Hilo

It's Thursday night and everyone is back on the ship after their adventures in Hawai'i. We leave port in thirty minutes or so, which will begin our eleven-day trek to Japan. Which makes this a perfect opportunity to tell about my last four days on land! To make it a little less overwhelming, I'll break it into two posts.

 

We woke up around 5:30 on Monday to prepare for customs, which started at 6 and was necessary for the ship to clear. All we really had to do was retrieve our passports (Semester at Sea keeps our passports while we are on board for safekeeping), walk up to the official, hand him our passport to look at, and give our passport back to Semester at Sea. While waiting for the ship to clear, I stood outside on the deck, marveling at the sunrise. It was somewhat cloudy but luckily Mauna Kea, a volcano larger than Everest if you include the ocean depth AND the place where scientists first recorded the increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration (yay environmental science!!!), was completely visible. The sun gradually lit up the moutain, and it really was a spectacular sight.

 

The ship finally cleared around 8:30, which prompted a mad dash to the Gangway exit on the second deck. Of course, once off the ship we loitered around for awhile for friends to disembark. When I stood on the land I felt queasy, and could feel myself rocking involuntarily. I am sad to say that my first stop in Hilo was the Wal-Mart to pick up snacks and supplies. However, after this detour we headed downtown to see what the city of Hilo had to offer.

 

First off, calling Hilo a city is a bit of a stretch. A three story building would be considered tall, most of the action was concentrated in a few blocks, and I witnessed several occasions where two locals walking on the street would recognize each other and start a conversation. Speaking of locals, they certainly realized that there were an unusual number of college-aged folks, and a few of them came up to us to inquire about where we came from. Hilo did have a small but neat Farmer's Market, where I bought a bunch of apple bananas for a dollar. I was tempted by some of the other fruit, like avocados, mangoes, and pineapples, but since I did not have a knife handy I settled with the bananas.

 

After the market we wandered through some shops. Some of the more exciting discoveries included a Hula dancing work out mix, more ukeleles than I have ever seen in my life, and an incredible restaurant supply store which all types of enchantments from ginormous woks to dozens of spatula varieties. I thought of Uncle Don seeing all of those spatulas.

 

We got hungry around one and found a local cafe. We didn't know we had picked a place with such a quirky owner - he got impatient when we were deciding what to order ("Hurry up already! I don't have all day you know!") and got offended when I didn't use a knife to cut my tomato. To properly demonstrate the error of my ways, he came up behind me, cut my tomato for me, and then fed me the food. I have photographic evidence! (that hopefully I will be posting in Japan?...)

 

Soon after lunch we decided to head back to the ship as we were all supposed to be ready for the Lu'au by 4:30. At the bus stop, a man came up to us with a handful of flowers that he picked from a nearby tree. Hawaiians are big on wearing flowers in their hair, and depending on which ear you place the flower, you can tell whether you are single or taken. If you wear flowers in both ears you are "Taken, but still looking".

 

We boarded the bus for the Lu'au, but as a surprise for all of us, we made a stop at the University of Hawai'i Hilo Campus. It seemed rather unnecessary, but as we were being hosted by the University I suppose they could dictate the itinerary. I don't think I could ever go to school in Hawai'i - I would be constantly distracted by the beautiful weather.

 

After the stop, we made our way to a university agricultural farm. They had a large shelter set up for us with a stage in front with picnic tables to sit. We were each given a tea leaf with which to make our own leis. Mine was a complete failure, I think I will stick to coloring to express my artisticness. They served the food cafeteria style which took awhile for 200 people. They served a pulled pork, chicken with rice noodles, spinach with squid, macaroni salad, rice and poi. Everything was very salty, except the spinach which was oddly sweet and the poi, which is mashed Tarrow (a locally grown starch), and pretty much tastes like glue. Or at least what I would imagine glue to taste like. It also looks like glue, but with just a little purple-gray coloring in it. However, it is an acquired taste that many Hawaiians strangely love.

 

We then saw three cultural presentations put on by university students. The first reminded me of a Maori war dance, it was very aggressive and involved the performers chanting and banging bamboo sticks together and moving in unison. Some of the moves seemed very intricate, and I kept thinking that one of them would accidentally miss their target and hit someone. The second was a traditional hula, which was fun especially at the end because they taught us some moves. Lastly, the Samoan club sang and played percussion instruments, and some of them had incredible voices.

 

After the Lu'au, we returned to the ship. I for one was extremely tired after waking up before dawn, so I went straight to bed.

 

On Tuesday, a group of friends and I decided to hire a tour driver to see some more of the island. Since Hilo is small, public transportation is not really an option, so a driver was definitely the best way to see (and learn) as much as we could. We chose to go with 'Volcano Bill', who was born in Honolulu but had lived in Hilo for 19 years. He had been in the tour business for 42 years, and had 20 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren. He was a great guide, and knew a ton of traditional stories as well as facts about all of the places we visited.

 

Our first stop was a famous road called Banyan Drive, where celebrities including Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, and Richard Nixon had all planted trees. The trees are actually native to Japan, which is typical of a lot of plant species on Hawai'i because nearly all of the wildlife is not native. At the end of this stretch there was a formal Japanese garden, which was commissioned by one of the Hawaiian queens. It had lovely arching bridges and manicured hedges, and seemed like a great place to relax. But we were off to our next stop, Akaka Waterfalls. On the way, Volcano Bill told us a lot about the history of the big island, including the fact that it used to be the sugar capital of the world until it could no longer compete with countries like those in South America or those in the Philippines. He also told us some interesting tidbits like a gallon of milk in Hawai'i runs about $10, and Ahi Tuna can be sold for 90 cents in the summer but goes up to $50 in the winter to meet demand around New Years.

 

We arrived at Akaka Waterfalls, which was absolutely gorgeous. It was at least a hundred feet tall, and the water fell in sheets to the pool below. We were only able to view the falls from a lookout point, there were no paths to the pool or anything because it was quite steep. The vegetation on the path to the falls was great, with big leafy trees and endless green.

 

After the waterfalls we went to Volcanoes National Park. As we ascended up the road there were less and less trees, until when we entered the park and we saw nothing but shrubbery. We got to the top of Kiluea and saw a huge torrent of smoke. We couldn't see any lava but Volcano Bill said that if we could it would be the red firey kind. There was a museum at the site, where one of the displays featured the charred clothing remains of a scientist who was studying the volcano and accidently stepped into new lava. It made me think that if a trained scientist couldn't tell the difference between hardened and hot lava, I definitely did not want to be wandering around on the volcano. At another place in the park, we visited a lava tube, which is basically a cave made out of lava rock. It is apparently the biggest lava tube in the world, and was very cool to walk through.

 

Our last two stops with Volcano Bill were an Orchid Plantation and a Macadamia Nut Factory. The Orchid Plantation featured dozens of types of flowers, including one that was selling for $20,000! It was absurd. I learned that the macademia is the hardest nut to crack, so before they had machines they put out all of the nuts on the road and put a board over them and then drove over the nuts with their cars. The best part of factory was definitely the free samples, although I believe that the chocolate covered ones that I tried would be much improved if they used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

 

Volcano Bill dropped us off back at the ship, a few hours before on ship time which was convenient because if anyone boards the ship past on ship time they are penalized with dock time at the next port. Then we were off to Honolulu!!!... which I will write about tomorrow because I am quite sleepy at the moment. Good night!