KT's Cruise Odyssey Day 5: Hilo, or...

[KillerTomato]

KT's Cruise Odyssey Day 5: Hilo, or "Oh, look, another gift shop!"

Photos: http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll23 ... 0-%20Hilo/

On a trip as long as this one (12 days total, but I'll be condensing the second half, which is mostly "Sat on my balcony, read, ate a lot" for several days in a row), there's bound to be one day you wish you could have a do-over on. This day, friends, was my "Can I have a do-over, please?" day.

It started pretty innocuously. We'd sailed past Kilauea the night before...not that I saw much of it; the lava flow was just a red spot on the horizon, but I can say I saw flowing lava! I was up kinda late, and I had an early shore excursion booked. I woke to find that the Hilo harbor is kinda....well....I suppose "industrial" is the kindest way to put it. But looking from my balcony to the city, I could see there were patches of paradise. I went onshore (we docked, so no tenders needed) and met up with the group on my tour.

The tour was called "Volcanoes National Park"...that's it, just "Volcanoes National Park". I should have realized this was deceptively simple for a shore excursion name. It should have been called "Gift Shops of the Eastern Part of the Big Island, With a Stopover At Some Volcano". OK, I'm being too hard on this tour, but it really was the weakest of the excursions I took.

Our first stop was the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Gift Shop/Factory. This actually was a pretty cool place, and I did pick up a lot of macadamia nut stuff...the chocolate covered macs are wonderful. We then traveled up to the National Park. First stop in the park was the Thurston Lava Tube. A short (15 minute) stop here to walk through the Tube, take a few pictures of the rainforest and the ferns, and hustle back onto the bus for the trip up to the summit.

I gotta admit, the volcano itself was quite impressive. It has been erupting from the Halema’uma’u crater for a couple of months. Not so much lava as what appears to be a steam plume, fairly steadily. I got lots of pics of that, as you can see. The Jagger Museum (which was as far west as we went, since the rest of the road around the crater was closed due to the nasty sulfur being pumped out by the volcano) was interesting, easily the most interesting gift shop we visited. We had about 45 minutes or so here, then were herded back to the bus for the trip to the last gift shop of the day.

This gift shop, though, was truly beautiful. It was an orchid greenhouse/gift shop with what seemed like a billion different orchid varieties. I posted just a small percentage of the pictures I took here…some of the more interesting looking ones, I thought. They even had one orchid (in my pics, it’s the one that has “20K” in its filename) that sells for $20,000. Frankly, it’s not even that good looking, but since it can’t be artificially pollinated or cloned, they have to wait for it to reproduce naturally…and it only does that every 5 to 7 years.

Eventually we headed back to the ship. We did pass along Banyan Drive, and saw the big, beautiful banyan trees, many of which were planted by famous people like Babe Ruth, Richard Nixon (pre-Watergate), Amelia Earhart….very cool stuff.

Back on board it was time to hit the pool, read a little, drink the drink of the day (Today's was the "Hawaiian Paradise"), and relax. Then it was dinnertime….

Once again, it was just Joanne and myself at our table for 4. We chatted about our day and had a nice dinner (fish again, with a nice pinot grigio), when it happened. We weren’t discussing anything particularly, just chatting, when Joanne – completely out of the blue, and apropos of absolutely nothing – chimed in with “You know, if we elect Obama, the negroes are going to rise up and take over.” I am NOT making this up. She actually used the word “negroes”. And I’m seriously thinking “What does this have to do with the banyan trees we were just discussing? And did I wake up from my nap in 1968?”

This was my first indication that my sole dinner partner was nuts. There would be more.

After dinner, I caught about 20 minutes of the show (Fred Travelena, aka Rich Little Lite…I never really cared for him, and he did nothing to change that opinion). I headed over to one of the lounges for my first crack at the Karaoke machine afterwards…”Come Monday” by Jimmy Buffett. There weren’t many people in the lounge who would have appreciated what I REALLY wanted to sing….let’s just say there was a lot of blue hair in the room! There were a couple of good karaoke singers, and a lot of bad ones. Too much country crap for my tastes, but I enjoyed it regardless.

Tomorrow’s adventure: Maui: “Dude, where’s your car?”, Heavenly indeed, a Haiku and a luau.

[otherindigo]

Can anyone say jealous? Yeah well that's me.

Sounds like you had fun, at least with some of the sites.

[MarleysGh0st]

Oh, my!

Did you ever find out what happened to the other two people who were supposed to be at your table? Or do we have to wait for another chapter to learn that story?

[KillerTomato]

Oh, my!

Did you ever find out what happened to the other two people who were supposed to be at your table? Or do we have to wait for another chapter to learn that story?

Yes, and yes.

[silverscreenselect]

Once again, it was just Joanne and myself at our table for 4. We chatted about our day and had a nice dinner (fish again, with a nice pinot grigio), when it happened. We weren’t discussing anything particularly, just chatting, when Joanne – completely out of the blue, and apropos of absolutely nothing – chimed in with “You know, if we elect Obama, the negroes are going to rise up and take over.” I am NOT making this up. She actually used the word “negroes”. And I’m seriously thinking “What does this have to do with the banyan trees we were just discussing? And did I wake up from my nap in 1968?”

This was my first indication that my sole dinner partner was nuts. There would be more.

Sounds like she'd be a good addition to the political discussions on the Bored.