* Aloha is a word you often in Hawaii. It means "hello", it means "goodbye" and it means "love". Everything was "... with aloha". You would see an ad for "the car dealership with aloha". You would eat at a place that had "food with aloha". A radio station that played "music with aloha". It became almost comical to see or hear all the things "...with aloha".
* It is beautiful and it is expensive. And each of the islands, we went to 3, were different. The Big Island (Hawai'i) was the strangest. You had torrential rains and flooding; you had winter storm warnings (2 peaks have snow on them year-round and you can ski there...in Hawaii!!), you had endless views of lava, you had rain-forests, you had desert. You have to get over the fact of how much everything is. And that the pace is slower, places close very early, and while Hawaii has a reputation of having friendly people, in Honolulu, not so much.
* Many of the radio stations play island music, but not necessarily Hawaiian island music. Jamaican reggae is very popular. I saw lots of rasta-men. Lots of rasta-women.
* The Hawaiian primaries (or perhaps they do caucuses, I don't remember) were just a few days away, so the newspapers had stories about Hillary, Obama, etc. But driving around, I never saw a sign or bumper-sticker for anyone other than for....Ron Paul. Not that there were tons around for him, but of the ones we saw, they were ALL for him. I should have checked when we got back to see how he did.
* Pearl Harbor is a sobering experience. The parks service does a great job getting folks in and out. Before you ride on a boat over to the Arizona Memorial, you watch a 20 minute films about the lead-up to WWII. I was wondering how the film was going to present Japan and their actions. Hawaii caters to the Japanese tourist. Signs, menus, radio and tv stations. You see them everywhere. I would say that 25% of the people on my boat were either Japanese or of Japanese decent. The film was factual, straight-forward and mentioned all the causalities at Pearl Harbor. Mentioned, but didn't go into detail, Japan's behaviour in China and Korea. No mention of the Bataan death march. Did mention the A-bombs and causalities, but just as facts, not justifications. Same for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the military reasons behind it. I thought it was well done and struck the right cords for what you were about to see. You don't get to spend much time on the Memorial - if I recall it's 17 minutes. It's smaller than I expected and weird looking down and seeing parts of the ship, with the oil leaking.
* We stayed at a B&B on the Big Island that was owned by a former Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. She was also a flight attendant for Warner Brothers on their private jet. Heard many interesting stories about P. Diddy, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Michael Jackson, etc.
* Getting around by car is hard work. Since the Hawaiian alphabet only has like 13 letter, all the street and highway names look alike. And forget trying to pronounce them. Trying to follow directions is tedious. And on the smaller islands, the traffic is awful. They might only have 2 or 3 roads on the island and with all the tourists, traffic can get like the Southwest Freeway around the Galleria on a Friday afternoon. Most roads are 2-laners and on Kauai, they have 1-lane bridges.
Ok, on to some pictures:
This is looking down from the Memorial. You can easily see parts of the Arizona and the white-ish reflection is oil coming up from the ship.
This is from our whale-watching trip. We were out for about 3 hours (and yes, I was making Gilligan's Island jokes with the folks sitting around me) and tails were about all we saw. No breaches, one fin, many tails. At one point we thought a whale was going to come under the boat, but no luck. We were close enough at times to hear them when they would blow. A definite thing we would do again.
A view of Honolulu from the top of Diamond Head crater. It was a 45 minute hike, parts of it very steep and very narrow, to the top. The structure in the foreground is a bunker built before WWII. You had to climb through one to get to the observation point. There are military bases and installations everywhere on all the islands, but especially O'ahu.
This is a black sand beach. It's not really sand, but lava. The people on the right are taking pictures of sea turtles that come to this beach. While there are a few black sand beaches on the islands, this was the easiest one to get to. There is also a green sand beach, but you can't actually get to it, you can just see it from a trail.
This is the Na Pali coast, which is on the north end of Kaua'i. We hiked about an hour on a trail (it was technically closed due to rain/mud, but we weren't the only ones hiking it) to this point. About another 2-3 hours is where the green sand beach is. This area is where parts of "Jurassic Park" were filmed. It was beautiful and lush, but with all the fog and low clouds, it was hard to get a decent picture. The trail went through a very dense rain-forest. We were staying at a B&B that was almost literally at the end of the road, perhaps 5 minutes from the trail head.
3 comments:
As a Kevin Costner fan would love to hear the stories you were told about him. Would you be willing to share? Janet
Well Janet, I'm somewhat reluctant to get into REAL specifics. The time-frame was around "Dances With Wolves" and "Waterworld". What I was told about him was all very positive - that he always travelled with his family; that he was very sincere about how Native Americans were going to be portrayed in DWW; that he was extremely nice to the not only the staff on the plance, but the crew members on the movie set. Again, without getting into specifics, the polar opposite of Mr. Crowe and P. Diddy.
Nice job LJ.
Post a Comment