I love turtles. The first time I saw one underwater while diving, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen (some exageration). Seat turtles just seem to fly effortlessly through the water, like a bird on a warm, thermal day. One of the reasons I’m in Hawaii is because Sean mentioned one day, a few years ago, that when he was in Hawaii he saw tons of turtles. I’d love to be diving and see a whole pack of them flying through the water. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave Hawaii without that dream being realized. I also haven’t gotten a single photo of a turtle. I’ve seen 4 turtles over the last 2 weeks. 1 was my very first time I went in the water 2 weeks ago. We were at that first beach park in Lahaina and it was my first time snorkeling and I left my camera on land as I wasn’t certain of snorkeling, let alone snorkeling with a massive camera on hand. I was just floating about in this fairly uninteresting section of beach when ey came flying into my view. I followed em for a few minutes before I got distracted by some scuba divers below me and lost em. The second one was in a beach cove at some tiny little beach on the south end of Maui, south of Kihei. We had just parked and put out lunch down on the grass when some people appeared out of a mass of broken trees and mentioned a turtle sunbathing on some rocks nearby. Ey was just sitting there on the rocks, having a great day. I walked away to get my camera, and apparently ey decided that was a good moment to slowly turn and drift into the ocean again. Damn turtle. The last two were at a restaurant named Ponds, in Hilo. Miranda and I were having lunch. The place was built up on stilts, and they had a pond directly underneath them. There was a huge number of koi in the pond, as well as two turtles who were alternatively swimming around, or sunning on a rock. Though, these were the types of turtles with claws instead of wings. So yeah, no turtles. Next time I come here, I’m going to tell the dive master specifically that I want a pod of turtles to appear in front of my camera lens. Also a humpback whale. This place is just lousy with them. Throw a breadroll and hit 5 of them and a baby.
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Blog setup
I tried out a new posting setup this time, as opposed to what I did in California. There I had brought my laptop and done all of this work through that machine. This time, I used only my tablet.
A few months ago I had picked up a folding keyboard and a USB OTG cable. (And a lot of other stuff to make my tablet more usable, none of which worked…). Because the Kindle Fire has no bluetooth, it had to be a USB keyboard. I didn’t want one of those rolling ones, because I like the tactile feedback of a real keyboard. The USB OTG cable is great, because it turns the little mini-USB port on the tablet into a full USB port (and other, more technical things). This little cable lets me plug in my keyboard, and also plug in the camera to transfer photos to the tablet. So the process is – plug in the camera, transfer the days photos over. Edit them using the Jellybean Gallery editing software (surprisingly good). Plugin the keyboard, use WordPress for Android to write the post and add the photos. Hope I have wifi so I can publish it, or I can save a local draft to be published when I find the wifi. It’s a pretty decent setup. I get to leave the bulky laptop at home, the blogging works because it’s a full keyboard, and the photo editing isn’t bad due to decent software. There are a few significant issues though. The photo import replaces the time on the photo with the import time (ridiculous), so the photos are in a random order per transfer. It works out, because I transfer each days photos at the end of the day, but it’s hard to keep the blog posts well-ordered because of this. The Kindle Fire only has 5.5gb of storage space, so I’m running out of room at the end of the trip. The keyboard isn’t powered, which is nice because it means I don’t have to recharge it. But it’s a problem because it looks like at 60% battery on the Kindle, it decides that it can’t power external devices anymore (ridiculous) and stops powering the keyboard. So I have to keep the Fire fully powered to use the keyboard at the end of the day. I’m thinking of buying a Nexus 7 when I get home. More storage space, smaller profile, bluetooth so I had more keyboard choices possible.
Last full day in Hawaii
We tried to do a bunch of things, but life conspired against us. No photos today. Having said that, this was a fun day!
We woke up and slept in until 7am local time. (This should make adjusting to Vancouver time much easier…) Cluck-cluck, our resident chicken, decided to try her hand at cawing this morning and woke me up. Thankfully, as yesterday was a gong-show of altitude and pressure changes, I passed out last night quickly. As Miranda said “I was mid-sentence when I heard you fall asleep.” It was nice.
Packed our stuff up – it had been scattered around the room this time pretty badly. John, our host, knocked on our window-door and told us that he’d gone easy on us, but that I was going to have to learn how to pick papaya’s. He had a long stick with a basket on the end, and on the end of the basket was a claw. You reach up into the papaya tree with the stick and pick at the papaya with the claw and it falls into the basket. Genius!
I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but “Dolphin View” was (and still is…) my favourite place we stayed at on the Big Island. John talked to much, but he was attentive and didn’t bug me like Jacqueline in Honokaa did. He is a middle aged hippy, with a house that he’s split up into 3-4 rental units, and a small property filled with fruit trees that he picks regularly. Not a bad life, really.
Miranda and I took off, only to stop at the nearest intersection to figure out where on earth we were going next. We wanted to head south to some beaches there, but we also wanted to rent SUPs or kayaks and head out on the water. The book implied that the best place for this was downtown Kona, so we headed there.
Had some lunch at Bubba Gump’s (fried shrimp, garlic shrimp, cajun shrimp…) and then walked along the beach until we came to a place that looked like it might help us out. Went in, and we were informed that the State had given a surf advisory and that if anyone was going to rent equipment, it was their heads. She recommended a place near our hotel that might be good though, as it didn’t have the surf breaking on its shore. We took a long walk back to our car and headed down that way.
No place to be found, we decided to check into our hotel early. Our room wasn’t available yet, so we started to hand out bags away and get changed for some water fun and…our room was ready just as we were walking away from the hotel. When we were done organizing, we just went down to the pool instead.
“Done organizing” is a euphemism. This place is nice, real nice, but we had a ton of things go wrong. It’s a maze of buildings and pools and stairwells and gantries, such that we had a hell of a time finding our room. We thought we might check out the spa, but we couldn’t find any information on it. So we go to use the telephone, but that’s broken. Miranda walks back to the front desk and they send a person us. The internet is working for me, but not for her, so she calls the front desk (phone has been fixed) and they shunt her off to a person to fix it. We’re both pretty irritated at this point. Pool time.
The pool is nice. There are waiters around bringing drinks, it’s big and the water slide is pretty decent.
Back in the room, we take a shower and the bath tub drain won’t open. Takes a person to pull the mechanism apart to get it to drain. That’s 3 failures in this one room, not including the maze to get here (which is a big fail in my mind).
The restaurant downstairs is nice and has a good view of sunset (I don’t think any place in this town has a bad view of it), but they can’t seat us until…7:45. It’s about 5:30. What the hell? It turns out that the restaurant is mostly “bar seating” with a smaller menu and you can sit where ever you like. Totally weird, but we had a decent (somewhat tasteless) pizza and some spring rolls and watched the sun go down again.
Back at our hotel room, playing some Agricola again and writing this blog post. 🙂
Tomorrow we’re planning to shop a bit, have breakfast in bed and then…on an airplane at 10:45pm. Looking forward to seeing my cats again!
Mauna Kea
After the snorkel cruise, we came back, showered and got our stuff together for freezing temperatures.
First we went downtown for sushi, which was closed. It was 3pm and we were trying to get some food in us before we started the long drive to the mountain. Ended up eating at Thai Rin instead, which was good food but less than stellar service.
Drove along highway 190, also called the Hawaii Belt Road. This was a long and straight road, and well maintained. 5
2kms (Siri tells me) later, we turned right onto Saddle Road. This road has a lot of bad press. Apparently it was originally built by the military, and so was very poorly maintained for many years. As well, it rises 6,500kms in total and drives between both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Coming from Kona, the first bit of it was a little dodgy. As Miranda commented “we only have the budget to re-pave half the road, so we’ll do the middle”. About 20 minutes later though, it turns into a lovely well maintained highway. That happens to go up and down like a rollercoaster. Put your hands up, it’s more fun! (At one point on our way back we both had a moment – “why is the road on our left…” *panic* no, it’s ok, it just swerves sharply left…)
40kms later, we turned left onto Mauna Kea Access Rd. 6 miles later…we’re at the Visitor Information Center at 9,000 feet elevation. Despite the weather forecast, there are clouds. We get directed to a small trail that leads to a decent sunset location and start the hike up.
This was the most brutal hike I’ve ever been on. Not because it was steep or rocky, but because of the altitude. It was somewhat steep, and a little rocky, but we had to stop every 20 feet and let my poor heart and lungs catch up. Very strange feeling. We made it to the top and it was completely socked in. That’s 0 for 2, Hawaiian mountains…
Hung out for a bit hoping, but eventually walked back down to the VIS. Sat in the car and played Carcassonne for a bit while true dark set in and we tried to get some good star photos. The best spot, however, was partially being faced by the parking lot so we kept getting car headlights and people and it wasn’t great.
We drove back down the mountain, saying that we’d stop and find a place to take some more. We found a decent spot, turned off the highway, got out of the car and started setting up when we heard a cough near us, in the pitch black. Miranda says “Hello?”. We decided later that it was probably just a goat. But at the time we both opened the nearest car door, got in, locked it and drove away as quickly as we could!
We stopped for some munchies in Waikoloa but otherwise, drove straight back to Kailua-Kona.
Today is our last stay at the luxurious Dolphin View. We somehow have to clean up our mess and take off for the Sheraton down the road – Miranda wanted to stay somewhere nice for our last night, so there we are. 🙂 Nothing much planned for the next day and a bit, some water, some shopping, we’ll see what we get up to.
Fair Wind II Snorkel/Lunch Cruise
This was an enjoyable ride, even with 96 people on the boat and a number of children. SNUBA was definitely worth the extra cost to add on!
After an ok lunch (burger was slightly burnt, but the rest of it was good) we went back into the water for some more snorkeling.
And going down the ships water slide.
Photos from Miranda’s birthday
Mauna Kea summit was cancelled, so we made new plans – a dinner cruise with Body Glove. Here are the photos!
This morning we went out on another cruise – this one a snorkeling, breakfast and lunch cruise. This was much more recommendable. Sailed out back to Kealakekua Bay, my third trip to the bay. But this time we parked at the Captain Cook monument and got out to do some snorkelling, which was excellent. I signed up for SNUBA. It was ok. Given a choice between that and the SCUBA, I’d take SCUBA anyday. But the SNUBA wasn’t bad. You are hooked up to a hose that leads up to the surface where your air tank is. I was a little uncertain of not being able to check my airtank (important). Also, because your hose only goes down 15 feet, you can’t look at things any deeper than that, and you certainly don’t have to worry about decompression. But as a tourist attraction, it was nice. 15 minute briefing of stuff I knew already from SCUBA and a half hour in the water for $70. Comparable to a single SCUBA dive, and I didn’t have to do any work at all. Put your mask and fins on, grab camera, get in water. Done. Got some fun photos I think, including a few where I swam underneath Miranda. 😀 Which is important to note – Miranda got in the water, with a mask and snorkel and swam around with me! 🙂 We saw a lot of really cool things, I can definitely recommend the snorkelling in this area, everything is 3-15 feet under you. Breakfast and lunch were pretty nice, although our burgers were a little on the crispy side. Now we’re sitting around and planning a drive up the mountain – clouds at 6-7 thousand feet mean at the Visitor Center at 9,000 we’ll be above them. :)…hopefully. There’s that Haleakala photo floating around Facebook that shows it could be otherwise… Later!
Miranda’s Birthday
Today is Miranda’s birthday, and we had a busy day planned.
I already posted the morning. The sad part is that while writing that post up, I got an e-mail from Mauna Kea Summit Adventures telling us that they had cancelled the tour for today and to call them. Not good. I told Miranda this, and expected heavy disappointment, but instead got a Call To Action. This birthday was going to be good, regardless.
That company was completely useless. I’m definitely glad that they cancelled, rather than take our money and take us on a bad trip – that’s good practice. But their next available tour was on February 16th, an entire week and a half away from now. What tourist is going to be able to reschedule for that long away? We hung up and started looking for something else to do.
We called the other summit company to see if they had space in the next few days. They were also booked until the 16th, but…weren’t planning on cancelling tonight. I had checked the MK weather and it supported our companies decision to cancel…soooo..what’s this other company’s plan? No idea, we got off the phone.
An hour and a half, and numerous phone calls later we have a new plan. We celebrate Miranda’s birthday tomorrow as well, do a dinner cruise tonight, a snorkel cruise tomorrow morning and drive up to MK tomorrow night for some awesome stargazing.
We looked at two dinner cruises. Body Glove and Spirit of Kona. Both our Big Blue guidebook, and a local we spoke with, told us that Spirit of Kona was not a great cruise, so we booked on Body Glove with only a half hour to spare!
The cruise was alright. Float out to Kealekekua Bay listening to a guy talk about the history of the coast (only barely interesting). Eat some alright appetizers. Drink an alright mai tai. Eat and alright dinner. Float back with the sunset. Saw another whale or two, which was awesome and made the trip much more worthwhile.
In the end, the best part of about the evening was spending it with Miranda.
We came back and played some Agricola before bed. 🙂
There are no photos in this post, because I’m going to sleep instead of dealing with photos. Dinner cruise photos tomorrow.
NIght!
Kealakekua Bay
We went swimming today. Apparently dolphins swim in this bay as well, but I didn’t see any.
It’s a state park just south of Kona. Once in the bay, I swam north and saw nothing but sand. Just near the info stands there are some rocks that had some cool life living there. … but the camera battery died. Recharging now so I can take more photos later.
From Honokaa to Kona again.
We woke up to a lovely breakfast that had been made for us by our host. Banana pancakes, eggs, passion fruit, tea and coffee. Another conversation and we jetted out of there to go horseback riding in Waipio Valley.
This valley has a 1000 foot drop, over 3/4s of a mile. There are very clear signs at the top telling you that you must have 4×4 to go down (or rather…back up…) and that AWD is not enough. Driving down was fine…I still don’t understand how that white tour van managed to drive back up. The Valley itself has about 50 residents, who live without outside electricity, phone lines, tv, etc. I’m told they are mostly people who want to live “off the land”, some hippies, a few Veterans. Our taxi driver from the other day told us to be careful – people go in and they don’t come out. Our guidebook tells us to be wary of angry residents.
After having gone through the area, I think that if you had the right maps, that it would be a decent place to go hiking. We saw numerous people hiking down the road and some people wandering around the trails we were on.
We took the road north, across the top of the extinct volcano Kohala, one of 5 that erupted to create the Big Island in the first place. A nice drive across a mountain. Something that I thought of – this isn’t a drive “through the mountains”, because there is really only the one mountain, and it slopes downward slowly but steadily. Again with the bright green meadows
We reached the tip of the Big Island and looked out over the ocean.
Driving back down the tip on the west side was quite different. Here you can see quite clearly which is the dry, desert side, and which is the rainforest side. Back to black lava rocks piled up in rough formations, dried out grasses and very few plants at all. Interesting – on the side of the highway here, hundreds of people have stopped and picked up little white stones and graphitti’d messages such as R+G, Tupak, etc.
We arrived in Kailua-Kona and had to pull a tight left on a 45 mph highway. Scary. Drove around the north side of Kona for a bit trying to find our place and managed to…its the one without the address. “Dolphin View” the ad says, but we’re pretty far away from the ocean here. Having said that, so far I like the place. Our own bedroom and washroom. An ocean view and you can hear the waves and seagulls still. I found it incredibly peaceful after our long drive from Honokaa.
Breakfast this morning was english muffins and some array of fruit from the nearby trees. It’s Miranda’s birthday today and we’re going up Mauna Kea to stargaze and take in the sunset tonight!
Guidebook
Our guidebook has some controversy about it. I won’t be able to fully explain it all here, but here are some words.
While in Maui, we read a book called Maui Revealed by Andrew Doughty. It turned out to be a fantastic book, slightly funny and with lots of great tips that you could pick apart very easily. When we got to the Big Island, I saw the BI version of it on the shelves of our first place, and decided I wanted a copy for our trip.
Since we left Volcano, this book has been (in my mind) a god-send. Clear directions, with useful information about things you might care about, genuinely interesting to read. I don’t think our vacation would have been the same, or as filled with great sights, without it.
While at the Waipio Wayside this morning, we mentioned the book to our host. She was shocked that we would use it – apparently the author has a bad name with the locals, and when interviewed blurs out his face and has promoted practises that have caused heated issues with landowners in the Waipio Valley.
As visitors, we have no idea about this. But as responsible people, we care about this.
Everything that our host had said makes sense, I think she was entirely correct. The edition of the book that we’re reading even says and all but apologizes for causing some issues in the Valley.
We Google any controversy with the fellow and find a long and well written TripAdvisor post on the book. Talking about more landowner issues, promoting trespassing, etc. This, again, doesn’t surprise me. Particularly since, again, in the 6th edition has a section specifically saying do not go against any signs, this road is public, the land on either side is NOT public.
I feel a little betrayed, as I love this little book. But I also completely appreciate these peoples opinions and desires to not have some strange author promoting irresponsible behavior.
The only thing I can say is…that within the framework of two responsible adult human beings, this book has been amazing. If you were blindly following previous editions, maybe you should buy a less risque book.
But the next problem is…now I feel like I can’t talk about this amazing book, for fear of getting someone angry with me. How can you tell the difference between the responsible adults and irresponsible ones? You can’t, except by getting to know them.