmarks displayed in those stairwells.

Finally we headed back to our cabin and found that our suitcases had arrived. NCL gets the applause here for the fastest delivery of luggage to cabin that I have ever experienced. We began to unpack. For those who are wondering about hangers, I can verify that we had 18. DD made it clear that half of them were hers and I had to try and double-up with my stuff. I did bring post-its (Thank you CCers) and I left one on the TV asking for more hangers. I never did get them. The other post-it note asked for the mini-frig to be emptied, and that one happened.

They announced that muster drill was at 4:30, so we headed down there at 4:20. Some folks take this thing far too literally. They don those bright orange horse collars in their stateroom and attempt to negotiate the stairwells wearing them. “Junior, watch where you’re going!” “I can’t mama. I can’t see my feet.” At your muster station, the staff is going to tell you how to put these things on. They live for this moment. Would you deprive them? We got dutifully checked off, joked with the other passengers about how charming we all looked and then they dismissed us to let the fun begin. One welcome surprise here was that the photographer was nowhere in sight. On RCI, they are happily posing families together and snapping hundreds of professional pictures. Does anybody really want a picture of themselves on a cruise ship in a life preserver?

My DD was itching to get into the pool so we changed into swimsuits and headed for the pool deck. We swam for about an hour, but I can’t say I cared too much for the pool. I felt like I was climbing down into a pit. I don’t know if this type of design is typical of NCL ships. It probably allows for more space for deck chairs, but it felt terribly confining to me. I didn’t spend much time in the pool.

I abandoned my DD and went down to shower and change. When I came back with my embroidery, the hula dancers were entertaining the passengers on the pool deck. They do 2 shows -- each one lasts 45 minutes and they are outstanding. Don’t miss this event. What a wonderful way to prepare for sail-away in Hawaii. I snapped a couple of pictures with my blackberry and emailed them to family and co-workers (Guess what I’m doing right now!).

We had eaten a relatively late lunch, so we decided that catching sail-away was more important than dinner. We grabbed a snack in the Aloha Buffet and got our unpacking out of the way. By 8:00 p.m., we were up on Deck 12 as the ship’s horn blew and they cast off the lines. The ship began to move away from the dock and we were underway!

I have never done a sail-away at night and it was incredibly beautiful. All of Honolulu is lit up and your vantage point from the upper decks is pretty amazing. The ship slips out of Honolulu harbor and glides past Waikiki beach. I wondered if the ship looks as magical from shore as the shore looks to those of us on the ship.

We finally decided that an evening snack was in order so we went back to the Aloha Buffet to see what was available. I discovered the crepe station I had heard about. I have never had someone make me a crepe while I watched and waited. It’s really pretty cool. Check it out if you get a chance. We got there just before closing (actually I think they were open a bit past the 9:00 p.m. advertised closing time) and there was no rush and bustle. By that time, we appreciated the chance to gear down.

After we rounded Diamond Head, my DD and I went down to our cabin to settle into our balcony chairs and watch the southeastern coast slide by. Hillside communities were all lit up and it looked like a giant had dumped over a bucket of twinkling diamonds. The lights spilled down the hillside. We were mesmerized by how pretty it was. If you are lucky enough to have a port-side balcony cabin, this is one of the hidden treasures you can experience.

Surprisingly, it was my DD who suggested we turn in early, so we didn’t go to the evening show. Frankly, we were still adjusting to the time change.

Your review is a pleasure to read...I look forward to the next installment!

After reading about leaving the Honolulu port I am very excited that we booked a port-side balcony cabin!

I was the first one up (this is going to be a recurring theme) and I stepped out on the balcony to watch the approaching island. The pictures I tried were still a bit premature, since it was only a mound in the sea. I went up to the buffet to get something to drink and wandered the upper decks, just enjoying the experience of being on the sea again.

There were a few other early risers wandering the decks as well, and in the gym I passed, the physically fit were attacking the exercise machines with enthusiasm.

As Maui approaches, you can clearly make out the two separate mountains that the island is formed from. The northern mountain is unmistakenly much more rugged than Haleakala. Even at that early hour, much of Haleakala was encircled in cloud. I stood there studying it and wondering how many hardy souls had gone up the mountain that morning for the sunrise. I eventually returned to the cabin and went out on the balcony to enjoy a quiet morning with my embroidery. It wasn’t long before my balcony neighbors emerged to see what the horizon held in store.

Cruise ship passengers don’t meet in the halls. They do so hanging over the balcony. If you are trying to decide if you want to spring for the balcony or not, you might want to take into consideration that you severely cut down on your social opportunities if you are in an inside cabin. In my case, I discovered that in the weeks shortly after I booked my cabin, 17 other Ohioans took a fancy to the same location. They had booked on either side of me. We had a number of chats during the week hanging over the balcony.

My DD finally dragged herself out of bed about the time we were coming into the port. So we went up to the buffet for breakfast. The folks who had booked excursions were assembling in the theater and many of those who had rented cars were bolting the rest of their breakfast to be among the first to disembark. My DD and I had a nice leisurely breakfast and then headed down to the lounge for hula class. We would be exploring the island shortly in the rental car I’d reserved, but that was no reason to skip sampling some of the included activities our cruise fare had paid for (note: I did not say ‘free’).

There were a couple dozen females and one intrepid man who showed up for hula class, which was to be the first of many. The Hawaiian Ambassador (China) is a lovely lady who always had a smile on her face. She stepped us through a couple of hulas and it was a wonderful, relaxing experience. Every movement has meaning and she enjoyed sharing her island heritage with us as she taught us the movements. Nearly everything she said was first said in Hawaiian and then followed by the English translation. She made constant reference to showcasing us all on Friday for our graduation and putting us on NCLTV. She then enthused about how she always loved to showcase the men in particular. Our lone male was a guy named Troy … we never saw Troy again.

After class, my DD and I collected what we felt we needed for the day and headed to find the rental car shuttle. As we got off the ship and approached the terminal building we spotted the inevitable ship’s photographer with a couple of furry characters they wanted passengers to pose with. In a vain attempt to try and dissuade them, I pulled my Royal Caribbean hat out of my backpack and put it on. I netted a dirty look from the lady with the camera, but they still lined me up for the shot. I will wonder to my dying day if they actually posted that picture in the hall with all the others.

We had rented from Thrifty and it was a smooth and quick operation, especially since I had registered with the Blue Chip program (Thank you CCers). I assigned the navigation duties to my 14-yr-old and off we went. The plan for the morning was to drive up Haleakala. This was my second ascent of the mountain. 38 yrs ago, my DH did the driving and I got to enjoy the view. I clearly remembered that the locals hadn’t bothered to limit the view by doing anything constricting like installing guard rails. While my DD tried to make some sense out of the map, I turned the car in the direction of the clearly visible mountain and followed the road signs that said Haleakala.

The drive up Haleakala takes you through some of the most varied landscapes I have ever experienced in such a limited period of time. You find yourself passing abundant flowering shrubs, and then gigantic cactus. At 2500 feet, the road winds through a cattle ranch landscape set on gently rolling foothills. Then at about 6500 feet, you plunge into a pine forest and wonder if you’re in the great Northwest. Soon the vegetation thins and the only sizeable trees are snuggled into mountain crevices. Keep a sharp lookout for the silversword plants that grow nowhere else in the world. You’ll start to see them as you near the summit.

As for those missing guard rails … it was just as unsettling as I remembered it to be. Only this time I was behind the wheel. The road twists and turns, offering some rather scary drop-offs that generally tended to be on the side of the road that affected the cars going up. Down the center of the road were the rather new reflectors that highway designers have imbedded in the asphalt. I was keenly aware of these reflectors, since I was shunning the edge of the road and we were treated to the constant whump-whump-whump of hundreds of these things as I ran over them. I kept watching the other side of the road to assure I moved back over to my side whenever anyone came down. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic headed down as yet … except for the periodic group of cyclers (followed by their nanny in a van).

Before we reached the actual park entrance, there were even a number of places where there were puffy little clouds sitting on the hillsides on either side of us, even though the roadway itself was clear. Once we actually got into the park, we found that the National Park Service believed in guard rails. This was a welcome addition to the drive. We stopped at the nearby Park Headquarters Visitors Center, but there wasn’t much to see there. A couple of the world’s most photographed nene (pronounced nay-nay) were posing at the edge of the parking lot, so we obliged them and took a few pictures ourselves. Then we headed for the visitor’s center that overlooks the crater. There are actually two visitor centers near the top. The first one houses a small gift shop and offers incredible views of the crater. There was a ranger on hand to describe what we were looking at. The colors on the crater floor are brilliant. Each of them represents a different lava flow, made up of different kinds of minerals in the rock. He described how the two breaks in the walls of the initial crater had occurred over time and allowed immense flows of molten rock to escape into the valleys below. Although clouds were gathered at the edge of the crater, the view was clear and crisp. All too often, your camera doesn’t capture all the color you remember, but I’m pretty happy with the shots I got that day.

We then went on to the little visitors center at the 10,000 foot elevation. This was nothing more than an enclosed shelter with a very wet floor. The ranger on duty explained that a storm earlier this year had damaged the roof and they were having an awful time getting a contractor to come up and bid on fixing it (go figure). Actually, I should think some enterprising roofer should snap up the opportunity to be able to emblazon his trucks with the boast that “We’re the guys who topped Haleakala!”

We learned a great deal from that ranger. He told us about the silversword and why it is so difficult to protect it. Goats have been introduced to the island, and the park service has to employ folks to just try and remove goats that want to feast on the plants. The plant has a rather long tap root, but the root has to run parallel to the surface, since the rock is too hard for it to grow down. Consequently, the weight of people walking on the loose rocky soil near the plant inadvertently cause the sharp rocks to sever the root. And the plant dies. He said the plant grows for 10 to 50 years before it actually blooms. It blooms spectacularly … but just that once – and then it dies. There are plants near the parking area (stay on the sidewalks so you don’t kill them) and you can reach out and feel them. They are surprisingly soft.

He also told us about the pine forest we’d driven through. Early in the 1900s, an enterprising fellow decided to introduce 86 varieties of trees to Maui. Only 13 survived. Among them were what I believe are the same lodgepole pines you’d see in Yellowstone.

And you probably heard that the islands formed over a hot spot where molten lava pours up out of the earth’s core, with Kuaii being the oldest island. The logical conclusion is that the hot spot has been slowly moving south. Actually, it’s the other way around. Hot spots don’t move. The islands are moving in a northwestern direction about 4 inches a year. That means they moved about 10 feet since I was last there. The ranger advised us that if we hang around long enough, we’ll get a free trip to Russia.

Fun Fact: The air is so dry that in the chill of the early morning, moisture gets sucked from the rock and icicles form standing straight up. (No kidding! He showed us pictures of them.)

It’s a good thing we found the visit with the ranger so worthwhile. There was certainly nothing to see from up there. In the short time it had taken us to drive up there, the clouds had rolled in and the crater floor could no longer be seen.

We headed back to the car for the return trip down the mountain. I found this less intimidating. The drop-offs were mostly on the other side of the road. I just had to be on the lookout for someone headed up who was hugging that center line, like I’d done.

In short order we hit relatively level ground and stopped at the first fast food place we saw for a quick bite to eat to kill the hunger pains. We didn’t want to do a big lunch since we were booked at the Old Lahaina Luau and that was only three hours later by this time. DD hadn’t brought her desired change of clothes for this event so we had two options … go back to the ship, or go shopping. Since we didn’t have one of those guy-type people in our party, shopping won. We headed for the Lahaina Cannery Mall that I’d downloaded info about. It was supposed to be in close proximity to the OLL, so it was a logical choice.

Lahaina was another trip back in time for me. I’d been there 38 years earlier when it was a sleepy backwater boasting only the whaling ship/museum to make it worth the stop to see anything in the town. I frankly didn’t remember how dramatic the scenery was as the road slices through parts of the mountain as you head toward town. That was a real treat. Lahaina, however, was a shock. Sometimes you shouldn’t go back in time. This was one of them. If that museum is still there you can’t see it for the honky-tonk atmosphere that pervades the strip of town that fronts the ocean. There will be hoards of people who will find Lahaina to their liking, so don’t let me dissuade you. It just wasn’t for me anymore.

On the other hand, we found the Cannery Mall without too much trouble and I can recommend this place. I love venues that have managed to find new uses for old structures. It’s intriguing to me to wander through it and try to determine what was original and what was added for the new purpose. I found it light and airy and fun. My printouts hadn’t given me a clue what they used to can there, but based on the architecture, it had to have been pineapple. You really didn’t realize some of the tiles were a salute to the pineapple industry until you paused to study the columns holding the roof. Then you were able to trace the predominant theme. Actually it was rather fun. DD found a dress and shoes to suit her sense of style and we were all set for the evening.

OLL was right across the street from the Cannery Mall and we parked there mid-afternoon and returned to the Mall to wile away the remaining 2 hours and relax. I was focused at this point on getting a good parking place and backing into it so I could maximize the efficiency with which I could get out of there after the luau and be one of the first folks headed back to the ship. I had read enough tips to know that parking at the pier was likely to be an issue that night, so I didn’t want to be driving around after dark trying to figure out what to do with the car.

When you arrive at the luau, they escort you to your seat, pausing along the way to give you a festive drink and a fresh flower lei. DD was delighted to find that I had booked the traditional mat seating right in front. It worked out very well, although I found it a challenge getting my long legs under that table without intruding on the space of the guy on the other side (sitting Indian-style at my age is not an option). Fortunately, I took the end spot so I could cheat and stick my legs into the aisle. Although after sitting a bit, we got up to wander the grounds to get a chance to experience the crafts being displayed.

Among the things you can try out are some simple dance patterns with Pu’ili sticks (split bamboo sticks). Having seen the dancers at sail-away with these, DD and I couldn’t resist giving them a try. It was great fun.

I was particularly intrigued by the woman beating tapa to make cloth. I can’t imagine the patience involved with doing that for hours to flatten and spread the cloth fiber enough to make a garment. I’m still finding it hard to believe that an organic material beaten like that can be as durable and survive the span of years they attest to.

Then, of course there is the imu ceremony. I’d seen this years before at the Royal Hawaiian luau, but at the OLL they go to great lengths to explain the process and make certain that those in the back can have a chance to see what is going on as well. It is extremely well done. However, having seen the whole thing, my DD refused to eat any pig.

The drinks are included and there are a number of wonderful fruity offerings to pick from. Since I would be driving back, I opted for the virgin drinks and my favorite was the Honey Girl.

We returned to the table to find that our tablemates had arrived. We got to know each other and had a very enjoyable evening together. When it was time to go up to the buffet, our waiter appeared to give us a run-down on what the offerings were. All the traditional luau food was there, but they also added additional items that were more likely to be familiar to the palette of us haole. If you go, don’t pass up the glazed chicken. It was a favorite of everyone at our table. As you are finishing up, they set a plate of marvelous desserts on your table. My DD tried the chocolate-covered passion fruit and was in heaven. I’m not sure how many she sampled, but there were certainly none left on the plate when we stood up to leave – and she pointed out the plate at the next table where the occupants had lacked the discernment to realize what a treasure they were ignoring. She will probably be telling her grandchildren about it someday.

I’ve read plenty of reviews where people note that they go to the luau for the entertainment, but don’t really enjoy the food. Our experience was quite different. The food was outstanding and the entertainment also surpassed our expectations.

I wonder if the early hula dancers were as choreographed as today’s professional hula dancers are. What we saw was certainly a very polished performance. The costumes were bright and colorful. The dancers were very expressive – from hand and foot movements to facial expressions. Each of the movements tells part of the story and it is enchanting to watch it all unfold. Typically we think of hula as a woman’s dance, but clearly the men contribute their own style to their dances as well. The high energy and well coordinated movements draw you into the emotion of the dance. I can’t imagine that anyone walked away after that evening and considered it a ho-hum experience.

All too soon it was over and we were among the first people to slip away, with the focus being to assure a parking spot on the pier. We slipped into the car and benefited nicely from my parking strategy. In moments we were on the road. However, I hadn’t had enough forethought to do the preplanning necessary to map out my return to the main road. I just blindly headed in the general direction of the main road and had to navigate through a piece of central Lahaina. The wandering party-goers didn’t change my earlier impression to the fact that the years had not been kind to Lahaina. It is really just a mis-matched collection of bars and souvenir shops. I couldn’t get through it fast enough to suit me.

We were soon on our way to the other side of the island for what was a smooth and relatively brief trip. I mused about how really small this island is. There are likely those who rarely leave this island. What a sharp contrast to the world where I live. I can drive 60 mph for 4 hours and not leave the state. They can’t do that for 30 minutes. Same country – different worlds. Not necessarily better or worse – just different.

Without really being sure of which roads to take, I managed to make the right turns as I came into town and found the pier without any problem. I had expected this to be relatively easy, given that when in port, the ship is the highest man-made structure in town. The reality is that as you get close, you lose sight of it due to the surrounding structures. But we pulled up to the gate at the pier and turned left into the tiny parking lot to see if there was any parking. I had heard this lot was small, but I hadn’t heard how user-nasty it was. Cars were parked helter-skelter like some nearby disaster had occurred and people had abandoned their cars in panic and ran. Did someone really paint lines that these cars arranged themselves into? If there was a highway planner involved in laying out this lot, he had a wicked sense of humor. I couldn’t imagine leaving the car I was responsible for in this place. I carefully eased my way through and headed for the seawall. This was a nice wide stretch with sensible head-in parking. Easy-in, easy-out and room for just over 50 cars (for the record I counted somewhere between 35 and 40 spaces in the other lot). Despite the late hour I returned to the area, there were still about 10 spaces left. We parked, pulled our stuff out of the car and headed back to our floating palace to call it a night.

Having checked out the Cruise Daily the evening before, we had scheduled another late start to our day. The driving factor was hula class and DD rated that pretty high on the priority list. I let her sleep in while I worked on my embroidery on the balcony and watched the activity on the loading docks below. Those guys apparently start to work at 7:00 so they were likely to rouse anyone who was sleeping in late. But I didn’t see much indication that people were interested in sleeping late. There was so much to do.

Once DD was up we went to the buffet again for breakfast. I discovered that there were multiple stations for made-to-order omelets, so one rarely had to wait very long for one of them. I also found that the sticky buns were available inside, but not outside, so if you like that sort of thing, you may want to snag a few on your way to the aft dining space.

We arrived in the Mardi Gras Lounge in plenty of time for our 9:00 class and chatted with the other arrivals until China showed up. There were some newcomers and some people who had been there before were missing (including Troy). Once again, it was a delightful class and China added a couple of new dances to our repertoire. She announced that she also planned to have us dance at the Kanikapila, which would be held Wednesday evening. She envisioned this as an initial opportunity for the ladies to surprise their husbands with how well they could dance and went on to assure us that it would be filmed and we could see ourselves on NCLTV. I’m not sure how many of us thought this was an exciting opportunity – given that we were all struggling to live up to her expectations of us. But I figured “Who cares?” If I make a complete fool of myself, I’m never going to see these people again, since I had the foresight to have left my friends and family at home. But China is so incredibly charming that nobody voiced any of the doubts I could see in their eyes.

After class we collected our things and headed off for a bit of exploration on the island before we had to turn in the car. Fortunately, at the pier, there were no furry characters accompanied by ship’s photographers. As we passed through the terminal, we stopped to make a quick purchase of hair clips with flowers on them. Every terminal building has a little mini-flea market where local vendors have things for sale. So you really don’t have to go very far if you want to buy something quick to finish off a shopping list for gifts for folks back home.

By this time, few cars were left in either lot. We hopped in our Charger and headed for Io Valley. DD was again studying the maps and trying to determine if I was headed in the right direction. I was ignoring her concerns and driving toward the deep cleft in the mountain that was clearly visible even from the ship. There was only one road into that cleft and it did eventually lead us to Io Valley. This happens to be another place I had visited on my first trip to Hawaii and I had some clear expectations about what we would be seeing here. Life had a couple of surprises for me. To be sure the Io Needle was there. But where was the rock wall with the water oozing out of it. Did the underground spring that pumped water through the porous rock dry up, or did they simply cut off access to it?

The parking area for the Io Needle is pretty limited and you had to wait for someone to leave in order to park. Fortunately, it wasn't too long of a wait. We actually ended up with the first spot (I had to double check and make sure somebody hadn't painted a wheelchair on the pavement). There were a fair amount of trails you could wander about. I believe there were signs advising you to stay on the paved trail, but we opted to follow some other folks who were exploring a dirt path that ran up along the stream. Before very long, we found an enticing spot where it would be very easy to cross to an outcropping of rocks in midstream. I remember thinking about what a great picture spot that would be. Remember what I said about surprises? We got one! One of us (I’m not saying who) slipped and almost fell. No injury involved, but the camera got immersed. So much for the photo opportunity. We stood there adjusting to the loss. All pictures taken to this point would clearly be fine on the memory chip, but the camera was undoubtedly a total loss.

I decided to take to positive approach. I don’t have the skill to be a serious photographer with expensive equipment. At two years old, my $200 Kodak Easy Share camera (6.1 megapixel) had served me well enough. Since I’d seen the Wal-Mart shuttle at the pier, it was clear that it would be an easy matter to replace the camera. All we had to do was find Wal-Mart. We headed back to the car. One of us was pretty wet from the waist down (I’m not saying who), but how big of a deal can it be if we get the seat wet in a rental car. It’ll dry.

I wanted to fit in one more trip down memory lane and stop at the Kapeolani Heritage Gardens. I was sure that was the same charming Japanese garden my DH and I stumbled across when we had visited the island in the 70s. This turned out to be another place I should have left in the past. I actually recognized some of the statuary in the Japanese part of the gardens, but this is clearly an area that they are trying to reclaim. It needs a lot of work yet. It was frankly no loss that the camera was in no shape to take any pictures.

Finding Wal-Mart was a little bit of a challenge. Unlike heading for Haleakala or Io, it’s not sticking several thousand feet up in the air (now wouldn’t that rile up the local zoning committee!). We stopped someone in a parking lot and asked for directions (we don’t have a problem doing that – we’re girls!) and the fellow was very accommodating. He couldn’t remember street names (probably because he couldn’t pronounce them either) but he could give us the appropriate number of traffic lights and where to turn left and right. He even included a few landmarks (like Home Depot) so we’d be sure we were heading in the right direction. We pulled into the parking lot at 12:15 and pulled out at 12:30. That has got to be a record for a camera purchase. I had scored another Kodak Easy Share (8.1 megapixel) for $104. All is right with the world! And so it was time to gas up, return the car and go get some lunch on board.

I was a bit surprised to find that the guy in front of me at the gas station had Texas license plates (and a big sticker in the back window of his pick-up that said “Aloha Y’All”). I wish I was brazen enough to ask him how much it cost him to bring his truck over. I can’t imagine that anyone is so attached to one particular vehicle that they would ship it to Hawaii. But it wasn’t the only out-of-state plate we saw before the trip was over. We also saw Alaska, Maryland, and California.

At any rate, it was time to get the car back and go get some lunch. Drop off at Thrifty was very quick and the shuttle was getting ready to leave for the ship, so we were back in very short order. We headed for the fabled Cadillac Diner. It was time to try out that brownie sundae. We didn’t have to wait long to be seated and we started out with some of our favorite appetizers. I got the potato skins (they served 3, which was just the right amount for me) and DD got the mozzarella cheese sticks (4 of them). Then we ordered lunch. We used the teen drink passes for shakes and those have to be among the best shakes I ever had. She had chocolate and I had strawberry. They make these things with real strawberries … not just drink mix. All around we felt they served great standard American food! We cleaned out plates, but that left us no room for the dessert. We made a mental note to come back another day just for the sundaes.

We’d been keeping an eye on the clock, since we wanted to go to the kukui nut lei craft event in the Mardi Gras at 3:30. We made it in plenty of time and were advised who to see to pick up our “free” kit. I objected privately to the use of the word “free”. It is included with our cruise fare. In any event, this is a very neat craft and the finished product certainly matches what you will see for sale at every port of call. After the class, additional kits are offered for sale and would make a great purchase if you have grandchildren at home you want to buy something for.

Fun Fact: the early Hawaiians strung kukui nuts together because their very rich oil burned well, allowing them used them for light.

My DD rushed through her craft in order to make it up to the pool deck to try out the gyroscope (which had very limited times that it was available). That day there was a 45-minute time slot and she wanted to be sure and get there in time. I finished shortly after her and went up on deck to see if I could get some shots of her being spun around. I arrived just in time and the operators happily obliged my request to hold her upside down for a bit so I could get some pictures. She thought the gyroscope was great fun, but I had absolutely no interest. I love roller coasters and routinely tackle virtually every one that nearby Cedar Point in Ohio has to offer, but I don’t like things that spin you around. She wasn’t off it very long before she decided she needed one more go round. This time I tried out the video (you need to check out all features of new cameras, don’t you) so she gets to amaze and astound friends back home with her experiences whenever she wants.

Then she decided that she needed to go swimming. While she went downstairs to change, I moved closer to the bandstand. As soon as I had arrived on the pool deck, I was impressed with the music they were playing and now I could give this band my full attention. They are just what a pool band should be. Lively and fun, rendering favorite songs credibly well. I wish someone would have alerted me to these guys sooner. I would have reconsidered how I had planned my day to spend more of it on the pool deck. They were a Maui band and they packed up at 4:30 and left the ship. What a loss. Undoubtedly the best poolside entertainment of the entire cruise. If Jimmy Mac and the Kool Cats are on board during your cruise – check them out. The entertainment is “included” in your cruise fare.

When the band completed their show, the NCL staff began to loudly assemble the folks who were going to participate in the Pub Crawl. Given the amount of liquor they were going to down within the next hour, I wonder how many people would still be standing up by dinner time. It was fun to watch them assemble. They were a rowdy bunch, as befits the event they were about to embark on. Just before they set off the NCL folks advised them that their mantra was as follows:

There are good Ships and there are wood Ships and there are Ships that sail the sea.

But the best Ships are Friendships and may they always be.”

With a happy roar of approval, they downed their first drink and moved on to the next pub of call.

It’s amazing how much we packed into the remaining half of our day. My DD emerged from the pool with just enough time to get all cleaned up and into her formal before the 6:30 hula class she wanted to attend. Again there were newcomers and missing faces, but we went through 2 of the dances before we slipped away halfway through the class to make it to the Capitol Atrium for photos with the captain. We don’t seem to have a good track record at managing to slip this event in, so I’m glad we got it right this time. The captain was very charming and the picture turned out very well.

Then we went to the Liberty Dining Room for dinner. We had to wait just over a half hour, but I rather expected that. I’m amazed someone hasn’t started a post to rave about the baby shrimp appetizer. I loved it. As for the main course, I know everyone has the lobster this night, but we had the beef wellington. It was excellent. I thought the portions were a bit small, but in all honesty, how badly do we need to stuff ourselves? They had seated us at the same time as two other 2-tops and the waiter seemed to handle the serving as if it were a table of six. This wasn’t a problem, except that one of the other diners was so busy wandering the dining room talking to other folks that we had all finished before he even started his meal. We had planned on having ice cream for dessert, but after waiting 15 minutes for it … and this guy was still working slowly on his meal, we decided that it wasn’t worth missing the Not-So-Newlywed game for a bowl of ice cream. So we slipped out and hightailed it to the Mardi Gras lounge. I think every cruise line runs a version of this show, and it never fails to be terribly entertaining. Although I have them in my notes, I’m not going to divulge the questions they asked. Let me just issue a word of warning: If you are traveling in a large party that includes virtually all your in-laws – you don’t want to get chosen as a contestant.

For those of you who are concerned about motion sickness, this was one of the two nights when there was a fair amount of motion while we were underway. I never heard anyone say they were actually sick, but there was an awful lot of giggling going on as people tried to walk a straight line going down a hallway … a particular challenge for anyone in high heels. I also wonder how the 56 Pub Crawl participants were doing right about now.

When the show ended in the lounge, virtually everyone stood up en mass and headed for the theater below. The comedian’s show was timed to begin shortly after this one ended and the Mardi Gras show was a great warm up to what would turn out to be a very funny show. One word of warning if Chris Alpine is still the comedian when you sail: If you can’t laugh at yourself, don’t sit in the first few rows. Because before the show is over, the whole room is going to be laughing at you, so you’d better be able to join in. We had the wisdom to sit in the middle of the theater.

If we had any energy left, there were more venues for some evening entertainment when the show ended, but we’d reached our limit.

My pre-cruise planning had involved printing off lots of info from web sites about Hawaii. I had a divided portfolio that separated each day by the pertinent info concerning where we were going and what we might do. I had my hit list of “must-do’s” and a list of optional items so my DD could have some input into the final list of objectives. So as we left the cabin to go ashore each day, I grabbed the pertinent batch of paperwork and handed it to my DD. On this day, she had her own stated objective before we even left the ship. She wanted to see both kinds of lava they’d taught her about in all those classes in science.

We didn’t rush to be off the ship so we managed to miss the initial flux of highly motivated folks who hit the rental car agencies in the first wave. When we arrived at Thrifty there were only two people in the regular line and nobody in Blue Chip. Unfortunately, there was only one counter agent. The family she was initially working with had special requirements, so they took a bit of time, but once they left I figured things would move pretty fast. This was another one of those little surprises in life. The next guy was afflicted by a case of terminal indecision. He couldn’t make up his mind if he was willing to spend the extra $20 and get what he wanted or go the frugal route and be unhappy with the vehicle. He also wasn’t willing to step aside while he pondered the matter. He wanted an audience, so the rental agent just kept patiently repeating the options. Whatever they pay her, she wasn’t paid enough that day. Don’t ask me what he eventually decided; I plugged in my iPod to give me something more pleasant to listen to. When the agent finally turned to us, it was a quick process and we got a pleasant surprise. Not only did we get upgraded to a Durango, it only had 137 miles on it. What a treat! I really liked this vehicle. It was a lot closer to what I drive at home and it was so new I didn’t bother to inspect it for dings – particularly, since it was raining.

As expected, it’s pretty hard to get confused on which way to go coming out of Hilo. We headed off in a pouring rain and hoped the rental car shuttle driver was right when she claimed that when it’s raining in Hilo, it isn’t raining at VNP. As promised, shortly before we reached the park, the rain quit. We entered and headed left to miss the crowds by doing the Crater Rim Drive clockwise (Thank you CCers). The strategy worked and the crowds didn’t catch up with us until we were leaving Thurston Lava Tube.

The Lava Tube is unlike anything else you see in the park. Everything else is craters and steam and harsh landscapes; Thurston is jungle. Take plenty of pictures here. Your co-workers will drool over the lush tropical landscape when you do the office slide show upon your return.

We followed the CC tip and took flashlights for the second part of the tube that is not lit. We even had the initial thrill of realizing that no one else was adequately equipped, so we had the place to ourselves. However, the flashlights I brought were the type of flashlights a woman packs – not the industrial strength he-man floodlights that we probably would have had if a man was calling the shots. Our nice light-weight flashlights barely cut into the gloom. We stood there about 15 feet into the tube peering uncertainly into the dark, waiting for the other one to lead the way. I figured the honor should go to the conqueror of Cedar Point’s Millennium Force and The Pride of America’s Gyroscope. She figured the honor should go to mom. By mutual consent, we both declined the honor, turned off our flashlights and retraced our steps … no harm, no foul.

Crater Rim Driver was closed beyond Devastation Trail due to high levels of sulfur dioxide gas, so we headed down Chain of Craters Road.

The trip down Chain of Craters Road was a random journey of discovery. We stopped at numerous craters and at least three lava fields (all three consisted of rock that was molten matter deep in the Earth's core the last time I was there!). Each lava field was different. DD was delighted to clearly identify the two different types of lava she had studied so many times in school. We marveled at the depth and the size of the many craters we pulled aside to view. In reviewing the pictures I took, you don't really get a sense of the depth until you put a person in the picture or note the size of the trees at the top in relation to the distance from crater rim to floor. The wind whipping across those lava fields can get pretty intense. At one of the wide open stretches, we were parked along side the road and I couldn't get the car door open due to the force of the wind. DD was on the "Leeward" side of the car and she couldn't understand why I was having an issue.

At one point we passed up the gaping opening of a lava tube right by the road. I’d say it was about 3 feet wide and a foot and a half high. We got a good picture of it and I would have liked to shine a light into it to determine how far back you could see … but, of course, that would mean pulling my wimpy flashlights out again …

We found one lava field that we surmise was once a wooded area. It looked like someone had gone around driving telephone poles into the molten rock before it cooled. We surmise that the lava around the trees cooled before the trees burned up, leaving numerous holes about 6-7 inches in diameter that were 1-1/2 to 2 foot deep. You see, that was part of the journey -- trying to imagine how the lava had progressed when it was molten ... what had happened to what was initially in its way. It's like a living laboratory out there with recent activity that illustrates how so much of our world was formed. The few of us who manage to travel to such an incredible place get a chance to appreciate what we were taught all those years ago in school. Of course, on the other hand, you can breeze by there, grumble about all that bleak rock and wonder why the Park Service doesn't bulldoze that stuff out of the way. I wonder if that would have been my dad ... we kids always believed his personal motto was "See America by car ... from the car. And don't stop for anything ... especially if it's on the other side of the road."

I had heard that Hawaiians sometimes leave offerings to Pele on Kilauea, but I hadn’t expected to see any. To my surprise, we came across a bouquet of cut anthuriums in the middle of a lava field. Happenstance? I’ll never know. But I noted them to my DD and we respected the intent that would have been a part of their placement if this were an offering. We left them untouched.

I was initially hoping to go all the way to the ocean, but we wanted to make sure we had enough time for the movie at the visitor’s center and a suitable amount of time at Jagger Museum. So we turned around about halfway and headed back. It began to rain pretty hard by the time we got to Jagger museum (so much for the encouraging words we’d heard from the shuttle driver) and I pulled out the disposable rain ponchos. I got an instant reaction from the 14 yr-old! There was no way my DD would consent to donning “a garbage bag” so I left her to her sense of style and I choose to be dry (and keep that new camera dry in the process). Behind Jagger Museum there are outstanding views into Halema’uma’u, where that incredible vent was still belching vast amounts of steam. Since it was on the other side of the crater, you lost a sense of just how big it is. You had to keep reminding yourself that it is over 100 feet across. With that thought firmly in place, you begin to relate to just how wide that crater below you really is (2530 x 2950 feet!). They had a great set of pictures in the museum showing the development of the steam vent. It is clear that the crater visit is much more dramatic because of the steam vent. How lucky we are that it happened just a few months before our trip. Our initial pictures when we got there were marred by murky cloud cover, but it cleared up in about 15 minutes and we got some very good pictures.

We had brought a light lunch with us from the ship and we ate it in a nearby picnic area overlooking Kilauea. Then on the way back to the visitor’s center, we stopped briefly at the steam vents, but after the vent in Halema’uma’u, these were pretty unimpressive. The visitor’s center, however was a real treat. I expected the movie to be a canned presentation of stuff that had occurred over decades. Instead we got a current events film, including time-lapse photography that detailed the current flow that started in February. The time-lapse segments are not to be missed. You will see exactly how the lava cools and tries to settle. Then a fresh flow comes along, slips under it, lifts it up, and sends it flowing down the hill again.

DD had been mentioning she wanted to check out the tree molds before we headed back – it was one of the things that caught her attention in the downloaded material she’d been sifting through. At this point, I suggested we do that next. But the rain was getting to both of us and we decided that a return to the ship would be a great idea. It poured heavily all the way back to Hilo, where we gassed up the car. We dropped off the car and got a quick shuttle ride back to the ship.

We dumped our things in our cabin and headed back to the Cadillac Diner for that brownie sundae. We had a little bit longer wait for a seat since the rain was preventing them from utilizing the tables on the deck outside. But finally they seated us at a table for four. As we waited for the waiter, I noted that there were still plenty of people waiting to be seated. I caught the hostess going by and noted that if anyone wished to share our table, they were certainly welcome to the other two seats. Apparently at NCL, the concept of shared seating is a subject that isn’t brought up unless the passenger does. She profusely thanked us and returned shortly with a charming honeymoon couple. We had a delightful chat with them as they told us about the copter ride they had done that morning and related all the very cool things they had seen. The brownie sundaes were every bit as good as we had heard. We polished them off, took our leave from our tablemates, and then headed off to the Mardi Gras lounge for the Ribbon Lei Craft. As we left, I heard the waitress asking if there was any party of 2 that was willing to share a table.

The ribbon leis are beautiful. I was looking forward to this one. However, I found it to be a bigger challenge than I expected. I’m pretty good at various crafts, but their directions made little sense to me. To make matters worse, there was a couple seated next to us and the husband had it figured out in nothing flat and was making great progress. What a blow to my female ego. One of the cruise staff finally came over and showed me what I was doing wrong and I ended up with a beautiful braided lei by the end of the class.

We had another hula class that afternoon. China was determined to be certain that we were ready for our TV appearance the next evening. She stepped us through our 4 dances and then advised us we were the best class she had ever had. I tried to note that she probably said that every week, but she wasn’t admitting it.

My DD and I had a very nice dinner that evening in the Liberty Dining Room again. We arrived shortly after it opened so there was no line. We were seated right by the aft windows and began to peruse the menus. I have to note that I found it curious that on the menu, the “always available” appetizers were Baby Shrimp Cocktail and Caesar Salad. Since when is a salad an appetizer? I always thought of it as a course of its very own. I had let this menu intimidate me the first night and had only ordered the shrimp. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. This time I ordered both. The waitress didn’t seem in the least bit surprised. Given that the portions are on the small side, it turned out that I didn’t have any trouble finishing my entire entrée, even though I had polished off the shrimp and the salad. There was a rather long wait for dessert again, but we didn’t have a tight schedule so we waited it out. We got sherbet, although it was a different flavor than what had been on the menu. Not a big deal, since it was a perfectly good ending to the meal.

This was the second of two evenings where the ship was doing a bit more rolling than most other sailings I’ve been on. Again, it wasn’t unsettling – it was just fun. We walked the decks after dark and about 9:00 we staked out a spot along the rail for the lava flow sail by. The rails don’t start to get crowded until about 9:45 (by which time we started to get some rain). We had first spotted the distant glow at 9:00 and the ship draws pretty close to the general area before they head in closer to shore. Fortunately, the brief rain ended by the time people were showing up with some very serious photographic equipment. It was amazing. So few people in the world ever get a chance to see something like this. And there is certainly no assurance that it will still be flowing on any given sailing. We felt excited to be able to see it and privileged to have had this happening while we were in Hawaii.

Given that we would have to be ready to leave the ship at 7:45 for our excursion the next morning, we called it a night after the sail-by.

Thanks for sharing your adventure. Can't wait for the next chapter.:D

sorry.double post

Now, THIS is a trip review!!!!! ;)

LOVE the details - this is the way I wrote up my review for CC of our cruise to Alaska.

I am printing this out for my file as I am getting a group together to go in 2010 -- not too early to plan at all! Your info is fabulous -- will be better than any guide book -- I love first hand reports!

Thank you so very much for taking time to share.

Sounds like you and your daughter have a wonderful relationship - this will be a memory etched in both of your brains for ever and ever and one she will enjoy passing down to her children and grandchildren -- "Well, I remember the day your grandmother and I put on grass skirts and leis and........." :) SO many wonderful moments here!!!!

Thank you for the details -- I appreciate those who do report certain excursions were 'enjoyable' - but actually living it thru your description gives us all so much more info to figure out if it is something we might enjoy for ourselves.

You must be a teacher -- or an author - you have such a gift for being descriptive and write with such organized thought while making it FUN!

I can't wait till the next installment!

treasurequest: A wonderful and detailed experience!

Thanks to each of you who posted your encouragement.

The main purpose behind the journal is to create a lasting record for my DD. To be perfectly honest, this is the rough draft. Once I finish this, I'll go back and edit it to add the things I know I already missed. Then I'll have her review it to see what she thinks I'm missing.

No, cruisingici. I'm neither a writer nor a teacher. We all have wonderful experiences we enjoy relating to friends. I'm just writing the story as if I were telling it to a friend.

I'm glad it has struck a cord with a number of people and they are enjoying reading it. Part of the fun and anticipation I had while planning this trip was to read what others had posted about their experiences, so I'm just trying to add a little sparkle to the planning phase of the folks who are still in that pre-cruise mode.

We are loving every word of your wonderful detailed reviews of our very favorite places. How lucky you were to see the lava flow from the ship. We have taken this cruise several times and only once were we able to see lots of action. We look forward to the next chapter, and thank you for sharing your stories with us.

This morning was going to be different. We were joining the ranks of folks who had purchased an excursion through the ship, so we needed to be in the Hollywood Theater by 7:45 a.m. We were booked for the highly acclaimed Capt. Zodiac snorkel trip. With a sinking heart, I’d been watching from our balcony as they lowered lifeboats to use as tenders. This was going to deprive me of one of my favorite photo opportunities. Those lifeboats are enclosed. I always hope for an open-deck tender when we have a port where we don’t tie up to the pier. That sort of thing affords you the very best opportunity to get a picture of the ship from the back of the boat as you are heading to shore. There never would be a chance for one of those shots on this cruise.

We assembled our things for the day well in advance of the appointed time. Not being sure if we would spend some time on shore after the excursion, I was careful to make sure I took my credit card, driver’s license and boarding pass in addition to some cash. I have one of those water wallets (some people call them beach safes) that I got on my last cruise, and it was invaluable on this trip. We also each took one of those disposable water cameras for the snorkeling. Then we headed to the Hollywood Theater where we dutifully settled into seats and waited till they called our excursion. You’ve probably figured out by now that I tend to be rather analytic in nature (OK, so maybe over-analyze would be a better description for some of my rambling). In any event, I kept reviewing the sizeable amount of people that were passing through that room. All of them represented an average in excess of $100 each for the excursion they had booked through NCL. What a cash cow! Granted, NCL only gets a cut of the action, but this kind of traffic was common every day on this port-intensive cruise. Since I rarely book excursions through the cruise line, I don’t really pay much attention to the numbers of folks that opt for this convenience. This has got to be a pretty nice chunk of change.

There was another poster on our roll call who booked this same excursion directly with Capt. Zodiac. I should have followed his lead. I paid about $12 more per person, had to wait in the Hollywood Theater till they called my excursion and then had to wait in a long line that snaked through the Capitol Atrium and slowly inched its way down to the tenders. When we were finally ferried to the dock, the Capt. Zodiac staff took over. We were handed colored tickets to use as boat assignments and I got the last ticket. That means the other couple skipped the wait in the theater and took an earlier tender … in addition to saving $24.

At any rate, we were assembled into our groups (there would be 4 boats) and received the basic safety information, while we rubbed on our sunscreen. You are advised to put on your sunscreen at the dock, since they want it to have soaked in before you get to the reef. If you wait to do it till you get there, they won’t let you in the water right away, due to potential damage to the reef environment.

They give you a choice when you are stepping into the boat of where to sit along the side, advising that the back is “bumpy” and the front is “very bumpy”. DD wanted very bumpy, so we took the front two spots on the port side (do zodiac boats do left and right – or port and starboard?). There is a tethered rope that runs down each side at the base of the boat and you are advised to slip one foot under the rope to assure that you won’t get thrown out of the boat at any point. This little nicety strained credibility to the max. I’ve been white water rafting and these boats looked terribly similar to the boats they used for that. It seemed like a simple matter to me for the foot to slip back out from under that rope under the kind of force involved in tossing someone over the side, but I went along with it. Folks with hats were advised to stow them unless you had a good drawstring under the chin. They warned that they wouldn’t go back for lost hats – lost passengers, yes – lost hats, no. The Coast Guard frowned on boat pilots who failed to retrieve lost passengers.

I was the only one who risked trying the trip with my hat; and for the record – I didn’t lose it. The hat was to keep the tops of my ears from burning like they had a couple years earlier on a catamaran excursion in Grand Cayman and it slipped back a few times, but that was easily resolved. For those who have a similar need, make sure you have a good leather drawstring and tighten it from time to time. Mine was a soft canvas type (safari-style) with a floppy brim about 1-1/2 inches wide. I got it at the Animal Kingdom in Disney World.

We set off heading in a southern direction, but they set a course that put us pretty far out to sea. The other three zodiac boats had departed earlier and we spotted one once much closer to shore, so I guess every boat pilot has their own preference concerning how close to shore they want to be. We weren’t given official job descriptions for Chris and Peggy, but Peggy was the pilot and Chris was one who tended to the passengers. He passed out the equipment, provided most of the narrative, and kept a constant flow of jokes going to keep us entertained. Since they had a sign on board that said “Pirates for Hire”, let’s just consider him the pirate.

Our pirate got some basic info from each of us (where we were from and what we did for a living) so he had some frame of reference about what sort of things he could use to start conversations. Then he tossed questions at us designed to stump us. My DD managed to have the answers to the first few questions and he called her the Smart One for the rest of the trip. This nickname came with the added drawback that she was now expected to know the answer to every question. And she handled it with good fun when he’d tease her about any failure with “Hey! You’re supposed to be the Smart One!”

The trip to the Kealakeaua Bay for the snorkeling was wonderful. There is an incredible feeling of freedom that surrounds you when you combine the experience of being on the sea with fresh wind in your face. We bounced across the water and the only challenge was trying not to slide too far back into the personal space of the person behind you. It was a glorious day and this was an incredible way to be experiencing it. At least 3 or 4 times, my DD turned around to tell me how much fun she was having and to say she was so glad I’d booked this trip (and we hadn’t even gotten to the snorkeling yet).

We eventually headed toward a point of land, and when we rounded it, we could see Captain Cooks monument. There were a number of kayakers in the bay and they were trying to chase some dolphins. It was really pretty laughable. What do you think is faster -- a tourist in a kayak or a dolphin in its natural environment? Our pirate explained that dolphins are naturally curious. If you wait around, they will come to you. We steered into the general area and cut the engines. Within a very short time, the dolphins were soon swimming around our boat. We also seemed to have attracted the kayakers, since they headed in our direction too. Maybe they are just naturally curious.

Those of us with cameras got some pretty good shots of the dolphins before our boat was moved back to the other side of the bay for the snorkeling. They gave us a number of basic rules and warnings before handing out equipment. In particular they warned that we should avoid getting too close to shore. Unwary snorkelers can get caught in the waves and dragged across the rather ragged lava just under the water’s surface. “We call that the Hawaiian Meat Tenderizer!” Chris happily noted. Conversely, they noted that the fish were in pretty shallow water and if we went out very far, it got very deep incredibly fast. As a rule of thumb, they told us that some of the deepest water in the Pacific is around the Hawaiian Islands and that a general expectation was that for every thousand feet you go offshore, the bottom drops off a thousand feet.

Chris passed out snorkel masks and fins. He sprayed the inside of each mask to keep it from fogging and warned, “Don’t spit in my masks or I’ll spit in your face.” (This remembered quote comes from the Smart One who seems to possess total recall.) We donned our equipment and slipped over the side to explore the wonders of the fabled reef.

Do yourself a favor and check out a few web sites on Hawaiian tropical fish before you go. You will want to be able to identify what you are seeing. We dropped into this wonderland and immediately spotted vast numbers of yellow tang. There were a number of varieties of butterflyfish, although the best shots I got were of the pair of ornate butterflyfish that I stalked till they gave me a nice profile. I realized quickly that I should have done some more research. Most of the fish I saw were not ones I could identify (so how can you later recall that you saw something in particular?) You end up being one of those surface travelers that say “Yep, I saw lotsa fish.” The major quest of the day was to find a humuhumhnukunukuapua’a. This really wasn’t too difficult. There were a number of them there. I spotted the first one and surfaced long enough to find my DD and have her join in the discovery. I got several shots to cement the discovery and then we went our separate ways to explore some more. A short time later I was surprised to find I was the unwelcome intruder in a space that was apparently staked out by another

humuhumhnukunukuapua’a. This miniature Attilla the Hun suddenly charged right at my mask from a depth of some 5 feet. He veered off inches from my face and returned to his stated post. In stunned surprise I hovered there to study him and he apparently figured I was too dense to get the message, so he repeated the maneuver several more times. I even managed to get a picture of him just as he makes the turn away from my mask. I had to go get DD to experience this too, since some things are so much more fun when shared. She wasn’t too far away and she followed me over to the forbidden zone. Sure enough, he charged her mask too. My over-analytic nature has kicked in during the weeks since that day and I have to wonder why this 6-inch ball of fury only went for the mask. People in the water must seem awfully bizarre to a fish. We have all these gangly appendages protruding from a central body. How do they figure out where the head is? Does he go for the eyes he can see behind the mask? In any event, Wikipedia advises that this fish is aggressive and territorial, and I can firmly attest to the fact. It also has a misconception of what kind of threat it possesses to the average human.

I spotted an orange fish with white stripes and figured that must be a clownfish. It didn’t seem as nicely round as the fabled Nemo, but I got his picture anyway. But the best discovery of all had to be the octopus. Both DD and I got a good look at the fellow. The body was about two feet in diameter and you could really only spot him when he moved. He seemed to blend in terribly well when he was still. Unfortunately we were both out of film at this point, so we didn’t get a shot of him, but he probably would have looked like so much of the reef that it wouldn’t have been definable in the photo. DD watched him longer than I did, and she says she’s convinced he changed color depending on what was under him.

As I review the pictures I took that day I am amazed that the drop off to the depths really was at the 45 degree angle that would be necessary for a 1-to-1 relationship of distance from shore matching ocean depth. Given that we were in a bay, I wouldn’t have expected that to be true in this spot.

The time went by so fast. I wasn’t ready to head back when my DD noted that we should probably go back to the boat. Her sense of judgment was certainly better than mine, since she was right. Everyone was heading back to the boat, so we did too. Despite a number of concerns I’d heard expressed in CC posts, it wasn’t hard at all to climb the ladder and get back in the boat. Just before we stepped over the side, as we stood clear of the water, our pirate held a hose above us and rinsed off the salt water with a wonderful spray of fresh water. Chris would make comments like “I’ve never showered with a Canadian woman before. I kinda like it.” We settled back into our places and found that they’d produced some snacks, including fresh pineapple for us to enjoy. We were given the beverage of our choice and then everyone began to scan the water for the one missing snorkeler. The wife of the guy told us we could identify him by his bald head, so our pirate asked if he could call him Baldy. She happily gave him permission to do that and several cries for Baldy were heard over the bay as we searched for the guy. He was eventually spotted and came back to the boat. As he climbed in, our pirate noted that his wife said he could use the nickname. “She’s mean,” the passenger replied. “You picked her,” Chris shot back. (In case you haven’t figured it out yet, if you can’t laugh at yourself, find a different excursion.)

As we finished polishing off the snacks, our pirate pulled out a book and began to show us pictures of fish and ask if we’d seen one of them. He even asked if anyone had seen Nemo and I chimed in. Then he told me that there are no clownfish in these waters, due to the lack of anemone that they hide in. There is however a skinny imposter and he showed me a picture of the fish I’d seen. He then told us a great number of details about each of the fish he was highlighting. But I’ll save those for the more detailed version of this journal (I hear a heavy collective sigh of relief).

The trip back to Kona was different than the trip to the bay. This time they stayed pretty close to shore so we could see some of the sights along the cliff. We got to see a blowhole and went into some caves. The maneuvering was a bit unsettling since they would charge full tilt at the rock shoreline and then cut the engines suddenly and manage to stop on a dime, just a few feet from shore. And the boat would then surge up and down in the surf as they paused to give us some background about the shoreline we were seeing. Peggy’s favorite site was a dramatic piece of shoreline that looked like a reclining woman (work with me here – there had to be a natural formation somewhere on one of these islands that resembled something other than another phallus). There were two caves for eyes in which the early Hawaiian priests had set fires to scare returning native fisherman into leaving offerings for Pele (that ended up on the tables of the ali’i). We moved farther down the coast to another site so we could see our pirate’s favorite spot. He pointed out a long diagonal line that ran down from high in the mountains into the sea. It was the world’s first waterpark -- a waterslide built for the incredible large folks that were the ruling class. Only the ruling family could use it, but the commoners got to get into the act. Their job was to line the sides and be available to assure that the ali’i didn’t go over the side. Under normal circumstance, the common folk were not allowed to touch the ruling class. The ruling class possessed mana and if you touched them, you were stealing their mana. This was punishable by death. However, if they careened over the edge of the waterslide, and your last moments on earth involved breaking their fall, you were still dead – but you gained mana.

As we passed Laie Bay, our pirate told us about the Hukilau. As he described how the early Hawaiians drove fish into the bay prior to a big feast, one of the hulas that China was teaching us suddenly had a great deal of added meaning.

I asked if the economy was starting to affect the tourism industry. Chris noted that it was having a dramatic negative affect on Kona. He said that tourism was down 54%.

Once we got inside the outer marker buoys near Kona, they slowed the engines and we proceeded toward the dock. This was a good time for conversation, so our pirate used it to give us some information about sharks. They described the different kinds of sharks and discussed the various degrees of aggression that the different types possessed. They ended with the note that on the average, shark attacks kill about 15 people a year. Interestingly enough, our pirate noted that falling coconuts kill about 10 times as many people, but that doesn’t seem to grab the headlines.

We returned to the dock and tipped our crew (be sure you bring enough cash for this ... they certainly earn it.) Although Quinn’s had been highly recommended for lunch, neither of us relished the idea of going into a restaurant for lunch before a shower. So we grabbed the next tender and made the quick journey back to the ship. We arrived in our room to find that a towel animal had moved in during our absence. DD called it an elephant, I maintain that it was a rabbit. In any event, she was carefully moved to the little sofa so we could enjoy her for the rest of the week. (How do I know it’s a girl? That’s easy. One of our flower clips was clipped to her ear.)

We cleaned up and then had a light lunch in the Aloha Buffet of salad and sandwich. Afterwards, my DD noted that there was another Hawaiian craft with China at 3:15. My plans were entirely different. After the breakneck pace of the past week, all that I was interested in was a nap. I stretched out on the bed shortly after 2 and didn’t come to until well after 4. I went in search of my DD and found her sitting alone in the Mardi Gras. It was her favorite locale in the ship and she had decided to stay there until I showed up. She had made a very striking hibiscus flower out of crepe paper. I hope she can duplicate her efforts here at home, since I don’t believe the flower survived the trip home intact. At 5 the lounge filled up again for another hula class. This was our last class before the Kanikapila and China wanted to be sure we were ready. I think there were a couple of newcomers again, but I’m not sure. In any event we had an enjoyable hour and then went off to dinner in the Liberty Dining Room. Being early arrivals, there was no wait and we had a very nice dinner and wonderful service.

The Kanikapila was a very nice event. China danced several lovely Hawaiian hulas. There were also a couple of guest dancers – one male and one female. I loved watching the smooth flowing movements, the precise gestures, and the peaceful, warm expressions of the dancers. If you’re looking for an evening of entertainment from hip-shaking Tahitian dancers in coconut bras, you’ll be disappointed. This event is designed to celebrate the artistry of the traditional Hawaiian dances. After several performances and with great delight, China called her class up to dance two of our hulas, but our beginners class was no match for the talent of the professionals we saw that evening. When the dances ended, many people left to go down to the theater to see the magician. I decided I’d rather just relax in the Mardi Gras lounge with a drink and hang onto our seats for the up-coming White Hot Nights party. At this point, my DD opted to go hang out with her new-found friends from hula class, and the girls disappeared to go see the magician. After a bit, I wandered down to the theater to take a seat in the back and watch the magician for a bit. If you enjoy magic shows, than you will probably enjoy this one. I’m not a big fan of them; that’s probably due to my over-analytic nature. Don’t pass up on the show just because I wasn’t terribly impressed. In fact, from my observation, the degree of enjoyment of the audience was in direct proportion to the closeness to the stage. The sprinkling of folks in the back seemed rather stoic and uninvolved (like myself). The people sitting in the front half of the theater were having a very good time. My DD must have been in that section. She would later tell me what a good show it was.

I left before the show ended and returned to the Mardi Gras lounge. They were starting to set up for White Hot Nights and I had been looking forward to this one. Eventually, the girls returned from the theater without my DD. Apparently she thought she wasn’t allowed to come to this party because of her age. Meanwhile the assistant cruise director was on the floor telling everyone from age 6 to 90 to get up and dance. There were probably about a dozen kids there (which I was under the impression was going to be permitted for the first part of the party). So I went back to the cabin to find my DD getting ready for bed. I told her there were plenty of kids there and she eagerly changed back into something white and followed me back. The party was great fun. It was complete with strobe lights and fog and great thumping music. After about 20-30 minutes of dancing, they played “It’s Raining Men”. Not only is that a great dance tune, it was obviously the intro for the Ship-N-Males. When the song ended, they appeared on the floor and the floor cleared instantly so they could do a couple of dance routines. Then the guys pulled some ladies onto the floor (including my delighted DD and her friends). There was plenty more music and time for them to dance. They even included the Electric Slide and YMCA. They gave the kids about an hour before they announced that anyone under 18 needed to leave the lounge. We’d had our ration of fun by that time, so we headed back and called it a night.

I was up early and out on the balcony to embroider while I watched our arrival in Nawiliwili Bay. This was the island I had not visited in my earlier trip to Hawaii, so I was breaking new ground here.

People that do a land-based trip never get to experience this. I took a ton of photos as we approached the island. At first, an island is just a low purplish mound, sometimes rather indistinguishable from the clouds it has gathered around it. Then as you get closer, the shoreline starts to take on definition. Finally, the purple gives way to greens and browns. You slowly glide into the harbor tucked into a little break in the gentle mounds of mountain. I can’t imagine a more stress-free place in the world than that balcony in Nawiliwili.

The plans for the day were to do some touring of the islands by rental car. When DD tumbled out of bed we went for some breakfast and then got ready to leave the ship. I grabbed all the paperwork on Kauai from my travel portfolio, made sure I had my wallet, and snagged the camera. What I didn’t realize was that I’d never extracted my credit card or driver’s license from the water wallet on the desk. Off we went to go get our rental car at Thrifty. As we exited the ship, I noted the sign advising you that you needed a photo ID to get off the ship and I thought it rather silly that they have these signs and all security does is swipe your boarding pass.

Once again, the NCL photographer was waiting with a fuzzy character (I believe it was a hammerhead shark) to take pictures of passengers disembarking for the day. Once again, I pulled my Royal Caribbean had out of my backpack, and put it on to try and dissuade them. It didn’t work this time either, but the photographer clearly gave me the evil eye.

It was a short wait for the shuttle and we were soon at Thrifty to rent our car. I pulled out my wallet, reached inside, and instant panic set in. No credit card … no driver’s license. I immediately began to retrace my steps mentally and it was probably no more than a minute before I realized where those items were. There was no recourse. I told the counter agent I would have to go back to the ship and get it.

I can remember all those lectures I’ve issued my kids about taking personal responsibility. This was one of those occasions where you have to note that you need to listen to those lectures yourself. The ship even tried to warn me with those big signs and I didn’t pay any attention. I went back out to wait for the shuttle driver. It was a long wait. I eventually went back in and asked when they expected the next shuttle. One of the counter agents expressed surprise that I was still there so she said she would take me in her own car. This went above and beyond anything I would have ever expected of a rental car agency. Not only did that woman drive me back to the ship, she waited until I boarded, collected the missing things and came back out so she could drive me back too. Now that is outstanding customer service!

We were soon in our car and headed for Waimea Canyon. This was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever taken. The road twists and turns its way up the mountain. You actually drive on the crest of a sharp ridge. To one side, the mountain sharply drops off into a lush, colorful valley. To the other side the mountain slopes down to the ocean. We were about halfway up the road and I had just about forgotten about the earlier issues of the morning when the car said “Ding-Ding-Ding.” I quickly scanned the dashboard. There was an icon blinking on the left. I didn’t have a clue what it was supposed to signify, but I was guessing that it was a rough equivalent to the mysterious message my car will flash that says “Service Engine Soon.” I checked the gauge for the engine temperature and that was certainly not an issue. It was apparent some auto designer had come up with this brilliant graphic to pass a message to the driver of this car, but his logic was lost on me. Then to make matters worse, another icon flashed on the right. This one clearly showed a vehicle with squiggly road tracks behind it. This was particularly unsettling. This is not a road where one wants to risk having a car advise you that you may have trouble with the steering. There was no place to pull over and even less chance of successfully attempting a U-Turn to go back. The road was too twisting to make sure there wasn’t someone coming down. My DD pulled the driver’s manual out of the glove compartment and I eventually found a spot wide enough to get about 2/3 of the car off the road. I checked out warning lights in the manual and discovered that this was #25. The manual noted that the issue causing the warning might be corrected by turning off the car and restarting it. I tried it, and it didn’t help. The car just kept dinging at me. The manual then went on to say that the car could probably be safely driven, but should be serviced soon. Well, “safely driven” certainly didn’t mean making a U-Turn on this road. I decided to proceed to the Canyon.

We arrived at the first overlook and had to wait till someone pulled out to get a parking spot. This was a recurrent theme this trip. Given that tourism is down, how do folks manage when thinks are really jumping? At any rate, it was a short wait until we were able to park. We grabbed the camera and headed to the overlook. We were blessed with relatively clear weather that day. The view was amazing. All the pictures I’d seen don’t really do this justice. The brilliant colors and the depth of the canyon combine to leave you with a sense of awe. The occasional sight-seeing helicopter would slip through the canyon and it would look like a distant little bird coasting on the breeze. We shot plenty of pictures. Even when you shoot multiple pictures of the same landscape, the colors would change depending on the position of the clouds that drifted by.

When we returned to the car, we made the reluctant decision that we would have to go back to return the car rather than continuing on to the next overlook (probably wouldn’t have been any parking anyway). So we headed back down. The return trip was just as stunning. Yes, you are on the same road, but you’re seeing what was behind you before and it’s an entirely different experience. There are three speeds to take when driving this road – tourist, local, and grand prix. I decided to use tourist speed. From time to time a grand prix driver would be hanging on my bumper and I would ease over and stop at a relatively straight spot so he could pass me and get on with his sport. Frankly that would have been my DH on my first trip here. I just pitied the white-knuckled wife who was in the passenger seat.

We arrived back at Thrifty without stopping to gas up. They checked the car and apologized profusely for the problem. It was going to have to go into the shop. They comp’d the gas and instantly put me into another car. They advised that the gas would be comp’d on the second car as well. As I noted before, they really do have a handle on the excellent customer service thing. Ten minutes delay and we were back on the road ready to head for the north shore. At this point, it was time for lunch so we headed back to the Marriott we’d just passed in order to go to Duke’s. I don’t remember what DD had, but I got the fish and chips. The fish was ono, and I figured I had to try at least one local fish dish before leaving the islands. It was OK, but it seemed a bit on the dry side to me.

After lunch, we returned to the car and headed north. We had a hit list with lots of options, and I was letting my DD call the shots at this point. I had scheduled the morning (much of which I mismanaged), so the afternoon was hers. As we drove north, we came over a rise and were pretty taken by the beach we were coming up to. The surf was pretty wild and there were plenty of folks in the water. My DD decided that she should be one of them. The name of the beach started with a ‘K’, but that’s the best I can do. I visited with another mother on the beach while my DD had the time of her life playing in the wild waves. On the beach I didn’t see any other tell-tale NCL blue-and-white striped beach towels, but I did see a fair number of yellow-and-white striped ones (crew perhaps?). When DD had her fill of fun, she rinsed off at the outdoor fresh water shower and then changed back into dry clothes in the nearby washrooms. She decided at that point that she wanted to see at least one waterfall so we headed back toward Lihue and easily found the turnoff to ‘Opaeka’a Falls. I took several photos of the waterfall and the surrounding area. My DD, however, seemed more interested in a mother chicken and her little brood.

We returned the car and then went back to the ship. Before heading back to our cabin to get cleaned up for dinner, we decided that we had very little time left on the ship and there was one thing we hadn’t done yet. OK Ladies, let’s talk about shopping! At any given time on board, if you find yourself with 15 minutes of spare time, there are a couple of shops you can wander through to find “stuff” to take home. Mind you, the offerings in the shops is the same all week, but if you are a real shopper, you will wander through there two or three different times before you have some idea of what you want to spend your money on. We actually made it all the way to Thursday before we did our first foray into the shops. To be sure, you will see much of the same sort of things they sell in every island, and the prices will be only a tiny bit higher (at least on the items I did price comparisons on). So the thing I always look for in a cruise ship on-board shop is cruise ship merchandise. That’s the unique item they’ll be carrying – and there should be plenty of it. But that is not the case on this ship. The number of NCL or Pride of America items was extremely limited.

Wake up corporate office! This is a missed commercial opportunity. They waste resources on art auctions to make money. “We have this incredible value for a xxxx going for only $450. It regularly sells for $600, but you can get it here today for only $450. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll throw in an additional xxxx for the same price. That’s right. You get the second one absolutely free (It isn’t free. It’s included.)” Meanwhile, they are spinning this spiel to about 10-20 people who are being plied with “free” champagne to loosen up their resistance to pulling out their credit cards.

Forget the 20 art lovers (or maybe they’re just there for the free champagne – gasp!) There are far more people on this ship that would happily part with $$ for shirts, caps, warm-up suits, beach towels, etc. that brag about where they spent their vacation. How about beach bags? We’re all doing beach time. I wasn’t the only one on the ship using a Royal Caribbean beach bag. I spotted someone else on my deck as well. What choice did we have? They didn’t sell NCL beach bags in the on-board shops.

We did our initial window shopping and then went up to our cabin to get cleaned up for what would be a relatively quiet early evening aboard. This was the night of the ship-sponsored luau and it looked like about half the passengers attended this event. They only had one of the two main dining rooms opened, so we went to the Skyline for dinner. I had checked out the dinner menu on the cabin TV before we came down, so I was all prepared with my order. It was a bit of a surprise to open the menu then and find out it looked nothing like what was on the TV. I adjusted accordingly and made another choice. Again, we had a very good dinner and very good service. I continue to wonder why there are so many reviews that find the food or service lacking. Maybe I’m just too easy to please – I need to get more difficult, more grumpy, more critical.

After dinner, we stopped in at the Gold Rush Saloon to get another one of the strawberry smoothies we’d been getting all week. This was the night that Shane was there. He was amazing. He made the most incredible drink. I have to wonder why he would go to such lengths for something that was being paid for with a drink coupon purchased at the beginning of the cruise. I can only say that my conclusion is that he is a true professional who takes a great deal of pride in his work. I’m going to depart here from the popular crowd that claims that the best treat to be had on the Pride of America is the brownie sundae at the Cadillac Diner. That is very good, but it is surpassed by Shane’s strawberry smoothie. There’s a challenge for you … check it out.

At 8:00 there was a game show scheduled in the Mardi Gras lounge. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we decided to go check out Celebrity Heads. Although not especially well attended, this show turned out to be very funny. Four members of the cruise director’s staff were seated and the cruise director held up sign behind them so that the audience could see what persona they were being assigned. Then they asked the audience questions that could be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in an attempt to determine who they were. Naturally, the celebrity or the occupation in question was carefully selected to be sure to elicit the maximum number of laughs as the unwary questioner stumbled around trying to get a clue. Given that the contestants were part of the crew, I’m not sure how much of it was genuine confusion on their part or an act that they play every week. I’m certain that the ‘dumb blonde’ routine from the one young woman was just an act (work with me here).

Despite the number of reviews I’ve read that the Crew Talent Show was extremely well done, I wasn’t putting this one very high on my list of must-dos. How good can the non-professionals really be? But my DD wanted to go, so we added it to our evening plans. It turned out to be an absolute gem. Most of the entertainers had a song to sing. They had clearly been chosen very carefully and each entertainer was extremely talented in their chosen genre. The types of songs were spread over a broad range of potential tastes and I would expect that everyone in attendance came away with different song that they particularly remembered. Additionally, there were two numbers done by the cruise director’s staff that were absolutely hysterical. We had a wonderful evening and I won’t spoil it by giving details, but I’ll simply add my recommendation that future cruisers put this on their list of evening activities. As we exited the theater, I saw plenty of folks walking around in leis. So if you go to the luau and don’t get back in time for the whole show, there’s no reason you can’t wander in and at least catch the finale. I’d wager that you won’t regret the decision.

Before going to bed the previous evening, we checked our planned schedule. This was to be a beach day at the Marriott. DD noted that she’d gotten her beach fix earlier that day and if it was OK with me, could we just stay aboard and pretend it was a day at sea? I was fine with that. We’d have several days post-cruise in Honolulu to get in some more ocean time, but this was certainly the last day we could experience shipboard life.

Since DD was still sleeping when I got up, I collected my embroidery and went off to find a quiet spot on an upper deck. I ended up at the Oasis pool. I had the place entirely to myself from 6:30 – 7:00 a.m. I sat at the top of my floating palace surrounded by that incredibly beautiful island and worked on my embroidery. From time to time I would think about how lucky I was to be here instead of at work (where it would be nearly noon). At 7:00 a.m., the first chair hog showed up. She dropped towels and a pair of shoes on two chairs. Then she disappeared. I remained there embroidering and enjoying my little kingdom for another hour. The chair hog never returned. About 8:00 I decided to go check on my DD. Had she gone looking for me, she would have never found me here since it wasn’t one of the places we’d spent any significant time in.

She was up – sort of. After a bit of coaxing she made herself presentable enough to go for breakfast. We collected our usual breakfast favorites in the Aloha Buffet and then went into the Gold Rush Saloon to eat. This is a much more relaxed environment than the Aloha itself and not too many people seem to be aware of it. After breakfast, we wandered down to the Mardi Gras lounge for some bingo. In keeping with the gambling prohibition on this ship, this game is completely free for participants (did I say free? – I meant ‘included’ in your cruise fare) and the prizes are NCL logo items of one sort or another. The bingo caller was amply supplied with plenty of bad jokes to make us groan as he called out the numbers. Anyone within one number of winning had to stand up to be boo-ed. He said he got particular pleasure out of boo-ing kids, so they weren’t excluded from this little bit of negative attention.

At the end of the event, there were a number of passengers who walked out of the lounge bearing wonderful NCL gear to take back home. We weren’t among them. We went back to the shops to see if there was any chance they rolled out some great new merchandise overnight. They had added a couple of tables in the hall (oh cool! a sidewalk sale!) and I was pleased to find a black NCL piece of luggage, complete with wheels that folded down into a compact canvas portfolio. I regret now that I only bought one of them. It was pressed into service initially for the trip home and will likely get plenty of use over the years.

At noon, it was time for our last hula class. We were starting to feel pretty comfortable with our dances by this time. Both my DD and I particularly like the Hawaiian lullaby and I will have to try and find it so we can attempt to teach it to my grand-daughters. They will love it. For those who are thinking about taking an occasional hula class, please don’t be intimidated by the number of times my DD and I attended the classes. You don’t have to be that involved. Attend one class if that is all you’re interested in doing. We just did it because we were having so much fun. But it’s a vacation. And as NCL says, “you’re free to do … whatever.”

After the class, China held another class for those who wanted to make a kukui nut lei. China advised that even those of us who had made one before were eligible to make another “free” lei (it’s not free … it’s [altogether now] INCLUDED).This class was pretty well attended. Both DD and I chose to make another one. I was a bit late getting started with mine because I had skipped out at the end of hula class to go get something to eat. I tried the Key West Bar and Grill. This is one of those discoveries you make late in the week and kick yourself. They had great fixings for hot sandwiches (especially the chicken!!!) and their fries were very good. I made sandwiches for both myself and my DD and brought them down to the lounge so we could have lunch without missing the craft.

After the craft DD announced she was going off to hang with her new friends, so I got a little quiet time to myself. Initially, I wandered up to the pool deck, but it was clear that there were absolutely no available deck chairs. I decided that since all I really wanted was to settle into a chair and embroider while watching the island slide by, I could do that very nicely from my balcony.

Comfortably seated in those nice chairs on the balcony (much better chairs than RCI, by the way) I watched as we left the pier and headed out of the harbor. I got some awfully good shots of the lighthouse at the harbor entrance. Another good photo op comes up right after that as you sail by rugged coast with waves crashing on the rocks below. It takes a couple of hours to sail around the island to get to the point where they do the Napali Coast Sail-By. During that time, I just enjoyed the quiet time, watching the water swirl past the ship and taking periodic pictures of the island. As we neared the Napali coast, I went up to the Aloha Buffet to grab some snacks to enjoy for the sail-by. There were plenty of people waiting in line to get some ice cream, but I was after some cookies. This was another one of those little discoveries I made late in the cruise. They make great cookies on this ship and I wish I’d been sampling them earlier. I took several cookies and headed down to the cabin. My DD showed up and we put some music on in the cabin and settled back to watch the scenic coast.

As you begin to approach the cliffs of Napali, the sun is casting deep shadows in the mountain crevices. As you pull abreast of the same mountains you shot pictures of, you end up with shots where the folds of the mountain are only half shadow and half in the sun. Then you pull past the same section and now the shadows are merely accent lines in your photos. I am amazed how different the pictures are of the same stretch of coast, depending on where the ship was when the photo was shot. We visited with our balcony neighbors a fair amount during the sail-by, since many folks had opted to maximize their port-side cabins for this afternoon. Up on the outer decks, those with starboard cabins were lining the rails (you have to wonder if this doesn’t require some ballast adjustment by the crew to keep the ship from listing to port … LOL).

I checked the menus on the TV again to find out what was supposed to be served that evening. We made our respective choices and then got ready for dinner. We returned to the Liberty Dining Room (our favorite) for one final dinner that night. We got seated at a table right by the windows. They produced the menus and once again, it wasn’t the one that was posted on the TV. It was, however, the one that had been posted the day before (maybe that’s the secret … that means that the menu they posted this afternoon is for what will be available to the new people who come on-board tomorrow … if so, I should have been doing live postings from on board). We had a wonderful meal and very, very good service.

At 8:00 we it was time for The Greatest Hula Show on Earth. China seemed very excited and very nervous … just like a mother hen. She lined us up by height, which made me a shoe-in for the back row (the message here is that if you are shy, you’d better eat your wheaties). The little girls in our group were her pride and joy and she happily put them in front. The show went very well. The captain held the ship steady (bless his heart) so that when we wanted to go left, the ship wasn’t pitching us in the opposite direction. We had a wonderful time and the audience (which I suspect was mostly made of up family members) was terribly appreciative. They filmed it and put it on TV later that evening. China then presented each of us with a certificate proudly conferring on each of us an Award of Excellence for learning the fine art of Hawaiian Oli Hula. The cynic in me questions the “excellence” part, but it was fun and I would gladly do it again if I ever got the chance.

At 9:00 the schedule displayed a choice of either the Final Show in the Hollywood Theater or a game show called "In The Bag" in the Mardi Gras. During the course of the cruise, we'd had so much fun at each of the game shows we had attended that we figured the game show had to be great fun. We arrived to find that this was another one of those events that wasn't very well attended, but I attribute that to the lack of any description at all in the Freestyle Daily that would tell you what the game consisted of. Folks! This was the famous Quest! Unlike the posts I've read about it, this was the G-rated version. For those that are assuming this means it wasn't nearly as funny, you couldn't be more wrong. It was a blast. The cruise staff decided to create three teams from the people who were there, based on what part of the lounge we were sitting in. Each team ranged in size from perhaps 8 to 12 people. My team started out with only 2 adults and the rest were some kids ranging in age from 10-18. The husband of the other adult in my team tried to remain the aloof spectator, but by mid-game he was as involved as the rest of us. Some of the kids in our group started out a bit confused about how to play the game, but they caught on quick. Lots of running back and forth, a great deal of creativity, some frustration, and a lot of laughter. This game is one of the best mixers I've ever seen. We didn’t win, but we managed a second-place finish. The younger members of our team maintained that the loss was due to the fact that the winning team had more people.

We went back to our cabin and finished packing. Rather than put our luggage out, we were planning on walking it off ourselves the next morning, so there was no particular rush to complete the job. I was largely influenced in this decision by the CC poster who reported that one of her bags hadn’t turned up on the dock for several hours, causing her to miss her planned Honolulu excursion. Why bother with that whole baggage claim hassle if you don’t have to?

My apologies to those who are reading this: I know I've screwed up some of the spelling, particularly anything with more than 2 consecutive vowels. And I get a break from being critiqued by my former English teachers for the nasty habit of switching from past to present tense on occasion, since I can't believe any of those teachers are still above ground.

But the intent was to present this in conversational form, and I'm sorry to say, I make these grammatical errors in conversation, too. ;)

LOVED IT!! Grammatical errors and all! You have given me so much wonderful advice & information that I am going to have to print out your entire report and make notes for myself. We are cruising Feb 09!! I can hardly wait.:D :D :D

I loved it! Now I'm sorry your cruise is over...I've looked forward to every word.

I loved it! Now I'm sorry your cruise is over...I've looked forward to every word.

That's the beauty of journaling ... the cruise is never over. You get to relive it every time you reread the journal. You get to savor it again every time you revisit the memories. You get to take little steps back in time every time you and your traveling companion share a moment that reminds you of something from the trip.

My personal belief is that only 50% of a vacation is the vacation itself. 25% is the preparation and anticipation, and the last 25% is the memories you have when it's over. I used to feel terribly let-down when a vacation ended, until I realized that the end becomes a triumph. You pulled it off! Against all odds, there were no major mishaps, no cancellations, no insurmountable issues. And you have created a wealth of memories that you will treasure forever ... and my DD will have memories to treasure long after I'm gone.

In any case, I still have the three post-cruise days to write about, so you haven't heard the last of me yet!

Special note to jomc68: I'm terribly flattered. Thank you. I have to note however that you'd better make sure you have lots of ink in your printer cartridge. I type this initially in Word (Arial, 11pt.) and it's 33 pages at this point.

Thank you, thank you! This has been my favorite cruise review I've ever read. I can close my eyes and feel like I'm there. I am at the VERY beginning stages of trying to plan the same vacation for my family...you've now got me so excited to start the process!

Thank you, thank you! This has been my favorite cruise review I've ever read. I can close my eyes and feel like I'm there. I am at the VERY beginning stages of trying to plan the same vacation for my family...you've now got me so excited to start the process!

Good luck with your plans .. and thank you for the sweet compliment.

I had a great deal of fun with my planning. One of the biggest problems was being so excited about what I was making arrangements for ... and the only people I could share it with were the people on Cruisecritic. Nobody knew what I was planning ... not my family, not my friends, not my co-workers -- and especially not the DD that was going along. I just wish I could have seen everyone's face at work that Thursday morning when I sent the picture of Diamond Head from my blackberry.

The sky hadn’t begun to lighten when I woke up and went out on the balcony. We were slowly moving along the coast of Oahu. There were a few lit-up communities along the way. I sat and watched the island float by. Strangely, I didn’t feel that usual twinge of regret that the cruise was coming to an end. I credit that to the fact that this was the first time I had ever included some post-cruise days into my vacation plans. My basic plan was that since the cruise was so port-intensive I would pad the front end and back end of the cruise itself with a few days in Honolulu, to simulate the sea days.

The sky was lightening considerably as we eased slowly into Honolulu harbor. There is a small campground that you pass on the port side just as you enter the harbor. A number of people were sitting in lawn chairs in the quiet of the early morning facing the water. I wondered if they situate themselves there every week to watch harbor traffic in general or if this beautiful ship coming in on Saturday morning is their main interest. I waved and many of them waved back.

It was rather pleasant to be able to get ready to leave the ship without having some schedule to keep. I’m not sure why more people don’t walk their luggage off. If you had stuck it out in the hall the night before, you had to make a decision on what color tag you wanted. Your luggage wouldn’t be available for pick-up then until a certain time, depending on color. That doesn’t sound very Freestyle to me.

We went upstairs for a nice breakfast and chose to eat in the Gold Rush Saloon again. I was rather surprised to note that a number of people were saddled with carry-on luggage. I had to wonder if these were folks from other cruise lines who were used to having to be out of the cabins by an early hour. That was my background too, but I’d read enough to be aware that the same rules weren’t in effect here.

After breakfast, we finished stuffing things into suitcases and left the cabin for the last time. It was an easy walk off the ship and through the terminal. Roberts was right outside and they took our return tickets and loaded our luggage into the airport-bound bus. They waited 20 minutes before deciding they had enough people and we were on our way. Once at the airport, we were directed to the Thrifty shuttle and were soon making arrangements for our car. The Thrifty operation at the airport seemed rather disorganized. They were well staffed, but there didn’t seem to be much coordination going on between the various people who were involved in getting people into cars and on the road. Busy people flitted to and fro involved in some important errand and you were never sure who you were being handed off to. At one point someone advised me they would be bringing my car right up and then about 10 minutes later I was told to go back into the garage and I could drive it out myself.

We happily settled into our car and had to wait while another confused customer tried to figure out how to exit the garage. Finally we were on the road and had no problems figuring out how to get onto H-1 and head for Honolulu. I’d read enough postings to know that Honolulu traffic was likely to be a challenge. And it certainly lived up to that promise. Heavily choked side streets, poorly timed traffic lights, one-way streets, clogged freeway … yep! Honolulu has it all. In the immortal words of our Capt. Zodiac pirate “L.A. with coconuts”. After a few wrong turns and routings that trapped us on one-way streets headed the wrong way, we reached the Ilima Hotel. We hadn’t really expected our room to be ready, as it was only mid-morning. In any event, they offered to hold our luggage so we didn’t have to drive around with it. We did the basic check-in and then jumped back in the car to head for the PCC. Not having much alternative, at this point, I headed back for H-1, so I could make the connection to the Pali Highway. I would later find there was a better road that ran roughly parallel to H-1, but at this point I was still pretty clueless.

We cut through the mountain on the Pali Highway and ended up on the beautiful leeward side of Oahu. I can’t believe that people come to Oahu and never get over here. It is a world apart. The drive north offers you incredible vistas of mountain on one side and on the other side is ocean, dotted with the occasional island. We stopped along the way at a shopping center to get something quick to eat and use the ladies room. I have to comment here on the lack of aloha spirit that permeated this little outdoor mall. Signs at the doors to several fast food places proclaimed “No public restrooms.” Are you kidding me? Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken advised that meant that restrooms were for customers only. Good. I’m a customer. No, sorry. The ladies one isn’t working. This is a joke, right? Wrong. DD got a meal and I went in search of a restaurant that was a bit more customer-friendly. Subway also had the “No public restrooms” sign … I think they got them from the same printing company (probably located in that shopping center somewhere). I finally got lucky at McDonald’s.

So we shook the dust from that particular bit of civilization off our sandals and headed back up the road. In what was beginning to be a recurrent theme, we drove right past the PCC and had to turn around. We pulled into the parking lot and chose to park by a little green spot bearing a tree. The reality was that it would be 15 years before that tree was going to offer any car some suitable shade, but allow me my fantasy here, OK?

The entertainment book got us $40 off our admission here. We opted to only go for the day pass. I know everyone raves about the Horizons Show, but I didn’t want to be driving that road after dark. I also doubted we’d have the energy to spend all day here. It was a good call. We ended up leaving only three hours later. In that time, we visited 4 of the villages, saw the canoe pageant, played with poi balls (I must note here that I was relatively successful, but DD was not), and enjoyed some wonderful shave ice. We were hoping to catch the movie at the iMax, but we just missed the start of it and were too hot to wander around waiting for the next show. In all honesty, nothing sounded better than our air-conditioned car. I marvel at the intensity of the dances we saw that day. How do those people do that in those costumes in the heat? The dancers on the canoes are even in the sun during many of their routines. Our week on the ship hadn’t prepared us for the stifling heat we felt that day. Nearly everywhere we had gone, we enjoyed pleasant temperatures. But either the PCC is located in a very hot part of the island due some obstruction to the tradewinds that seemed to cool us everywhere else, or that was just an unusually hot day.

Back in the car, we headed back to Honolulu. Frankly we just wanted to check into our room and go find someplace cool to go swimming. We got back to the Ilima and were assigned our room. I got a bit or a surprise here. I had booked the cheapest room and expected to get floor 4 or 5. I was assigned the 16th floor overlooking the Ala Wai Canal with a golf course on the other side. The room and its view were incredible. This place was another CC posters tip. We loved it. The room was huge and had a full kitchen. We dragged our luggage in, extracted the bathing suits and went downstairs to swim. The little pool did a good job of cooling us off and we were soon ready for a shower and a meal. Although I was willing to walk a couple of blocks to a restaurant, my DD wanted to stay put. So we took advantage of one of the places that delivers pizza to your room (we opted for the Hawaiian pizza, since it was … well … Hawaii). We relaxed on our balcony and enjoyed our view along with our genuine Hawaiian pizza (come on, work with me here). The dusk crept up on the city and the lights began to appear on the nearby mountainside. It reminded us of the night only one week earlier when we had sailed around the end of the island and viewed the lights that were scattered on the mountainsides just slightly south of us.

We went inside and decided that a nice quiet evening would be a relief after all the rushing around. So we turned on the TV and my DD found that one of her favorite programs was on – Mythbusters. She’d first seen this program in Galveston years earlier when we were at a pre-cruise hotel. So it was pretty funny to find that we hadn’t watched any TV at all this trip (except NCLTV) and the first thing we found on the TV this trip was that program she first gotten hooked on in Galveston. So we sat back to watch them ponder some of the weighty issues that plague us all: Can a mouse scare an elephant? Can a car with rockets attached fly a mile and a half? Can an airplane on a conveyor belt get airborne, given that it has reached maximum take-off speed, but the conveyor is running in the opposite direction … so the airplane is really in the same place all the time.

I’ve got you on the edge of your seats don’t I?