1998 Hawaii

Wednesday 12/02

Now I know why we don't make this trip very often. Besides the expense, there's that grueling trip. We left at 9:30 AM Eastern Time and arrived at 9:30 PM Hawaii Time. With the 5 hour time change, that's:

· 17 hours of travelling
· 4 airplanes and 5 airports
· 1 major rerouting made necessary by a late arrival (we watched our connecting flight roll away from the gate)
· 2 dreaded middle seats
· 3 naps by me
· 0 naps by Debbie
· 3 airplane meals (now that made it all worthwhile)

One thing we woulda done differently was to book the trip directly to Kauai from the mainland instead of going through Honolulu. We wound up missing Honolulu anyway, but only after the rerouting and some other dipsy-doodles.

Thursday 12/03

Some people were complaining about the huge waves caused by the wind and rain we were getting. But I thought they were swell. Sorry for the Horvath type joke. I'll try to restrain myself. The rain was on and off. When it was on, we could usually find a rainbow somewhere.

Our condo, the Kiahuna Plantation in the Poipu area of Kauai is the cat's meow. We've got lots of room and our garden view is beautiful; too bad there's a long walk to the beach and a longer one to the pool. We like watching (and feeding) the local birds. We made plans to cook lots of our meals in our kitchen. Here though, cooking is defined as pouring milk over the cereal, or slapping some lunchmeat on some bread to go with the Taro Chips and beer. We went out for our dinners. The little pet Gecko that lived in our kitchen didn't seem to mind our schedule.

Didn't do much but hang around this first day. We stayed around Poipu, and explored the ruins of a really nice hotel there called the Waiohai that we stayed at 13 years ago. Sort of like the Lost World of Jurassic Park. It had been done in by Hurricane Iniki. We walked to dinner at Brennecke's, which was still there.

Friday 12/04

"There's a Kamehameha!" is translated as "Stop the car; I want to see this." Perhaps some further explanation regarding that translation is in order. The State of Hawaii has erected signs on the roadsides to designate points of interest. The signs are little pictures of King Kamehameha I, who united all of the islands in the early 1800's. So now Debbie, and presumably all other automobile passengers in the state have only to point out the Kamehameha signs in order to instruct their drivers to stop. It works for us anyway. On every one of our trips.

The high winds and occasional rain forced a cancellation of our NaPali boat trip, so we drove to the western shore of the island, to see some beaches that we hadn't been to before. And of course stop at any Kamehameha's along the way. Polihale Beach is at the end of the road; the road stops there because that's where the NaPali cliffs begin - it's not possible to circle the island by car. Anyway, it (Polihale Beach) seemed more like the end of the earth. Although the high surf made it way too dangerous to swim, the beach was truly gorgeous. And remote! We walked for miles and saw only three other souls.

It turned out that we couldn't swim at any of the beaches, even those in the usually calm Poipu area, all due to the surf.

That evening we took in some local color by eating in a little bar in Lihue and then watching the "Festival of Lights" Parade. Yeah, it was a little dinky, but it was good, small-town fun.

Saturday, 12/05

We spent the entire day driving around the east and north side of the island, towards Hanalei. No magic dragons were spotted; if there had been any about, they would have had Kamehameha signs attached. The off and on rain was mostly on this time, so we couldn't see as much of the stunning scenery as we would have liked. But we'd been there before and still have the pictures to prove it. We did make a couple of stops that we hadn't before:

At the Kilauea Lighthouse Wildlife Sanctuary we saw several types of seabirds and watched some really huge waves hitting the sea cliffs below.

We also enjoyed the Guava Plantation, sampling different guava products and touring the gardens. We discussed starting up a Guava Wine operation there. It worked for Pineapple Wine on Maui.

On the way back we ate a Brennecke's again, and then walked across the street to the beach to see three endangered Hawaiian Monk Seals. Got really close - two were sleeping on the beach while the third one kept moving around to try to get comfortable.

Sunday, 12/06

The NaPali boat cruise was cancelled again due to wind, rain and waves. Things did seem to be improving, however.

We drove up to the Kalalau lookout. I really struggle to keep myself from taking pictures of the fantastic scenery - when I had taken the same scene years before. This time the main goal was to find some birds for Debbie to identify with her new Hawaii bird book. Found a few. But Brrrr. It was cold up there! We had a very nice picnic lunch in Kokee Park. We've been seeing at least one rainbow per day - today's was over the Kalalau Valley. On the way home we stopped at a butterfly plantation.

Monday, 12/07

We finally made it out on our NaPali boat, the NaPali Explorer. It was well worth the wait. The crew was super nice and helpful at pointing things out. And we had only 13 passengers, while they're geared for 30 or more. The cliffs were stunning and awesome as ever. Besides this boat trip, we have now hiked part of the Kalalau trail, saw the cliffs from the western beach, saw them a couple times from the Kalalau Lookout and flew over them by helicopter twice. Every time, however, we find something new. This time we saw:

· Several Green Sea Turtles, up close
· Spinner Dolphins (so called because they jammed with the Spinners back in the 70's) Oops. There I go again.
· Several caves, really close up. And in. With the boat.
· No whales. Oh well, we were just about a week too early.

I went snorkeling, but not for long. That water was just a bit too cold.

Riding the waves back made for a really exciting trip. Thank goodness for Dramamine.

Tuesday, 12/08

There were a few hours to kill in the morning/early afternoon before our flight to Molokai, so we drove to Wailea Falls and then to the Menehune Fish Pond. The Menehune are mythological little people that the Hawaiians believed built this and other fish ponds.

After the nice place on Kauai, the Molokai hotel, the Kaluakoi Villas was a disappointment. Another long walk to the beach/pool, noisy neighbors, no screen door to the lanai and plenty of bugs, Geckos and other creatures.

The surf was too rough to swim here as well.

Wednesday, 12/09

There are three ways to get down to the Kalaupapa Peninsula, where the leper colony was (and still is) and where the famous Father Damien brought order to the chaos in the 1800's. You can fly down in a small plane, take a mule ride, or hike. The peninsula is cut off from the rest of the island by 1700+ foot cliffs. The lepers were dumped off there since there was no way out for them.

Once on the peninsula, it is illegal to venture anywhere without a guide or a tour, since victims of Hansen's Disease, as it is now called, are the only residents, and they don't want visitors in any other fashion.

This all sounded like just the ticket for me and Debbie (really!), so away we went, hiking our way down.

Didn’t get too far. For one thing, we wound up following the mules. And since it was raining, the trail was extremely muddy. And the mud we were walking in wasn't just plain mud. The mules… Never mind.

It was too late to catch the plane, so instead of Kalaupapa this day we drove east along the southern shore to Halawa. Another trip that we had done before, but another one that was worth doing again, with more stunning scenery. We weren't allowed to walk across the private property to the remote waterfalls like we did 11 years back.

I had the best fish yet at the Molokai Pizza Café, which is just a little hole in the wall. Then for dessert we went over to Purdy's Natural Macadamia Nut Farm. Mr. Purdy himself, the owner and farmer, took us for the little tour and gave us some samples. It was fun and informative, but he must have used the word, "natural" 100 times.

Thursday, 12/10

"Are you aware that the passenger door is open?", I yelled, doing my best to stifle my panic. The pilot of the 6-seater, which had been rolling down the runway, reached over and yanked it closed just as the wheels were about to leave the ground. He yelled back something to the effect that that was the only way to get air into the cabin.

I knew it would be a quick trip and it was - only about 5 minutes. In fact, all the pilot really had to do is roll the plane off the cliff and hope to land it safely on the peninsula below. Scary, but quick.

Kalaupapa International Airport was fairly informal. It wasn't too busy during 45 minutes or so that we waited for our tour to pick us up. Not too busy in the sense that for a good part of the time, we 5 passengers were the only ones there at all.

Finally an old broken down school bus showed up. It had the words Damien Tours written on top. An old tall, but slightly bent over guy who seemed to look at people a little funny got out and took $30 cash from each of us. It turned out to be some of the best $60 we ever spent. The guy's name was Richard Marx, and we assume that he is one of the 45 remaining patients/residents. This is because he is the sheriff, judge, mayor and everything else, and only patients are allowed to live there. The patients are allowed to leave, but prefer to stay. After we picked up the ass-riders (as he called them), we were off, tooling around the peninsula.

We learned a lot about what life is like there today (there are no new cases; the youngest patient is 58), as well as what it was like in the 1800's. The place was a living hell until Father Damien and later a few others showed up to help put some order in place. Mr. Marx was an expert on Father Damien (following his footsteps all around Molokai and Belgium), on Hansen's Disease (appearing at the UN about it), and on the entire peninsula (where, as I said, he is the chief).

He wasn't too kind in his opinions about the National Park Service, including the new administrator, which run the place as a National Historical Site. Or about the Mule Riding company, which puts pressure on him to "stay on schedule".

We had a picnic lunch at what has to be the most beautiful picnic spot in the world - the site of Father Damien's St. Philomena Church, where we were on a low cliff, looking over the sea and the much higher cliffs and small islands off the coast.

The plane ride going back was much scarier than the one coming down. The first question was, would the plane make it up and over the cliff. Then it became, can the pilot make that little plane turn and actually fly into the wind? Somehow we made it.

Debbie and I were laughing about the whole scary incident while driving back home, when I noticed an earth mover, moving dirt on top of a cliff overlooking the road in front of us. I jokingly said, "I hope he doesn't move any of his dirt over the side" as I approached at 60 mph. Just then, Debbie yelled "STOP THE CAR!". I started braking, while asking why, and she yelled "BOULDER!". Then I saw it too. An Indiana Jones type of boulder was coming down the cliff towards the road just in front of us. Although we weren't yet directly below it when I came to a stop we were close. Then it started to occur to me that the boulder would hit the road and then roll down to where we were (and on top of us) anyway. I was trying to quickly think about backing back down the hill, when I saw the boulder and several smaller rocks strike a concrete barrier that was between the road and the cliff. It hit the top of the wall and fell back in towards the cliff. Meanwhile another car (another of the twelve or so that exist on Molokai) was approaching from the other way at a high rate of speed. I did the only thing I could: signal to him frantically with my headlights, but he just gave me a quizzical look as he went by. By that time the danger had ceased anyway. All of that happened in about 3 nanoseconds.

Friday, 12/11

It was "Bad Luck with Busses Day" for our first day on Oahu. First, we couldn't find the shuttle that's supposed to run from the airport to Waikiki, so we had to take a taxi. Then we tried to catch a public bus (their system is called, "TheBus") to go to Pearl Harbor. Maybe we were invisible, but the one we were supposed to get on passed us right up. We gave up on that one too.

There wasn't much to the Marathon Expo, compared to other such running events.

We had Chinese Dim Sum for lunch - a new experience for Debbie. Dinner was Chinese too - in an Italian/Chinese Restaurant. The Entertainment 99 discount messed them up so much that it took several of them a half hour to figure out our bill.

Were we bummed about any of this? Heck no! This was Waikiki, and we were hanging loose. And we had a real hotel (the Outrigger Waikiki in case you're keeping score) with both an accessible and swimmable beach and pool. Also by this time it was finally hot and sunny most of the time. Somewhere along the day we actually went a day or two where we didn't get to see at least one rainbow,

Saturday, 12/12

Debbie had expressed her reservations, but we made it all the way to Pearl Harbor on TheBus with no problems. Like Kalaupapa, this was a very sobering experience. A short film had everyone teary-eyed, and then they took us by boat to the Arizona Memorial. It was serene. When we returned, a veteran of the battle told us of his experiences. I think that that was the most interesting part of all.

TheBus ride back included some great theater, consisting of some very interesting characters. The most interesting character of all was one that we met later on - a little old Chinese guy who operated (you guessed it) another Italian Restaurant.

Sunday 12/13

I awoke at 3:00 am and was out the door by 3:30, heading for the race. Debbie and I laughed because at that time we could hear the toilets flushing all over the hotel (they were those loud kind), indicating morning constitutionals for all the runners. Debbie watched me run by the hotel at 5:45 and then met me at the finish at Kapiolani Park. There sure were lots of Japanese banners and tents there.

We lunched at the cheap little Chinese place that we used to frequent 15 years ago. Same old hole in the wall with good prices and good food. Then we walked back to the park for the awards ceremony. I learned that I was not the winner.

The dinner cruise that evening was very nice. Good food and a very nice sunset. We watched for the "green flash" of light that's emitted as the sun sinks into the ocean. I saw some green; Debbie didn’t.

Monday 12/14

Just hung around the beach and the pool. Funny to see so many people hobbling around. 'Course I was hobbling a bit myself, too.

We had a good lunch at the Top of Waikiki Tower, and then a fantastic supper at Nick's Fishmarket, which deservedly enjoys an excellent reputation.

Tuesday, 12/15

Surprise! The trip back home was actually easier than the one going out. Go figure. Anyway, we're home now. And we've got rainbow withdrawal. And I haven't seen a Kamehameha in a while…