Saturday, April 27 Honolulu

Saturday, April 27 Boarding

A great time mingling with people from different countries all boarding at the same time.  The set sail party was very quiet compared to our previous cruise.

Boarding Boat

Real Lei

We had a very nice dinner of Mahi at one of the huge restaurants – excellent food.

The ship is your basic size, about 2400 passengers and crew of 750 approx.  One of the glaring shortcomings is the pool area. It is very small.  They have a second one aft (rear) of the ship but again it is maybe 20 X 20 ft.  Not exactly the ideal situation for so many people.  The cruise’s function is transportation from one island to another so onboard entertainment is very limited.

We sat on our balcony and watched the sunset and a few miles of ocean go by.  No seasickness for us – I don’t even feel the ship moving in the interior.  Ted says that he can feel the ship moving but not anything that would make you ill.

Sunday, April 28, Rainforest Tour

Sunday was a day of adventure. We took a walking tour in the rainforest to see a couple of small waterfalls with our Tour Guide, Dawn, and three other couples.  The other couples were from Edmonton, Sidney and Pennsylvania. 

Our first stop was at a surfer’s beach, Ho’O’Kipa, that supposedly gets waves as high as 30-40 feet during the winter.  There were tons of surfers on the water so must be a local favorite.  Stunning, beach shore as well.

We started out on pretty nice trail through the jungle but soon found ourselves crawling up rocks and tree roots.   The size of the plants and flowers were unbelievable!  I loved it all!  You can’t believe the amount of vegetation that is edible.   Along with eating parts of trees and plants, we picked and ate Sugar Banana,  Guava, SugarCane, Ginger and Mangos. 

We ate lunch after the toughest part of the climb on the top by one of the waterfalls.  We had a smoked turkey sandwich and homemade chocolate chip cookies from a local farm – delicious! And of course, more fruit picked from the trees. 

At the second waterfall, everyone was encouraged to jump in and cool off.  I walked in a ways but the water was freezing and about 2 feet in I couldn’t see my shoes so opted out of the cool of in the pool.  About half of the group did go in but agreed that it was pretty muddy.

Ruby In Pick Suit

We heard then saw a “bull frog”.  If that is a bullfrog, then I have never seen one before.  It was about the size of a MN turtle and the sounds it made sounds like an air horn on a semi truck.  No croaking for that big boy!  The noise stopped us all in our tracks.  I was sure that we were going to run into a wild boar. 

By the way, there are no snakes, poison ivy or oak and not many bugs of any kind on the islands.  They did have the MN bird in the forest though. 

Back to the ship for anniversary dinner at the steak house then listened to some bad Elton John music on the main deck.