April 16, Tuesday--Neither of us slept much on the eight hour flight, but Korean Airlines certainly keeps the passengers fed! They fed us supper and breakfast and kept us too busy to sleep more than an hour or so. We arrived there at 10:15 of the day we left--Tuesday. We were met at the airport by a Pleasant Adventures person, but then had to call for transportation and wait as is usual at airports. We had been spoiled by the service in China and Korea! We reached the hotel being driven by a cheerful, but garrulous driver and checked in only to find that we had to walk what seemed a mile to get to the desk and then to the elevators. We should have asked for a busboy, but had no idea that we'd have to walk so far. The view from our room was beautiful--if not quite what I would have called "ocean view", but we could see the ocean if we leaned out on the balcony, and the beach was just outside the hotel.
We rested and then went out of the hotel and walked around. We bought tickets for the trolley tours and we bought coffee at Starbucks before deciding to eat at Roy's. It is a fish restaurant and was recommended by the man selling the trolley tickets. Roy's had excellent fish and we did have a very good supper.
April 17, Wednesday--We got up early to go to a free Orientation Breakfast that turned out to be a marketing ploy--not something to be repeated and not even very good food. We then returned to the room to brush our teeth and took the trolley to the central place for trolleys and caught the red line trolley--the historical one. We chose it because it was the historical one and because it was a double decker bus, but we both became so sleepy riding on top in the heat and some breeze that we got off near the hotel and took a long nap. One of the high points of the tour was that we could glimpse the apartment building in which Obama lived with his grandmother, the hospital in which he was born, and the ice cream place where he worked as a teenager.
After the nap we found a New York Deli restaurant in the hotel complex, had good sandwiches (Reuben and lox and bagel), and went back to the meeting place to take the green line trolley only to discover that we were too late. We couldn't go to Diamondhead! We made a few mistakes in returning by trolley to the hotel, but finally made it and went out to Waikiki Beach.
Tom actually got all the way in the water, but it was too cold for me so I made it about waist deep. After the sunset, we dressed and went for a very good pizza--also within the hotel complex. The hotel is very spread out and has been a little confusing (Hilton Hawaii Village) but it does have almost anything one needs--at a price! It's certainly more elaborate and has softer beds than anything we've seen for a month After the pizza, we found a place for an early breakfast--again in hotel--and went up to pack and go to bed.
April 18, Thursday--Luckily we discovered a place in the hotel that starts serving breakfast at 5:30 am so we were able to get breakfast before meeting our bus at 6:50. That made it somewhat better! There were only ten people on the tour and we went in a minibus so it was not a big crowd. Our first stop was Pearl Harbor, but it takes an hour or so of driving to get anywhere. At Pearl Harbor we saw an excellent video on the history of the Pearl Harbor attack and then were put on a boat to visit the Arizona Memorial. The Arizona with the crewmen who died on it is still sunk in Pearl Harbor and a memorial has been built on it. A visitor is allowed about 20 minutes in the memorial to view the memorial and that part of the Arizona that can be seen--mostly under water! Other ships had memorials that we viewed on the boatride to the Arizona. They had the crewmen listed inside the memorial. Apparently there was no effort to bring them up, but they were entombed in the ship as it was.
There was a serviceman on the Arizona memorial who was about to leave the service and was running flags up and flying them before packing them for friends. When we returned to land, we had about 30 minutes free time to view the rest of the site and for Tom to buy a mug. After we left Pearl Harbor, we drove to the Dole Plantation.
There the most interesting thing was to see several different types of pineapple growing. The rest of it was just tourist commercialism, but they did have very good pineapple ice cream! From there we drove to the north coast of Oahu where the major surfing is done. Nice scenery along the way!
We saw several of the famous beaches and saw some nice waves, but nothing like the 30 foot ones that are sometimes here. There were a couple of young men cracking coconuts for the milk.
(Click the video to watch the young man cracking a coconut.)
We stopped at a shrimp shack for lunch. The shrimp was pretty good, but not just real big, and I think the ones we get at home are juicier. Tom didn't want to peel shrimp so he had a cheeseburger. There were many people at this place, and it took a long time to b served. While we ate our tour guide, Alex, went to the Cultural Center to get out tickets. When we finished eating we drove to the Polynesian Cultural Center and watched various performances--first, sort of a survey as various tribes showed their dancing by dancing on canoes in the canal, and then by individual tribe performances of about 30 minutes each. The last one we were going to watch was the Tahitian one, but the drums were so loud that they ran us out. Instead, we went to the iMax show and saw some really pretty scenery. At about 5:00 we ate in the buffet that was served and then at 7:30 we watch "Ha, the Breathe of Life," a dancing extravaganza celebrating the continuance of life and culture. The staging was exciting with actors entering the stage from aisles and above the stage and with fire dancers who threw the fire and put it out by sitting on it in their grass skirts. we all wondered if they wore asbestus underwear! We were the first dropped off when we reached Honolulu, but it was still almost midnight when we were able to get to bed. I may have made a mistake with these all day tours since they are so long.
April 19, Friday--We were up by about 7:00 slightly before we had the alarms set and went down to the early breakfast restaurant where we had a very good breakfast--the best breakfast food that we've had on the whole trip. We'll gain back any weight we lost in China and Korea! After that we went back to the room to brush our teeth and then called a bellboy for the luggage. We had learned our lesson about the distance for the luggage! He took it down to the bus stop and met us there. Our shuttle came only a few minutes late and we were off to the airport. It didn't take as long as I'd expected to reach the airport and we were earlier than we'd planned, so we found our gate and waited for the flight. It was quite uneventful, and we made it to Hawaii (the Big Island) about 2:00. The airport there is quite unusual as it's mostly outdoors. We caught the shuttle to the Hertz car rental place and after a somewhat long procedure ended up with a bigger car than we'd really asked for--some kind of Nissan SUV. We drove to the hotel, left our luggage and checked in, and then drove back to pick up Lee and Laura. Lee, Tom, and I ate supper at a restaurant, but Lee picked up some food to take back to Laura.
April 20, Saturday--Our Grand Circle Tour of the island started at 6:30 am. Tom and I had scones and drinks from the coffee shop in our part of the hotel and then had time to brush our teeth before going down to the pick up point. One driver picked us up and took us to the second bus, a big one, where the second driver was and the second one ran the tour. He was very knowledgeable, but talked all the time and made some pretty poor jokes constantly. We made nine stops around the island and felt as if we'd seen a lot of it. We went south first, to the Ocean View area, and then went north up the east coast and cut across the north part of the island to return to the hotel. Where we started, from the Hilton Waikoloa Village, was in the lava area. Our guide explained that since there is practically no rainfall here, the lava does not weather as quickly as it does where there is heavy rainfall. Rainfall on this side of the island is less than five inches a year. As we rounded the southern part of the island we began seeing more vegetation. We stopped to see the Volcano National Park and saw where the lava lake was. Unfortunately, it had solidified and there really wasn't any flowing lava to see. To see that it's necessary to take a helicopter or boat ride to see lava flowing to the ocean. We did walk through another lava tube and through a rainforest area. Some places on the other side have 200-400 inches of rain a year. We stopped at various shopping places on the tour--chocolate factory, macadamia nuts.
(Click here for pictures from the tour.)
April 21, Sunday--We were tired and slept late since we had free breakfast vouchers and breakfast lasted until 11:00. Lee ate with us, but Laura didn't feel well. We then rested for awhile and went to the beach near the hotel. It was fun to get in the water, and it seemed warmer than it had seemed in Honolulu. I was even able to get in it. The Hawaiian Green Sea turtles were fascinating.
(Click on the videos to see them move.)
After we played in the water for a couple of hours, we took Laura back to the hotel, and Lee, Tom, and I drove to Hawi on the northern tip of the island where we had sushi in the Sushi Rocks restaurant. They used local and organic ingredients, and the sushi was quite good and quite unusual. The tastes of the rolls was more different than that of most sushi. It took us longer to eat than we'd expected, but when we finished we drove to Mauna Kea to the observatory to look at the stars. it took an hour and a half to go about 60 miles, and when we arrived at the observatory at 9000 feet, it was quite cold. I used Laura's blanket, and Lee bought a sweatshirt. Tom bought another mug and shared the blanket every so often. We saw Saturn, some of the Southern Cross, and the Cigar nucleus. It was interesting even though so cold. We drove back to the hotel in about an hour and went to bed.
April 11, Monday--We started a little later than we had meant to, but Lee and Laura ate breakfast with us and Lee helped us with the luggage. We had time to get gas in the car, leave it at the Hertz car return, take the shuttle to the airport, and then wait for an hour. This airport at Kona is really unusual. It's not a big building at all, but a series of covered areas--all open as far as I can see. We flew from Kona to Honolulu and then Honolulu to Atlanta. The layover in Atlanta was uneventful and we flew into Memphis where after a wait, Dorothy, Will, and Thomas picked us up. We ate lunch and then drove to Corinth, and Tom and I drove home.