Stew & Trish Cruise to Hawaii and visit Kona on the Big Island
- stewshou
- Oct 29, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 4, 2019
Part 2 of 3 of Stew and Trish’s trip West 2019: the Cruise
We left Lyn and Clark with sadness, but hope to see them again next year.
The flight from Calgary to Vancouver went smoothly as did the train ride to downtown. A data plan is most helpful when travelling; my smart phone gave me confidence to take a transfer at the waterfront subway stop onto the skytrain to Burrard station. Once at street level we became disoriented; the compass, Google maps and neon sign above the Le Soliel hotel helped us find our way. We declined the tuck in service at the hotel.
Monday morning, Trish swam at the YWCA while I scouted out the walking route to the cruise terminal. After checking out my Visa account on the internet, several transactions appeared that I did not recognise, but no worries, the Scotia Bank tower was beside the YWCA. They told me that there was a technical glitch and the transactions would be reversed and I would not need to cancel my Visa (that would be disaster).
We walked in the rain to the cruise terminal to join the human crushing machine that is preboarding. We were able to get lunch on board by 2 pm; it sure is nice not to pick up the tab after eating on a cruise ship. The first thing we did on board was figure where the bow, stern, starboard and port sides were. You could spend weeks on a cruise ship and be confused where you are and where you are going in the ship.
Our first port of call was Kona on the Big Island. We took lifeboats to get to shore and back.
Video of life at sea.
My favourite vantage point on the Jewel.
The sleep at night was a little difficult because 10 ft (no white caps so light breeze) swells were meeting the ship on the beam. Our room attendant said there was a room full of girls beside us and that was why there was non-stop talking from there at times. We played backgammon and visited the library. At lunch we met a server from Zimbabwe who said that life is bad for his folks back home and would love to have refugee status in Canada.
I went to an activity “engineering and manufacture a foiling boat”. In my mind, that meant building an America’s Cup AC72 sailboat that flies over the water. To my disappointment, the activity involved using aluminum foil to make a boat full of coins that would float in a tub. My boat had wings and sank easily. Someone else got the prize. At the other engineering challenges, Stew helped to build a structure out of dry spaghetti and marshmallows, a house of cards, and a structure around a raw egg (made from paper straws and elastics) that protected the egg dropped from 3 ft.
Too much fun for Trish and Stew so we napped. The evening was the usual fine dining and music. We heard a Pilipino country and western band. Somewhere in the Pacific off the Oregon coast, we walked the promenade deck 7 around the “Jewel” a couple of times.
We feel a little isolated from the rest of the world because of the loss of broadband internet and withdrawal symptoms have shown; we are anxious because of lack of updates from the family. But we found hope in pay as you go internet at 99cents per minute that actually works. We sent an email to Russ in one minute. He has a broken clavicle and met with the surgeon yesterday.
The tv channels keep changing, tonight we get 2 Australian channels. The farmers of Australia are arguing in favour of their own exit deal; the drought is so bad that some are willing to receive payment for leaving their family farms of several generations. They are considering delivery of recycled city water and creating new reservoirs. In California reservoirs just get lower and lower. The rest of our time at sea was much the same.
Stew and Trish took separate excursions. Stew's first port of call was Big Island of Hawaii. Some beaches are black and some white, depending how much coral from the ocean landed on the beaches to mix with the black lava. The time to convert the coral to beach is many millennia.
It’s important to have your key card with you at all times. I left it in my pants pocket the night before our first stop in Hawaii and forgot to take it with me when I finally felt comfortable enough to wear shorts. While waiting take the tender (lifeboat) off the ship for the first excursion, I saw someone with a plastic key pass, and my mind freaked when I remembered that I did not put it in my pocket. Fortunately, the service desk gave me a new on quickly so I did not miss the excursion. Generally, on the ship, you put your wallet and passport in the safe, because your key pass is all you need to get what you want on board. You cannot get off the ship or back on the ship without the key pass. You cannot get back on the ship without photo id, usually a passport, US customs is very strict about that.
Stew’s tour guide was of aboriginal Hawaiian lineage. He could sure tell a tale about the white man. The first stop was a coffee plantation with a tasting bar.
The second stop was the Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Park. It is a native cultural place of refuge. According to tradition, if you commited a “Kapu” because you did not follow the strict set of rules, and if you could get to the place of refuge, you were spared from death. This would be the origin of the term “Big Keõna” (Kahoona). He was the priest who could cancel your “sin” and you were free. The refuge was set apart by a lava rock wall; it was to the people, a source of great spiritual power.
The third stop was the Church of St Benedict. It was painted with the sky etc to look like the outdoors. The natives would not go inside because they were used to living in shelters open on both ends.
Our guide (Earl) called us all “cousins”. His real name is so long and Hawaiian like that I can’t repeat it. The shoreline is covered in condos now but was wide open 10 years ago. Hotels have been leveled. Homes stand on shoreline that was open when he went fishing as a child. He told his version of Captain Cook’s discovery of Hawaii. The natives thought they were visited by a God because the white cloth they were using in their ceremony was so much smaller than the white cloth (sails) on Cook’s ship. They worshiped Cook and his crew as gods on his first visit. The locals took one of Cook’s life boats but Cook did not notice until he was out to sea. When he came back to get it he was welcomed by natives from a second tribe and was killed. Maybe the natives did not like the diseases that Cook brought. There is some dispute that the natives ate cook, Earl said emphatically not so. When a white American disputed that with Earl, he said he was getting hungry. The British come yearly to maintain Cook’s memorial.
The third stop was to St ? church just after a Sunday mass. I did, after all get to church that Sunday.
Trish – I enjoyed a sea zodiac ride and snorkelling. Captain Rick and first mate Devonte (de-von-tay’) took us to an area closer to shore where the small spinner and spotted dolphins rest during the day. At night they go out further into the ocean and as some tiny sea animals come closer to the surface, the dolphin have their meal. The animals seemed to have enough energy to play around the boat – and one even did repeat breaches and spins in the air while vertical, right out of the water.
Our safety on the zodiac was two feet under a taut rope and a handhold on each side. It was rather like an amusement ride roller coaster. It was a lovely sunny day and quite calm and warm in the water. We got to the sheltered snorkelling spot, got our equipment (fins and snorkel set and half a noodle to float). The water is so salty that it is very easy to float and take in the spectacle of many type, sizes and colours of tropical fish. The reef looked to be in the stages of re-building with predominantly one type of coral that is a cream colour. I also saw many sea urchins and these red spiky animals or plants. After snorkelling, we were treated to fresh pineapple. On the way back, we toured a grotto and the oldest lava tube – reported to be the one that began the island. On one side of the small cove was one end of the lava tube. On the other side was the resumption of the tube which apparently goes many miles out into the ocean. The cove was created when the section between the ends of the lava tube was eroded by the ocean over many years. In another spot a cross section of a lava tube was evident.
I took pictures of a rock formation that was taken to be the face of the goddess Pelea (pay-lay’). Below the face in the ocean is a flat platform made of lava. It is said that natives would bring food, flowers or fish to this rock to honour Pelea and those gifts were used as food for monks. If there were not too many offerings for a while, the monks would fill the eyes of Pelea with straw and light it so that it appeared the goddess was angry. People would then resupply the rock table with offerings.
We stopped to view the only piece of is land belonging to the British Isles – a monument to Captain Cook.
Later, we viewed the hotel built on a design by Frank Lloyd Wright. There have been some whale sightings recently, although it is early for them to reach this latitude on their journey south for the winter. Unfortunately we missed seeing a bottlenose whale today.
Captain Rick pointed out two other sites – one was where the royalty of the time invented surfing after they observed dolphins surfing along with the waves. The king at the time had a summer home near the water at that site. The first surf boards were flat hunks of wood. And that is how surfing for humans first was invented!!
There are underground aquafers in Hawaii but the water has to be filtered and bottled for consumption. There are no snakes in Hawaii. Half of the Big Island (Hawaii) is dry (Kona side) and half is wet (Hilo side). The dry side gets an average rainfall of 22 inches per year. The Hilo side gets 222 inches per year. On the east side (Hilo), one can normally not see the tops of the mountains due to the clouds occluding the view. Captain Rick pointed out a house that was owned at one time by John Wayne and also stated that Mark Twain spent quite a bit of time here. The next blog will be the Hilo side of the Big Island.
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