Back Home

We got back from Hawaii today. We left Friday, 5:30 pm Hawaii time, and got home Saturday, at about 11:00 am our time. Actually, we landed in Chicago at about 5:30 am, and had to sit there until 8:40 to fly home. Why we didn’t just take the hour and a half drive, I don’t know. But that’s what we did. As a little bonus, we saw Mike Ditka at the airport. If you don’t know who that is (you know who you are), read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ditka

It’s sad and nice at the same time to be home. I loved Hawaii, but there’s no place like home. For some reason, whenever we get back from a trip, it always hits me that we are home when I walk into the bathroom.

Catamaran Ride

Yesterday, Wednesday, we went for a ride on a catamaran. It was a lot of fun. You could either sit in the back on seats, or in the front on a net type thing. We sat in front. And since it’s a net, we got soaked when we went over the waves, which was cool.  And you could look straight down into the water, which was the bluest water I’ve ever seen. We didn’t have a camera (remember the waves), so we didn’t take any pictures, but it was awesome. While we were sailing out to sea, we passed another boat that apparently had a passenger fall overboard. But he got back on just fine.

Earthquake!

There was an earthquake on the Kona Coast of the Big Island, Hawaii, at 9:20 am.  There isn’t any damage reported so far, and no danger of tsunamis.  On the TV they just showed a warning announcement for several of the surrounding areas, including Honolulu, where we are.  I don’t really know what the danger would be, but that’s what it said.  My mom said she felt her bed shake a little, but I didn’t feel anything.

So I guess that’s pretty cool.  As long as nothing too bad happens.

Pictures

I ran out of time to jazz it up a little, but I said I’d put some up, so I did.

Click Here To See The Pictures

Luau!

We are now back on Oahu.  We got here yesterday, Monday.  We decided to jump right into the remaining activities and went to a luau.  Not just any luau though, it was at a place called Sea Life Park.  Which is kind of like Sea World.  We got went a little early so we could look around the park.  We saw sting rays, sea turtles, dolphins, penguins (only two of the seventeen species of penguins are exclusive to the antarctic), and all that cool sea stuff.  And then when the actual luau program started, we got to see a dolphin show, and they showed us some stuff with a few penguins and some sea lions.  After all of that, was the actual luau, which was great.  I was a little skeptical at first, but once it got going it was really fun.

There was of course the music, and the dancers, and the food (the best part).  I was, inevitably, asked to go up and dance with the guys (not even the girl hula-ers, the guys).  I think that whole part was caught on tape, and there are some pictures too, which I will be posting.  For real this time.  I just loaded 394 onto the computer.

More Volcanoes

Tonight we went to the volcano park again (we didn’t do it yesterday like I said in that other post). This time we could actually see hot lava, or magma. We couldn’t really get too close, because to do that we would have had to walk over two and a half miles of lava (cooled) that was very reminiscent of Mordor. When you have two four year olds with you, traversing razor sharp lava rock with lots of large cracks and crevices isn’t very fun and takes a really long time. So we opted to look at it from a distance. Once I get the pictures (along with all the other pictures we’re talking on this trip), I’ll show what we could see, but what it was, was lava flowing into the ocean. When the lava hits the water, it explodes. We could see the explosions.

While we were leaving the volcano (you have to park very far away for safety), Bill would not get off my back to race him back to the car. He was doing the same thing the other day on Oahu, but this time I couldn’t take the badgering any more and gave in. I beat him. But he did put up a good effort.

I really do want to get some pictures up here, tomorrow I think we’re kind of going to be chilling, so hopefully I’ll be able to get them then.

Mahi Mahi

Rianne: “What’s Mahi Mahi?”

All at the same time -
Me: “Shark”

Katie: “Shark”

Mom: “Dolphin”

Dad: “Tuna”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahi_Mahi

I think my dad was most right.

Switching Islands

Today we switched to the island called Hawaii (we were on Oahu before, and are actually going back there, but we wanted to spend a few days here too). It’s a little different then Oahu. There aren’t really any beaches that you’d go swimming at, or places to go snorkeling or stuff like that. It’s a lot more scenery – volcanoes, black sand beaches, waterfalls and the like.

Pretty much right after we got here, we drove to the black sand beach (there are several, I think, but only one is still accessible). It was really cool. The sand was black of course. And there were a lot of little black crabs, and we saw five or six sea turtles.

After the beach, we went to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (I think that’s what it’s called). You can go up onto the mountains, and see where they have erupted in the past. We walked on the solid lava, and saw the steam vents. It’s neat, where some of the older eruptions happened, the ground grows stuff very well. So in one of the craters there is a rain forest. Actually, I’m not sure if the rainforest grows good because there was an eruption there, or because of its tactical position on the mountain that allows it to get the 200 in. of rain each year that is required for a rain forest. Either way, there is a rain forest there, and we walked through part of it.

Tomorrow we are going to go back again, I think (as you can probably tell, I really don’t know anything about when we’re doing stuff), and try to see some magma flowing into the ocean.

Hanuama Bay – Killer Coral

Today we went snorkeling (or shnorkeling as Anna calls it) at Hanuama Bay. It was very fun. We saw lots of cool fish, coral, and 2 Moray Eels. The coolest fish were these kind of rainbowish, tie-dye looking ones, which were probably a foot and a half or two feet long. The eels were cool at first, but then one of them started swimming around right under us, and there were too many people and corals around to swim away. So it felt like you were going to kick it or something and then it would come and bite a finger off or something. Which, needless to say, would stink. I’m not really a whimp, but when a three or four foot eel is facing right at you, and you are at an extreme bio-mechanical disadvantage (1. not having enough room to swim away. 2. being a land creature vs. a sea creature, in the sea), it’s pretty freaky. Their mouths aren’t that big, but I’m sure they’re big enough to take small limbs off, or big chunks of skin out.

The most exciting part of the day, was when we were done, and heading in to shore. There are kind of three sections in the bay. Starting closest to shore.

First. A shallow (five or six feet) part with the ground covered in coral, and some bigger chunks of coral.

Second. A sort of break water made of coral. I’d say, in most areas there is about two feet of water between the coral and the surface. Remember that. That’s not enough room to swim, especially when there are waves crashing all about the area.

Third. A deep (ten to twenty feet) section, covered mostly in coral, with big patches of sand here and there. That section really has nothing to so with the story other then this is the section the story begins in.

So we were out in the third section, unsuccessfully hunting for sea turtles, and we decided we were done and were going to go back in.

Now, to get past the second section of the bay, you had to try to find a canyon or gap in the coral to swim through. If you tried to swim over the coral… well, as I said there isn’t enough room to swim. It’s too shallow and you shouldn’t touch coral.  It’s sharp and I believe it can be poisonous. You can guess what I did. And of course everyone else (brother, sisters, and dad) was following me.

I thought I had it at first. I thought I had a nice little gap to go through. It took maybe three seconds to figure out my mistake. But it was too late by then. There was really no turning back. A wave picked me up and shot me over part of the reef. Then I had to kick like crazy so as not to get sucked back to where I just was until the next wave came.  And of course when the waves came and went, the would push you sideways as well as forwards and back.  So I constantly had to make course corrections to avoid coral impact.  All I was trying to do was move forward and dodge the taller towers of coral. I was picturing the part of “Cast Away” where Tom Hanks slams his leg on that hunk of coral and it puts a big gouge in it.

As I neared the end, and the waves were easing up a little bit, I put my hand down on the coral between a few nasty sea urchins to stop the waves from pushing me all over, and gain my bearings. While I was stopped, my brother, Bill, caught up to me and appeared to be having a grand old time with the ordeal. Later he said that being swept inches over razor like coral felt “Mission: Impossible-ish”. Before I started swimming again, I didn’t put my snorkel back in my mouth. I don’t know why, I just didn’t. So until we got past the rest of the reef, I was sucking air, looking down, sucking air, looking down. Why I didn’t put the snorkel back in my mouth during that? I don’t know. I don’t even know why I went over that part of the reef! I knew there was a safe area, the area that we got into the third section through. But I guess I just wanted to do it my way.

We all came out of it without a scratch. My dad actually didn’t even follow me all the way through it. He realized the danger and went around. When we got out of the reef, all I could think of was how dumb that was.

Of course now that we’re all okay we can look back and laugh at it, but it was pretty darn scary while it was happening.  And as usual, it’s these kind of things that make vacations memorable.

Diamond Head

Today we climbed Diamond Head, which is a volcano crater that has some WWII stuff on it, and a great view at the top. It was fun. The sign at the entrance said that the trail was 8/10 mile. I know that’s the same as 4/5, but that’s what it said.

At first the path was a paved side walk for a little while. Then it turned into rocks and the natural face of the mountain (it’s kind of a mountain). Once you get closer to the top, there are some normal stairs, a spiral staircase, and then a whole lot of normal stairs. At the top, you could look out of an old bunker, or climb out of that and go a little bit higher to a lookout thing. The view was really cool from up there. It’s high enough that you can see everything, but not too high so that you can’t see some of the smaller details of stuff. After we were done at the top, and started to go down, it started to get more fun.

As we were going down the spiral stairs, my sister, Katie, looked like she was about to puke and fall over. She didn’t, but by the time we got down the spiral stairs (this is still very close to the top, so there’s a lot of mountain to go), she looked really nasty. So my dad told me to go ahead of everyone to get some water and bring it back.  Then we would meet somewhere in the middle on my way back. I ran the whole way down, stopping just get get around people that were taking up the whole trail. When I got to the bottom I bought five waters from the stand thing. I drank one real quick and then started back up. I met up with everyone else about a 1/4 of the way back up the trail maybe. I can’t really say I was tired, but it was a pretty good run.  The run down was kind of tough, because, as I said, most of the path is the rocks at natural ground.  So you have to watch your step.  And it’s usually weird running down hill.  Coming back up was a little harder because I had the water, a big chunk of the paved part is very steep, and I had already run the whole thing down.

Most people might like the extra workout, but I thought it was nice.  So it was a fun time.