09- Kehena: Kalapana without access to the sea

The subsequent posts are not going to be so much a blow-by-blow chronologically accurate account as pictures with captions. I've fallen behind in the blog so what happened when has greyed a bit.

We flew into Hilo, hired an SUV - barely fitting all our suitcases in as it is - and headed south, through a rather lengthy car-park of a crawl through Keaau, over to Pahoa then down the Pahoa-Pohoiki road to the water. I was aghast to see all the beautiful trees that had lined the road just after the Lava Trees park appeared to have been cut down.

WHY??!?

Then I remembered: a cyclone/hurricane had gone through this area: what we were seeing was the devastation left by the horrible winds. The place was not the same, at all, except for a really short area that was a bit protected. Even Mackenzie Park was closed. I guess even ironwood trees were no match for those winds!

We got down to the Beach House at Kehena just at dusk. We scrambled to get the bags inside: the party was happening at Kalapana and we didn't want to miss it! And it was hopping: music and food and tie-died die-hard hippie-holdouts and locals and visitors ate and mingled and listened to the music and watched the hula. Derek and Jackie had amazing pizza, we had an asian dish each. I was going to stand, but the lovely lady sitting with her mates told me it's not good eating standing up and offered me her seat at the park-table. What a lovely soul!

08- Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget

On Derek and Jackie's bucket list was a visit to the Arizona Memorial. I'm embarrassed to admit that all the times I'd been to Honolulu, I'd never made it to Pearl Harbour, so I'm grateful to Jackie and Derek for providing the opportunity. If you get there early, they give you free tickets, but seats are limited, so we had to make an early start.

Which we did.

All I can say is: well done, well worth your while, this is a must-do, indeed. The presentation in the theatre was balanced, dispelled a lot of misconceptions on what actually happened and set an appropriate stage of respect and thoughtfulness. The people in our group behaved accordingly: it would have been churlish not to.

It was a beautiful day, particularly for a 'winter' day:

From memory, Hawaii (I'm going to spell it without the glottal stop, only because it seems a bit pretentious to do so) is generally pretty wet this time of year: it's the rainy season. Well, it wasn't. Rainy, that is: it was cool, dry, beautiful.
The boat ride out to the memorial was lovely and cool. The water that the remains of the battleship was submerged in wasn't very deep... you could see the gun turrets and that was it:

Apparently the oil would keep seeping out of the submerged wreck for another fifty years, but that the environmental impact if they tried to extract the oil all at one go would be significantly worse.

The mood was quiet and respectful:

It was just that kind of morning.

.

We returned to the digs for a thoughtful breakfast, then dropped by K-Mart to deliver a parcel for a dear family friend of Julia's workmate - Grant. He had made a lovely book of their times together in Hong-Kong: she was quite touched by this gift!

We had enough time, so we went up to Kaneohe, the northwest side of Oahu. It was my favourite weather: overcast:

Of course, the trip ended with a forage through the Kaneohe Sears and Macys and a rather heavy meal at Ruby Tuesdays.

07- First Hugs and Leis

Re-Sunday

We spent the day (very unsatisfactory sleep) trying to get our bearings - found a Ross (Dress-for-Less) which always helps - but Julia was wracked with her first chest infection in ages, so we sort-of didn't push it: mostly rested.

Monday

The next morning we took a taxi to the Alamo place and picked up a Hyundai Sonata. We parked in the domestic terminal, then had a coffee in the Starbucks with a lass from Canada who had been teaching English in Japan, and who was returning home - home was now Georgia. Grace had a Brazilian boyfriend of Japanese origins. Very interesting young lady.

Although advertised as a full-sized car, the boot of the Sonata would only just accommodate two large and two small suitcases. Need to keep that in mind for the next port of call: Hilo!

It was such a delight to finally have Nanny, Jackie and Derek with us! Of course, in good Hawai`ian tradition, they got lei-ed, straight away!

They had lost a day due to a broken windscreen - sort-of a compelling thing to get fixed, I would say.

After we got them back to Waikiki, we popped down to Tony Roma's [down-side, ova de-ah!] for a bite to eat, then called in at the Ala Moana Shopping Centre. The most significant (outside of family) thing I noticed there was the proximity of the Microsoft Store to the Apple Store. Well, that, and the number of people in the Apple Store: it was busy! There were quite a few people in the Microsoft Store too, but judging by the colour of their shirts, almost all of them were staff! I mentioned to Derek my impression: the others were people asking directions to the Apple Store.

Finally, we eventually meandered down to Waikiki beach:

The magic is still there:

We frolicked in the foam:

... gazed at the sunset:

...and even found a bit of romance...

We're off to a great start!

06- An Interesting Longest Day

Sunday

(You're meant to hear that metallic ting-ting like on "Law and Order" when you see the day-of-the-week as header)

We were at the airport with time to spare. Quite to my surprise, we found ourselves aboard an Airbus_330 instead of a Boeing_737-800.
Well, this is more like!
Makes sense, an A330, going over huge ocean expanses like a trip to Hawai`i. Reasonable of Fiji Airway, I thought. As it turned out, the A330 was only for our shorter leg to Nadi (pronounced 'Nandee'). Our stay there was not all that long. They were renovating the airport, so things looked a bit topsy-turvy... apparently, it also affected some of the air-traffic control systems, as we were delayed at least a half-hour or more before we finally found ourselves in the air over Fiji, on our way to Honolulu in...

...a Boeing 737-800.

It seemed like the longest flight of my life, even though it was only a bit over 7 hours. Did not sleep at all... Julia did, others did, I couldn't. What a relief when we finally landed on runway 4R (to my surprise... I expected 8L, for some reason).

One last hurtle: getting to our accommodations. We'd gotten through customs, gotten our bags, headed to the front of the taxi queue ... and I had to load our bags into the boot of the taxi myself, as the driver was this frail little auntie. We start driving off and she asks our destination.
"Niu Street."
"Where is Niu Street?"
"Waikiki?"

I was gobsmacked. I'd seen everything, now: a taxi driver who wanted directions to the destination. After all the weird stuff that had happened up to that point, I finally cracked... this was the last straw. I'm afraid I lost it a bit with this unfortunate ancient, who felt perfectly justified of accusing me of leading her astray because I mentioned 'Aloha Tower' - which was on the way - instead of simply saying it was the 'Hawai`ian Monarch'. I had no idea it was the 'Hawai`ian Monarch' we were meant to head for till we finally pulled up at the door.

We paid her - sans tip, I might add, "get to know your GPS, lady!" - and sat listening to techno-rock belching out from the nightclub under the 'Hawai`ian Monarch' until Julia insisted I ring this guy (who said he'd "be there" at 3:30AM) ... and did finally let us into our penthouse suite at four in the morning:

...
and so, we saw this out the window the next day!

Yeah, pretty cool, but not anywhere near as cool as finally picking up Nanny, Jackie and Derek at the airport... not the next day, but the day after.

05- A Delight of a Wedding

Saturday

I've been in New Zealand twice before, but never in CBD. The taxi ride from the airport to CBD struck me as a bit of padding-the-bill, but perhaps the reason the driver went off the motorway, sat in the worst line ever for 45 minutes, only to get back on a motorway that was moving quite well was to avoid some building-site slowdown that we didn't know about.
Yeah, that would be it.

Our accommodations were, to be charitable, whimsical. The design was pure bloke: multiple bits of sports memorabilia graced the walls, but there were no mirrors anywhere, and the toilet was out on the landing next to the lifts. Clearly, a guy's idea of a finished product, with no feminine input required, thankyou. The parallel fluorescent ceiling lights were Oh! so "I'm really an Office".

That whole accommodation needed a re-think and a facelift.

Good job Steph and Lister were just up the road, next to the Sky Tower:

... so that Julia could do her makeup and hair. We headed up there after I had my little interview with a GP about the care and feeding of this horrid horse-fly bite that had been making my life miserable the past few days. At this point, I was actually feeling better, so no antibiotics and just a bit of antihistamine and it's all good.

Lister looked incredibly suave and successful, and Steph essentially glowed. They are lovely parents, those two!

Another taxi -- in two minds whether hiring a car might not have been cheaper, after all -- headed us all out to Allely Winery:

What a Venue!

What an event!

How relaxed it all was!

And what a great party!

Brendan was all boy (as he does):

Julia was loads of fun:

Lister and Steph were elegant (as always):

... and of course the girls were gorgeous:

Jenna had chosen an absolutely stunning dress... she was incredibly beautiful!

The food was amazing. The event: outstanding. Kiwis are lovely, friendly, easy-going people. We felt very much at home.

Us oldies finally decided it was time to let the revellers carry on and for us to get some shut-eye: we still had a long trip ahead of us.

I'm only grateful that there's no piccies of me on this.

04- The Holiday Begins

Friday

Some of my favourite moments of going on holidays is having a bite to eat in the international airport terminal prior to departure. You've checked your bags and you've got plenty of time to go through the security check-in, so you tend to treat yourself to something you would never do otherwise. In our case, it wasn't the mocha and muffin or ham-and-croissant, however... whilst we did have a mocha, the real treat was getting a hug from Hannah and Steph, and sort-of high-fiving Brendan and Lister. Steph looked serene (as she does), Hannah was keeping a close eye on Brendan, who was being hilariously 'boy':

03- Before We Left

Wednesday

In any event, in a nutshell, here's a quick synopsis: the story of weird misadventures sort of started on Wednesday, where I was trying to quickly do the last bit of washing before the “big rain” set in just prior to our departure on holidays, I was bitten by a horsefly on the right ankle. I have been bitten in the past before – one remote instance was remarkable in that it grew into a severe systemic reaction necessitating antibiotics to clear it up – but I'd been bitten since then without any such consequences.

Thursday

This bite, however, did the nasty: I was really crook all day Thursday with shivers, sweats and general malaise. Oddly enough, I didn't put it down to being sequelae to the bite until the night we were meant to leave, perhaps because not every bite has such a dire outcome. When I finally left work, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed, which I did. When I finally awoke, it was raining a lot, although there wasn't much wind. I took some Nurofen and after a shower, tried to finish packing. As it was, I forgot to pack additional lenses (for video and images) and couldn't find the power plug converter thingies. 

I'm pretty sure anyone who travels regularly by now has this little cache of converters which suddenly go into hiding when any talk of going on a trip occurs.

Julia decided to stay in a hotel near the airport Thursday night – as opposed to us driving down Friday morning early – because of the unpredictable nature of Cyclone Marcia and the effect the cyclone would have on the roads and traffic: a wise move. Our noble friend Peyman – who is like a son to us – accompanied us to the airport and drove the car back to the house in Redland Bay, where he was going to house-sit in our absence. 

Although the night was a short one, the sleep was a good one, and I felt much better Friday morning.