Pretty Pictures Pt. 4

Here's the last batch of Hawaii pictures from my aunt:









Man, I really do want to go back. I'm feeling so in need of another vacation now. Preferably somewhere I'm not allergic to the local plant life.

Pretty Pictures Pt. 3

Yup, it's more Hawaii pictures from my aunt, this time featuring some of the native wildlife. Also lava.

Pretty Pictures, Pt. 2

More Hawaii pictures from my aunt! She took a lot of good ones, so I figured I'd post them a few at a time. Here's the current batch:

More Pretty Pictures

My dad recently reminded me that I was going to post some more Hawaii pictures. So, here's a few more that my aunt sent me. Gosh, what a pretty place! I want to go back now.









More to come later, probably.

It's Meeeee!

I meant to post some of these sooner, but I've been busy. Plus, my internet was down for two days. Fun times!

Anyway, some more pictures from my aunt. The one thing lacking from my previous posts on my Hawaii trip, I think, was pictures with me in them. So here's a few, just to document the fact that, yes, I really was there:

Zippity Doo Dah!

I just got a couple of discs in the mail from my aunt with a whole bunch of photos from our Hawaii trip, including the ones taken of me riding the zipline. Of course, I couldn't not share them! So...

Here I am all excited and ready to go! Or possibly all finished and happy to have had the experience. One or the other:



Mid-flight:



And coming in for a landing:



Man, that was fun.

She sent me a lot of other pictures she took, too, some of which are just gorgeous. I'll probably share some more later. I wouldn't want to overwhelm you with all the awesomeness at once.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 13

And now, the thrilling conclusion of My Hawaiian Vacation!

Our last day in Hawaii was a very long day, thanks to the fact that our plane didn't leave until after 9 PM. Note to self: never, ever again say, "Yeah, you go ahead and make the travel arrangements. I'm cool with whatever." You will end up booked on a red-eye flight, which is not a pleasant experience for someone who is a) currently on a sleep schedule that involves waking up at very early hours in the morning, and b) completely and utterly incapable of sleeping on a plane. Aaargh. Still, I can't complain too much, because it allowed us to squeeze in what turned out to be one of the absolute highlights of the whole trip: a snorkeling expedition to Molokini. (We had wanted to do it the day before, but they weren't able to schedule us then.)

Molokini is a partially sunken, reef-encrusted crater off the coast of Maui, and there are just no words for how amazing an experience it was to snorkel there. The water was unbelievably, impossibly clear and absolutely teeming with fish. And then, just when I thought I was having the most unbeatable underwater experience of my life, we packed up and moved on to somewhere even more amazing, where we had the opportunity to swim up close and personal with sea turtles. Lots of sea turtles. They weren't shy, either; one of them nearly ran into me on his way up to the surface. They're fascinating animals that before this trip existed for me only in nature documentaries and aquariums, and getting to swim face-to-face with them was incredibly cool, and well worth the price of being exhausted and salt-encrusted on the plane going home.

I have no pictures from this experience, alas, as my camera does not function underwater. My aunt's friend did have an underwater camera, though. Maybe I can get some pictures from her later on. If so, I will be sure to share them with you.

And that's it! The end! I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog posts about whatever the heck I'm usually posting about.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 12

After all that non-stop dawn-to-dusk activity, a certain level of exhaustion started to set in, so the next day or two were blissfully low-key. Well, low-key for some of us, anyway. As previously mentioned, my aunt and her friend did get up in the middle of the night to watch the sun rise from the top of Haleakala. And she was thoughtful enough to send us sleepy-heads a picture:



There's some sort of interesting optical effect going on there, clearly, but don't ask me what it is.

Otherwise, let's see... We did some shopping, although I was disappointed to find that the large bookstore in Lahaina that my guidebook recommended had closed. (A moment of silence, please, for the vanishing American booksellers.) And I finally had the chance to do something I'd been longing for from the start of the trip: lounging around on a poolside chair with a drink in one hand and a trashy novel in the other. Ahh! Adventures are fun, after all, but sometimes you just need some relaxation. Isn't that part of what vacations are for?

We also spent more time at the beach, of course. Unlike the hotel on the Big Island, the one in Maui was located on a sandy beach you could swim at. Well, sort of. There was a very strong undertow that made going too far out inadvisable, but that was fine by me, as I'm not really much of a swimmer, anyway. Mostly, I frolicked in the surf. Frolicking being yet another part of what vacations are for.

In fact, here's a picture of the beach behind the hotel. I snapped this one quickly with my phone camera, somewhere between bouts of lounging and frolicking, when a friend e-mailed me complaining she was bored and stressed, and asked me to "send pictures of Hawaii or something."



We finished up our last full day with a sunset dinner cruise, which was also pleasantly relaxing. I do love the sunsets in Hawaii. Not that ours here in New Mexico aren't also spectacular, but they are notably lacking in ocean.

All of this sounds like an anticlimactic note to end on. But, wait! We're not done yet! Stay tuned tomorrow for exciting last-minute underwater adventures!

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 11

A while back I alluded to a road trip we took on Maui. Well, this is it! The "Road to Hana!" This is a little road that winds through rural Maui to the small town of Hana. When I say "winds," believe me, I mean it winds. Lot and lots of tight, blind curves, often with steep drop-offs into the ocean on one side of you. And when I say "little," I mean that along much of its length it's maybe a lane-and-a-half wide. Often less. And when I say "road," well, in places the conditions are so bad that the rental car companies don't want you to take their vehicles there, although, hey, what they don't know don't hurt 'em. Basically, it's sort of a scary-ass road. Although I think the worst part was at the end of it, going up hills too steep to see over, with nowhere to get over to if you could see something coming, while the sun shone down at exactly the right angle to completely blind the driver and everyone in the car every time we climbed one. I'm just really glad I wasn't the one driving, although the person who was handled it all like a champ.

If you brave it, though, you're rewarded with a zillion little hidden scenic spots, which are perhaps all the more beautiful because it was a tiny bit of an adventure to reach them.

You've got rocky seashore:



Waterfalls:



So many waterfalls!

Black-sand beaches:



I rolled my pants up and splashed around a bit there. It was great.

Lush rainforest:



There was a nice little trail you could walk through the rainforest, in fact, which was one of the first stops we made.

Wildlife:



That's a mongoose. Those things were everywhere! Also, feral chickens.

And secluded mountain pools:



Well, all right, those weren't all that secluded, as you can judge by the tourists in the picture. Still very pretty though.

Even with all of that, we still didn't see everything. We had an audio guide to the road that we played as we went, which was sometimes helpful and sometimes, well, not -- although it was often unhelpful in amusing ways -- and occasionally it would tell us to stop for something we could not for the life of us find and didn't want to risk trying to turn around for. As it happens, this was pretty much a good thing, as we saw just exactly as much as we had daylight to see, since we left the hotel before dawn and were just finishing up the road at sunset. Believe me, that is not a road you want to be on after dark, and there's pretty much no way to get off it once you're on.

All-in-all, it was a very fun and satisfying day, and if you're ever on the island, I recommend it. Whatever your rental car company says.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 10

After the ziplining, we drove up Haleakala. Yes, that's right, yet another volcano, albeit a considerably less lava-y one. Some marvelous views from up there, too:







Honestly, couldn't you just look at those vistas all day? Well, OK, maybe not all day. Apparently Haleakala helped me to determine the limits of just how far I am willing to go for a great view when my aunt decided to drive up to the summit for sunrise a couple of days later. (I think it was a couple of days. I mentioned how time all blends together on vacation, right?) Sunrise from the mountaintop is indeed supposed to be spectacular, but it's also early. When you factor in a long drive to the mountain from our hotel, the winding drive up to the summit, and the need to get there before the parking lot fills up with other people who have the same idea, that translates to getting out of bed at something like 2:30 in the morning. Now, I may be willing to free-fall down a zipline, hand over something close to a week's pay for a helicopter ride, or trudge up what feels like half a million stairs to get a good view of what Hawaii has to show me, but I draw the line at getting out of bed at 2:30 AM. That's not morning. That's bedtime. So I missed the sunrise, and I can't quite bring myself to regret it. But never mind. It looked plenty good enough to me during the day!

Haleakala, like Mauna Kea on the Big Island (which we didn't visit but did fly past) is also home to astronomical observatories. Me being me, of course I had to snap a picture of that, too:

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 9

The next awesome thing we did on Maui was ziplining. In case you're unfamiliar with this, it involves putting you in a harness, hooking you up to a cable, and sending you zipping through space high above the floor of the rainforest. I think the biggest appeal here is supposed to be in the thrill of flying down the line very fast, but personally, I really wished it could have been a lot slower. Not because the speed was scary -- although it was a little bit, just on the last and longest line -- but because the views from up there were so wonderful. I never quite felt like I had time to take it all in as I would have liked to. Still, it was tons of fun. And we even got my mother to try it, which if you know my mother is pretty surprising.

I have no pictures of this at the moment, alas. I figured if I brought my camera with me, the odds of it ending up at the bottom of a gorge in the middle of the rain forest were unacceptably high. There is a whole disc full of pictures that exists somewhere, though, as they send a photographer along with you, and we did get copies afterward. I think maybe my aunt has it. When I get my hands on them, I'll be sure to post some here, and you can all see what I look like while airborne.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 8

Apologies to anybody who may have been anticipating a regularly scheduled Hawaii post yesterday. I was busy. Admittedly, mostly I was busy sleeping, but when you work night shifts, you do not knock that as a useful activity.

So, where were we? I think I was just about finished with the Big Island, actually, so onwards to Maui! And practically the first thing we did on Maui was to attend the Old Lahaina Luau, which featured a terrific spread of traditional Hawaiian food. This included a pig roasted -- or, more accurately, steamed -- in an underground oven called an imu. And based on the results, I don't know why we're not all cooking pork that way. Mmmm.

And, yes, I did try the poi. Poor poi. It was generally not well-received. I actually didn't think it was nearly as repulsive as most people seemed to. It was sort of aggressively bland, with a hard-to-pin-down but faintly unpleasant undertaste. But I could imagine getting used to it if necessary, and I'd take it over vegemite any day. Sorry, Aussies! Although, actually, we might all have been doing it a terrible injustice -- the poi, that is, not the vegemite -- as I'm told it's much more palatable if you eat it immediately after it's made.

The luau also featured dancing. Lots and lots of traditional Hawaiian hula dancing, from various historical periods. This came with some commentary about the history and social importance of the dance, so as well as being entertaining and fairly impressive -- seriously, I'm not sure I realized it was possible to move your hips that way -- it was even sort of educational.

I didn't take many pictures at the luau, but here's one of what I think were the first set of dancers. (My apologies for whoever's elbow that is in the corner of the photo. All I know is, it's not mine.)



The people in the foreground there are sitting on the floor, traditional-style, but most of us had chairs. Funnily enough, the old ladies I was attending with didn't even bring up the cushion-on-the-floor option.

Oh, and this also happens to be where I discovered that I like mai tais. Although apparently the luau has really good mai tais -- even the Frommer's guide mentions them specifically -- and now I'm spoiled. The one I had at the hotel beach bar later was disappointing by comparison.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 7

Still speaking of volcanoes... The day after the helicopter ride, we went to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park for a ground-level view of things. And there was, indeed, a lot to see, including lava fields:





And a natural volcanic stone arch, which will probably not last more than another couple of years:



And the smoking caldera, which we didn't get a great view of from the air due to, you know, not actually wanting to get too close:



Actually, that's not smoke. It's steam. Which was pouring out from vents all over the place. Some of them you could walk right up to and stand in, if you wanted to engage in the most awesome example of overkill known to humanity and use a volcano to clear your sinuses.



Want a dramatic illustration of the fact that this is, indeed, an active volcano? How's this: there is a whole section of the national park that is no longer open to visitors, because lava came and covered up the road. Like this:



It must be extremely difficult trying to maintain a national park in an place that nature is not yet done making.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 6

Speaking of volcanoes, here's another very cool thing Hawaii has: black sand beaches.



The "sand" is actually really course and pebbly, and, yes, it is pulverized volcanic rock. Here's a close-up:



Um, yeah, that's all for today. I've been kind of busy.

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 5

Now we come to one of the big highlights of the trip: an hour-and-a-half-long helicopter ride over the Big Island. This was a lot of money, but whatever my credit card debt ends up being next month, it was worth it, because this is the most stunningly beautiful way to see the island you can possibly imagine. We got an aerial guided tour as we drifted past waterfalls, dipped into beautiful remote valleys, and hovered over volcanoes. Correction, make that active volcanoes. Well, one active volcano, anyway. We were told by the guide that in the thirteen years he'd been doing these flights, he'd put that day's lava-flow activity from Kilauea somewhere in the top five. Of course, that guy doubtless has reason to want to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth, but the local paper agreed; it was indeed being pretty darned active. And if you look at Volcanoes National Park's "What's Going on with the Volcano?" page, you might see a note about interesting activity starting on September 22nd. We flew over on the morning of the 23rd.

Unfortunately, most of the photos I tried to take from the helicopter didn't come out very well, mostly because certain people not in our party did not follow the instructions about wearing dark clothes to minimized reflections on the windows. But that's OK, because 1) there's a DVD of the whole thing somewhere that someone is supposed to make me a copy of eventually, and 2) the pictures I took of the most exciting part came out beautifully. Look! Lava! Actual flowing, glowing lava!

My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 4

And so, on to Hawaii, the "Big Island"! We stayed at a beach resort hotel there, and I liked it a lot. It didn't have a swimming beach, being rocky rather than sandy, but the views, including the view from our room, were terrific (as the sunset picture a posted a few days ago attests). You could also sometimes see turtles out on the rocks. Here's another picture. I think I took this one from our balcony:



There are also some old ruins out there that the resort is working on restoring. From what I saw (from my admittedly tourist's-eye view), there's a very strong interest in preserving and sharing traditional Hawaiian culture in modern Hawaii, which is good to see.

One of the things I really liked about this place is that the lobby, the bar, the dining area, and practically everything else was as open-air as possible. (This was true to a lesser extent of a lot of other places, too, including, most startlingly, the Kona airport.) The temperature in Hawaii, it seems, is so nice, and so consistent, that you don't even need walls. So you could just sit there in the bar enjoying the breeze and watching the tide come in two feet away. It was so pleasant, I didn't even mind when a bird flew in at breakfast and stole some of my scrambled eggs.

I'm honestly having trouble remembering exactly what we did on the Big Island when, but the date on my photos suggests that the first day we got there was when we stopped at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, or the Place of Refuge, a historically important site in traditional Hawaiian culture. This is where people who had broken the law or who were refugees from war could come to seek sanctuary and receive absolution from the priests. (Although I admit I'm probably simplifying that horribly. My knowledge of Hawaiian history is still sadly sketchy.) Among other things, there were very impressive carved wooden statues, which you unfortunately can't really see all that well here, because the lighting isn't great. Still kind of striking, though:

What I Did On My Hawaiian Vacation, Pt. 3

I'm going to have to abandon this "On day X we did Y" format here pretty quickly. You know how it is when you're on vacation. You enter this weird liminal state where you no longer have any idea what day it is or how long you've been doing any of this, and it all just becomes even more of a blur when you try to look back on it afterward. So, this bit is what we did during the rest of our stay on Oahu, which was about another day and a half.

First, we went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, a beautiful, reef-encrusted cove. It's actually a protected nature park; they make you watch a nine-minute video explaining how not to molest the coral or the wildlife before they even let you get in the water. It was very pleasant, and I remember being impressed at the time by the clear water and the number of fish, but I'm afraid it got rather badly eclipsed by the unbelievably awesome snorkeling trip we made on the last day of our vacation, so it's faded in my memory a bit. Sorry, Hanauma Bay! Really, you were lovely!

I think we spent most of the rest of that day in the car. My aunt, apparently, really likes driving, and she had this idea in mind that we were going to circumnavigate every island we visited so that she could see everything, OMG! There are a few problems with this, though, namely: 1) It's very time-consuming. These aren't exactly huge islands, but we're still talking hundreds of miles of coastline, often on roads where the speed limit isn't terribly high. 2) It's not in fact possible, as the roads don't generally go all the way around the coast. Little things like mountains and military bases tend to get in the way. And 3) You don't actually get to see very much from a car. So I'm afraid that by the time we were halfway around Oahu, there was a little bit of a rebellion brewing against this plan. (All's well that ends well, though, as we had a road trip experience later on Maui that left everybody feeling satisfied. More on that when we get there.)

We did at least get out of the car at various points to stop at scenic overlooks, pause briefly at beach parks, and make one rather sweaty hike out to look at some old Hawaiian petroglyphs -- rock carvings -- which were rather different from the ones we have here in the Southwest.

After that, I think there were drinks with little umbrellas in them. It's funny. I am generally never one to go for the more girly option on anything, and I am also not much of a drinker, to say the least. Usually, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of alcoholic beverages I consume in a year. But when I'm on vacation, suddenly I'm all about the slushy tropical umbrella drinks. Mmmm, mango and rum!

Then, at some point before we left the island, my mother and I walked down to the famous Waikiki Beach, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. Waikiki isn't really the place to go to admire Hawaii's natural beauty; it seems to be more the place for the hot young things to admire each other's tans and surfboards. Here's what it looks like, though, if you're curious:



It's actually not even a natural beach. They had to cart the sand in from a different island. Unfortunately, I seem to be lacking in pictures of Hawaii's real beaches, which is a shame because... Well, let me put it this way. You know that iconic, stereotypical image of an unspoiled tropical beach, with the warm white-gold sand and the perfectly placed palm trees, and the water so clear and blue that it sparkles? I used to think that image was kind of fake-y. Idealized, at the very least. But it's not. Those beaches exist, and they exist in Hawaii, and I swear, I could spend days at a time just staring at them. I think possibly I was just too awestruck to remember I had a camera.

What I Did On My Hawaiian Vacation, Part 1

All right, writing up this trip for the edification of all you loyal readers is probably going to take me forever, so I guess I might as well get started!

Our first stop in Hawaii was on the island of Oahu, where we stayed in Waikiki. We started off our first full day there with a visit to Pearl Harbor. Which was maybe an odd choice, as it's not exactly a happy, vacation-y spot. I hadn't realized this, but the U.S.S. Arizona memorial is quite literally a graveyard; the bodies of the sailors who went down with her were left to rest where she sank. The mood is appropriately somber, and the experience of visiting the site is really quite moving. They also have some very good little museums there on shore, which are well worth a visit if you're at all interested in that particular period of history. The site is free to visit, if you ever get the chance, but I heartily recommend spending a few bucks for the audio tour, which includes, among other things, commentary from people who were actually there. (I've got no pictures worth sharing from that particular stop, though, sorry.)

Then, in a complete change of pace, we visited the Dole Pineapple Plantation, where you can ride around on a little train past working pineapple fields, as well as samples of a few of their other crops conveniently planted by the train tracks for the admiration of tourists. This includes a little narration about how the crops are grown and about the history of Dole in Hawaii, although, unsurprisingly, it leaves out all the more unsavory bits. (And thank you, Sarah Vowell, for telling me about those.) It's thus rather less interesting than it theoretically might have been, but feed me enough amazingly fresh pineapple and heavenly pineapple ice cream, and I can be induced to cheerfully put up with your corporate propaganda for a couple of hours. Man, that stuff was good. I ate tons of pineapple while I was in Hawaii, and I am still craving more.

They also had what's billed as the world's largest maze. I actually found this kind of creepy, initially, having seen/read one too many fantasy stories, in which labyrinths are never a good thing. They're especially not a good thing for someone with absolutely no sense of direction. Eventually we gave up on solving the thing, but the attempt was at least entertaining.

I don't have many pics from this stop, either, but here's a picture of an adorable baby pineapple. I think this was some exotic red variety they don't usually grow in Hawaii.



Don't worry. There will be some very pretty pictures on the next trip post!