20161105 – Hawaiian Islands On A Floating Gin Palace

Well we’re off on our next great adventure, a 7 day cruise around the Hawaii Islands. As with all cruises there’s wifi available but it so expensive we’d both have to sell both kidneys, 8 pints of blood and a heart to pay for any sensible wifi access. It’s the equivalent of going to the dark side of the moon with a bunch of greedy pirates.

Therefore blog will posting will be a tad tardy.

Dropped the car off at the airport, got a shuttle to the port and then joined the usual boarding queue. Being silver members we got expedited registration but it still took 42 minutes of the usual misery.

Ship, boat or whatever they call it – Pride of America – has about 2,000 passengers and layout is quite good. Buffets area is smaller than normal but there are quite a few smaller restaurants around.

Up at the 6 bells for breakfast and to catch our first Wallace Arnold experience with the “Best of Maui” tour. Great they treat my 16 year old mind like that of a 90 year old imbecile with a memory span of a geriatric goldfish – if in doubt repeat it until boredom sets in.

First stop a surf beach to watch them surf.

Second stop a sugar plantation with the usual Disney style trolley tour complete with informative narration on my favourite subject plants!

Third stop an aquarium for lunch and the chance to ogle pretty fish, sharks and coral.

Our driver is very informative and one of the most amusing guides ever and we get to see a lot of the island.

Back on board our floating gin palace for a lazy afternoon and dinner.

Up and out for the crater tour. 07:50 departure.

A long drive up to the Haleakala crater which is at 10,000 feet. No longer an active volcano but worth the trip and another National Park hat to add to the collection. Spectacular views.

Afternoon lazing onboard. Wendy toddles off to make a Lei, otherwise known as a shell necklace. I pass up this tempting opportunity. Back in the day only Hawaiian royalty could wear these. Now any old riff raff can buy or make one. If you’re feeling really stupid then you can buy an expensive “Lei shell making kits”. They’re selling faster than toilet rolls at a dysentery outbreak. The average American and her greenbacks are soon parted.

Cruise ship leaves early due to 40 foot waves predicted at our next port, Hilo, so captain, quite wisely, avoids that. Probably because they don’t have enough pewk bags. Tomorrow becomes a sea day rather than Hilo and the volcano National Park. Some passengers are left stranded as they decided to leave early, after we’d departed the ship. Fortunately we were on a ships tour so although our tour was cut short we got back before they high tailed out of there.

The volcano National Park houses one of the few active volcanoes in the world. The highlight of the itinerary. Fortunately I’ve got 3G access on my mobile and manage to book a car for Wednesday and a longer drive down to the volcano. We’d have been devastated to miss it.

40 foot waves down the East coast of Maui so Hilo and the volcano’s off the menu and we have a sea day.

Well at least we get a lie in. No crack of dawn tours.

Lazy sort of day. As usual most of the activities seem to be aimed at geriatric bingo brigade and paleo bargin huntresses. You can learn how to wrap a sarong, Hulu dance, weave a hat from palm leaves, play endless trivia or how to fold towels into animals. Haven’t come across any talks on colonic irrigation yet. The only morsel of intellectual stimulation is a Hum-back Whale talk.

As a result of our complaining about an obstructed view they’ve tried to compensate us with 4 free speciality restaurant meals each – about $30 a meal. So now we have to eat at a speciality restaurant every night. Tough life.

Start off in Cagney Steak house – lobster bisque and a tea bone. Lobster bisque gives me a touch of the squitters. Really think I need to avoid shell fish. Love crab cakes but they certainly don’t love me.

Cruise by the bottom of the volcano to get a glimpse of the red hot lava flowing into the sea. Sadly it’s a good distance to the shore – no risk of a Greek tragedy with this crew – so it’s nothing but a red glimmer in the distance. Then dash back in to watch the rest of the election programmed. Finally go to sleep when they’ve called it for Trump. Shock and awe. Tomorrow there’ll be a lot of long sad faces on the ultra smug democrats who “knew” that Clinton was obviously going to win. Best not speak to any Americans for a few days.

We live in interesting times. All the pundits and poles got it wrong. Lots of similarities to the BREXIT result.

We had nothing booked today so I went through web hell to book the cheapest herzt mobile I could find for a trip down to the volcano. It’s a 2 hour drive but I was dammed if I was going to miss the highlight of the cruise.

Pick up my hertz mobile. Breathe a sigh of relieve as it’s not a fiat 500 but instead a Chrysler 300, very spacious very comfortable. We share the cost of the trip with Lynell from Australia.

Pleasant drive down. Visit visitors centre, buy yet another hat for my collection, and get to see lava in the cauldera, how awesome is that. Drive around the various craters and the volcanic landscape. Walk down a lava tube. What an awesome day. Not only do we get a personalised tour with stop offs where we choose, rather than a couple of stop offs with the bus tour, but we also save £250 in the process. So yesterday’s disaster turns into a real plus.

Get back in plenty of time to board. A well planned and well executed trip – moral again is better to do your own thing.

A fantastic day and then in the evening we get another freebe to the Italian speciality restaurant. Followed by the ??? show, which Wendy really enjoys and I manage to snooze through. Mind you a bottle of merlot did help.

I do the helicopter tour around Kauai. Wendy passes.

Well it cost an arm, a leg and a kidney, but I’m always reluctant to say this, it was worth every cent. What a fantastic island this is the Waimea Canyon and the Napali coast are unbelievable. Get a pilots front row seat, manage to retain my breakfast and nearly overflow a memory card with awesome pictures. It’ll take a month to cull and edit them.

Then in the afternoon we catch the free shuttle into the Mall. Well the less said about that the better.

At least it looks like we’ve got a home exchange in San Diego to replace the one a scrot has welshed on.

In the evening we do the Teppanyaki meal in a Japanese restaurant. All very entertaining but all those veggies before we get to some decent meat is just too much for a carnivore.

Up early for Waimea Canyon tour. I’d already seen it from the helicopter but the tour was well worth it for Wendy and we both enjoyed it. Stopped off at a market – could have passed on that; then the canyon; coffee farm with lots of free samples; then a blowhole. Thankfully no coconut husking demo. Great narration from our tour guide. Excellent and well worth it. Must be loosing my grip, that’s twice I’ve said that this week.

Back to the ship for lunch then lazy afternoon as we set sail for Honolulu. Pass on the invite from the captain to a select sail away party.
Sounds like he’s a bit of a Billy no mates, always wanting us to be his friend.

Joy for the first time ever we get to walk off a floating gin palace with on immigration or other delays.

Then to spoil the jubilation we meet the two clueless screw ups who are trying to organise our Speedishuttle back to the airport. It’s total chaos. So much for a shuttle every 20 minutes, it takes 45 minutes in the gruelling sun and a near riot from the massed passenger revolt to get on a shuttle. My fault I should have used Uber instead of these jokers.

Finally get to the airport. Survive the rude Hawaiian airlines check in staff and fortunately we’re TSA pre-checked.

Then we’ve 5 hours in the worst airport lounge ever. No food, no alcohol and to top it all they close for 30 minutes for lunch. Customer service, what’s that? Are all the Japanese mentally retarded or is their inscrutable gormless look just a way of deflecting complaints?

This airport must be the most expensive on the planet. A burger from burger king is over $10.

Ryanair are really missing a trick. Why not do what Hawaiian Airlines do, turn the temperature down so that it’s colder than a witches tit and then sell blankets. Another example of Hawaiian excellence in customer service.