It’s been well over a month since I returned from my recent (and first) trip to Hawaii, but I still wanted to share some of my notes about what we did. I wrote this out while we were in Hawaii, and it’s missing the last four or five days–but it still gives you some idea of what we did and how I liked it. NOTE: We left on March 18th, if memory serves. You can work out the rest of the dates from there.
Wednesday: Lots of flying. Saw a ship all lit up from the airplane when we got to Honolulu. It was dark, though, so we couldn’t see much else. L Rented a car from Budget, which I get to drive! J Almost asked for a convertible, but I didn’t think Mom would appreciate it as much as me, so I didn’t. Found our temporary home, in La’ie on the North Shore, just up the street from the Temple. It’s a cute little house, right on the beach, which is really nice.
Thursday: Travis tells me the bay we are “living” on is called Hukilau. For years, the locals in La’ie (who were almost all Mormon … La’ie has been a Mormon settlement for a long time) would gather once a week to fish in the bay using a large net that they would set out in a horse-shoe shape. They would then sell the fish to raise funds for the Church. They only stopped about 15 years ago, sometime in the 1990s, when the government started taxing them for it.
This was mostly a resting-up and settling-in day. Travis and Bernice went into Honolulu and did some shopping at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, and also wandered around Chinatown for a bit. The kids (especially Warner) were dying to swim in the water, but the lady we’re renting from, Sue, told us that they bay had been polluted by a recent storm and recommended that we wait a few days before swimming in it. So I took Porter, Byron, Mikaela, and Christian for a drive around the island. We went all the way up the North Shore and then down the western side to Hale’iwa, where we went inland, past the Dole pineapple plantation, down to Pearl City, and then back up the east coast and home to La’ie. It really is a beautiful drive, and we missed a lot of gorgeous views driving through the night.
Friday: Drove into Pearl Harbor to see the USS Arizona Memorial. The video they showed at the beginning was very touching. Jake Keck, my second cousin, is living here in La’ie for a while, so we took him with us. Afterward we went to lunch at L&L Hawaiian Barbecue. They serve things with lots of rice and macaroni salad out here. After that, Mom and Jake and I drove to WalMart/Sam’s Club (they are in the same building) to pick up a few more things, and Travis’s family drove a little further, to Snorkel Bob’s in Waikiki, where they rented snorkel gear for the week. They were planning to snorkel in Waikiki, but once they got there, all the kids said they’d rather go home. So we did. Bernice and Travis took a few of the kids to Shark’s Cove to snorkel. They said it was pretty cool … until they got dashed against the sharp rocks! We watched Hawaii Five-O on TV.
Saturday: Mom and Bernice and I got up early and drove into Honolulu to shop at the swap meet that’s held at Aloha Stadium every Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I got a beautiful sarong, as well as a bracelet and a few necklaces. We also bought souvenirs for all the grandkids, and Mom bought some dried fruit and macadamia nuts to snack on. The swap meet took most of the morning, and then we went, again, to … Walmart/Sam’s Club! We ate lunch there, and Bernice picked up a few more groceries.
In the afternoon, I decided I wanted to swim in the ocean, so I donned my most hideous t-shirt and most water-friendly pair of pants (light-weight khakis) and went out there. Bernice came with me, in her swimsuit, and together we braved the waves. In the meantime, her family came walking back from their own adventure, and we stopped and talked with them about it for a while. They had waded out to Goat Island, a little island in the middle of Hukilau Bay. If you walk up the bay to the point, the water is fairly shallow, with coral at the bottom, and you can just walk across to the island. Travis had taken the kids out there and they spent most of the day there. About the same time they were coming back, Bernice had decided we should get out the snorkel gear and snorkel for a bit. Once she got it all together, she declared that she and I were going to snorkel to Goat Island! I hadn’t been expecting that, but I wanted to snorkel and I wanted to see Goat Island, so I agreed. We wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.
At the point where you can wade across the bay, the water is really too shallow to make snorkeling very pleasant. However, it was shallow enough for us to see the coral and other marine life at the bottom, which was really cool! I just about drowned when I first got brave enough to stick my head under there. I was so astounded at everything I could see that I tried to shout, “Holy cow!” and came up spluttering salt water out of my mouth. Since swimming wasn’t really practical in that water, we mostly “walked” our way across with out hands, grabbing hold of the coral with one hand at a time and then pulling ourselves forward; we also flippered some with our feet. J We made it across the bay and then around a really sharp point of the island—sharp in the sense that the island and that point in particular are formed out of lava rock—and then made a plan of action for how to get back. We decided we didn’t want to go back the same way we had come, so we shot for a longer route that would bring us more toward the middle of the bay. It worked all right. It still wasn’t very good for snorkeling, since it was too deep here to see anything—even though we could touch the bottom with our feet most of the time—but it was much smoother. Until we got close enough to the beach, that is, that floating, swimming, and snorkeling were all out of the question. See, the bottom here was still covered with that coral, which is not pleasant to step on. I know, because I tried. I took of my snorkeling flippers at one point, thinking I would just brave the rocks. That lasted about two steps. Then I had to try and put the flippers back on, which is not as easy as it sounds, when you’re sitting in the ocean, getting hit by wave after wave, with not enough water beneath you to ride the wave. Instead, you keep getting pushed down onto the ocean floor. It made for some rather entertaining floundering before I finally got those flippers back on. Of course, then the problem was how to walk with the flippers on my feet. I don’t know how those penguins do it, because it’s not easy to walk with flippers. But all this while, Bernice had been steadily working her way toward the shore by walking backwards. So that’s what I did, too. It worked, even though I felt a little silly. And even though it was very slow. But we did both make it back to the shore, back to our little house where we showered and doctored our battle wounds. It was definitely an experience to remember.
Sunday: We went to church at noon, next to the La’ie Temple. Actually, Mom and I got separated from Travis’s family, since there are two chapels next to the Temple, and we chose the one they weren’t going to. We didn’t realize what had happened until after Sacrament Meeting. We only stayed for the one meeting, and afterward went to the Visitor’s Center and then walked up to the Temple. We won’t be able to visit the Temple while we are here, since it’s under construction for some major renovation work. However, the rest of the family is planning to do baptisms for the dead at the Kona Temple on the Big Island this Friday. Or is it Saturday? I’m not sure yet whether we’ll be able to get me plane tickets to go out to the Big Island, so I may not get to the Kona Temple either.
After lunch on Sunday, we drove up the North Shore to Waimea, where we all got into Travis’s car (it’s an SUV) and drove up a steep mountain trail to the ruins of a Hawaiian heiau, or temple. It’s almost on a cliff, and you can walk out around it to see Waimea Bay below—and, if you’re lucky, to see whales off the coast. Bernice and Warner did see some, but the rest of us missed them. After that, we continued down the shore for a few more miles, to a place known locally as “Turtle Beach,” since lots of green sea turtles hang out here. We got to see three or four of them, just floating along in the water and occasionally coming up for air. It was pretty cool.
Monday: Tried to leave early again, so that we could get to Waikiki in time for our reservations on a sight-seeing submarine. Didn’t make it in time. They were very nice about getting us on the next tour, though. The sub was awesome—we got to see all kinds of fish down there, and even a sting-ray. And I learned (finally!) to pronounce the name of the Hawaii state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua’a. Sheesh, that’s a mouthful! However, I prefer another word, the longest Hawaiian name for a fish: lauwiliwilinukunukuoioi. Try saying that five times fast!
Again, we made our way to Walmart/Sam’s Club for some lunch and shopping. Then we drove up to Punchbowl, or the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. This military cemetery is built in a crater (so it’s shaped kind of like a punchbowl), and it is the final resting place of 28,000 veterans who lost their lives fighting in the Pacific arena during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. In addition, there are 28,778 more names engraved on marble slabs, representing all those whose remains weren’t found. It’s an incredible sight.
Driving out of Punchbowl, we saw an incredible rainbow, right below us and arching over a valley right in the heart of Honolulu. We continued seeing rainbows all the way along the freeway out of town. Wow. No wonder they call it the Rainbow State.
We again watched Hawaii Five-O in the evening, and were excited to recognize Punchbowl in the opening credits! J
