29 September Land Ahoy!

29 September Land Ahoy!

We woke up in the harbour at Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. We stood for about an hour waiting for Border protection to clear us. There was great chaos and confusion with the US queue and the alien queue. Some pugnacious little old asshole with what we thought might have been a New York accent had shoved his way into what turned out to be the alien queue and was trading abuse with a pair of much larger Canadians. He was yelling out that he wasn’t going to miss the tour he had paid $500 for and telling them to “OK just beat me”, which would have been tempting for many of us. This eventually degenerated into mild shoving. He then allowed himself to be steered into the US queue, where he proceeded to start yelling out for what we presumed was his (lucky) wife . . not. “Irene!” “Irene!” I called out “Adrienne”, which was hugely funny for the Rocky fans, and a few of the others started singing some song about a lovely lady named Irene. Eventually the lovers were reunited and they shambled off. (The first 'ugly American' we have seen onboard.)

J had plenty of time to catch her volcano tour and I spent the day idly eating, watching movies and winning the morning and afternoon trivia (luggage labels anyone?) I did wander down the pier and found a wifi café. There was no news from anybody at home, least of all the Lottery Commission L although there were a lot of lovely grandchild pictures, including a beautiful smiley picture of Michaela sitting up by herself. I found Amanda on facebook and chatted while she gave Joshua his 6am feed. Also posted 6 days of blog.

J writes:  While we expected to be late leaving on the tours because of the queues at Immigration, it wasn’t that bad and we were called for our bus about 10 minutes late.  It took quite some time to load up the coaches and 2 false starts early on.  The tour leader/driver for the day John was a fountain of knowledge on all subjects and we were schooled the whole day long.  We stopped at a Macadamia farm *yawn* and then an orchid garden which has some divine specimens.  One even smelt like chocolate.  Then to the crater rim which was just gently smoking away.  Jagger Museum was hands on and interesting. 

 

 Next stop was the Visitor Centre where I watched a 20 minute film on Hawaii.  Then a drive past yet another view of the crater before reaching the Thurston lava tube.  This is situated on a lower flank of the volcano in a tee tree forest.  Beautiful bird song as you traverse the path and steps.  The tunnel is long and damp with an uneven floor surface.  You exit up a short set of steps that was a natural sky light in the tunnel.  Pretty cool actually. 

 Entrance

 Middle

 End

 

 Back to Hilo and the nearby Rainbow Waterfall for a 1quick photo opportunity and back to the ship about 5.30pm.  There was some rain but we managed to avoid getting wet.  Lucky us.  Ship sailed at 6pm.

 Falls

 This lovely group was on our bus.  We always knew which bus to get on.  Just follow the orange shirts.

 

The lunch desserts were so delicious and so chocolate-enriched that I saved half of each of the portions and put it in the room fridge for J when she returned. Just as well because she didn't get any lunch today.

We had buffet dinner out on the terrace again and watched the sail away.  Another perfect holiday memory. We wandered into the music quiz, which we all did as a group and shared the download vouchers, which we will have to redeem before we leave the US. We then lingered in the nightclub (and it was at least 8.30 by then!) watching karaoke. I got sucked into doing Sweet Caroline, which strikes some perverse chord in my imagination while we are doing the standing stretches in tai chi (something to do with “hands reaching out” and the instructor being Caroline). Fuelled with fame, I Iater did the banana boat song (Dayo!) to a room full of African Americans, who didn’t seem to mind. J went up and sang with a few others and, as usual, was shaking her bits and grooving with the backing singers.

The 11pm sailpast of the volcano was a bit of a non-event. J had been told during her tour that the lava flow had stopped 2 weeks ago, so all we saw was a dull glow. But it was nice to be out there. We were right in close to the shore break and there were flying fish skittering across our wake. We returned to the cabin to our nightly gift of chocolate from the cabin steward and the wonderful news that the negotiation with the cruise company had turned out very favourably, which made us most happy.