News from the Boat_Hawaii

Aloha, everybody!

(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

[Didn't think I'd make it, did you? Yeah. Neither did I.]

So… it seems like everybody on the ship just kind of forgot about Hawai’i. I can’t even count the times that, when we were heading for Japan, I heard the words, “This is our last port.” Like Mauritius, Hawaii was just a place where we could recoup, hang out on the beach and not worry about any of that pesky culture business.

Well screw those people. Hawai’i was one of the ports I was most excited to go to, and it was hands down the port I enjoyed the most. Not necessarily my favorite port, but definitely the one I was saddest to leave. It definitely helped that it was warm and sunny, and that the first thing I saw when we got off the ship was a rainbow, but I can barely even begin to describe how much I loved Hawaii.

I probably wrote this on several postcards, but to me, Hawaii feels like it got stuck in the 60s and never moved on. There are roadside drive-ins that sell deep-fried everything, muscle cars that howl by, convenience stores that sell literally everything, and then of course the surfing. And not snazzy short board extravaganza, although I’m sure that’s around too, but good old-fashioned ten-foot long boards that I can barely carry, let alone paddle on. There’s a sleepy who-cares vibe that just permeates everything, surrounded by absolutely gorgeous people, landscape, and wildlife. Even Pearl Harbor, which is in itself pretty gruesome, is fairly easy to take in just because there’s nothing to see. There’s a rusting chimney in the water, and a long, long list of names of people who died, and the horrifying knowledge that somewhere below you, there are bodies that have been imprisoned in a sunken battle ship for almost 70 years. The USS Arizona still leaks oil, actually, and the few veterans that are still alive consider the oil to be the tears of their comrades that are still caught below.

[On a less romantic note, that’s two quart of oil being leaked into the ocean *per day*, and while that may not sound like a whole lot, that’s many, many gallons of water that are being polluted. I’m sorry for the whole soap-box thing, but I don’t think stopping oil from leaking into the very water we depend on to survive is desecrating somebody’s tomb, it’s just plain common sense. I really don’t want to be disrespectful, but I just can’t get over the fact that this is a sunken ship leaking oil into the ocean and people don’t think it should stop.]

But overall, the parts of the memorial that I saw were very subtly done. Nobody was beating you over the head with the fact that people died here, and nobody was holding tirades against the Japanese. It was more of an overall “war is horrible” thing, and we all know how much that appeals to me. But it was still a bit rough, and I was very happy when I managed to hit the beach with a board and just relax for a little bit. Not that, you know, going surfing twice in one day is all that relaxing, but man it was fun. Mind you, the board was pretty much twice my size, and after a while my arms started hurting so badly that I wanted to cry, but there’s just something about sitting on a board in the sunshine with palm trees in the distance that makes me be okay with the world.

So that was O’ahu. A little touristy but surprisingly modern, and with lots of Japanese tourists. Unfortunately we had to miss Santa coming in on a surfboard because we were heading off to Hilo on the Big Island, Hawaii. All I saw of that was the ride to and from the airport. Instead Dan, Chelita, Utsav, Kevin and I hopped into a rental car (that we weren’t supposed to rent) and drove up to the Akaka Falls, 300 feet high, in the middle of lush, gigantic ferns and trees. It was surprising to me how an active volcano could be so *green,* but there are definitely palm trees and grassy hills and plants everywhere.

But you can only look at plants for so long, so we made our way to Kona, where people on the ship had said to go. It was pretty dead. There were a couple of stores and fast food restaurants, and then the ocean, but this was definitely not a happening place. So we asked a store clerk what there was to do, and he shrugs and says, “Jump off the end of the world.” Awkward silence as we all think to ourselves, *Can it really be THAT bad?* and then he laughs and says, “It’s a cliff. The End of the World. You can go jump off a cliff.” Well, after that, we kinda had to do it just for the bragging rights. So he gives us directions, we follow them for a while, and end up at… a turtle beach. You know those sea turtles that you get on post cards of clear blue water and tropical fish? Yeah. Those are actually there, not three feet away from you, completely unfazed by the staring tourists. So. Awesome.

Anyway. Back in the car we go and this time, we actually make it to the End of the World. The cliff is in a field of black volcanic rocks with a pretty distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it, and beyond them there is nothing but ocean. So yeah, it kinda feels like the end of the world. The cliff itself is only about 30-40 feet high, and there were another group of people that had already jumped that offered emotional support, but my friend Dan who went first was still pretty terrified. So, naturally, I jumped in before I could get any more nervous than I already was. In fact, I went so fast that our appointed video and photography people completely missed it. I sort of landed badly and bruised my thigh, and between that and the adrenaline, I was pretty much done, but Dan got very into it. He even went a third time when a group of tourists showed up on a boat and told him to jump again because they’d missed it the first two times around.

It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized that The End of the World is allegedly one of the top ten most dangerous cliffs in the world, and that all the random flower bouquets on the rocks were for people who died…

For the record: I’m fine. My leg looked pretty horrible for a couple of days, but it didn’t really hurt. And I jumped off the end of the world. Beat that.

After that much excitement, it was an early bedtime for us – all the better, because the next day turned out to be a giant rush. We had about three hours of solid driving ahead of us to get back to Hilo, we wanted to hang out at a beach, we wanted to go see the lava river, and we had to have it all done before 6 o’clock. Even earlier, in fact, because Alexa still had to write some postcards and nobody wanted to risk being late getting back to the ship at the very last port. So we booked it to a black sand beach and hung out there for a while, and then we went off to see lava. Hawaiian traffic being what it is, we ended up not making it there until 3.30 or so, so we only stayed for a couple of minutes, but it was definitely worth it. That entire stretch of land literally looks like Hell. Crusted over in black lava, with smoke rising up in the distance, and when you get too close, you can still feel the heat… We didn’t see any new lava, but we saw hardened sections that had only formed in the two weeks since Thanksgiving. And the surprisingly numerous number of houses that people still live in. You can’t ever say that human beings aren’t resourceful.

We somehow made it back to the ship on time, although I think some small part of each of us wishes we hadn’t. Hawaii was just hands-down amazing. I don’t know if I could live there permanently just because it *is* pretty dead, but man, did I love it. Nothing to really worry about, no reason to be stressed out, just cruising along the island with people that I like and the music blaring…

I had a good time.

Lots of love from 31˚ 33.9N/120˚ 30.2W
Alexa

Pictures are here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=263376&id=834707681&l=8cbcacd404