Day 24 & 25 Our last two Islands
Friday – April 27, 2012
On the Big Island of Hawaii, where the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualalai meet the sea, the Kona Coast is a region of endless lava fields, golden Pacific sunsets and countless legends. This is where Captain Cook first spotted Hawaii, and also where he lost his life.
Today we were up early for our arrival in Kailua-Kona as we had been told that again today the ship would drop anchor in the bay which meant that we would be using the Tenders to go ashore. We caught the early tender into town and spent several hours wandering around all the shops and stores. It was there, hanging outside a small shop, that I spotted the dress I had been looking for, a streamline beautiful blue long mumu. Then we bought matching white leis for the wedding vow renewal ceremony that takes place Saturday night.
We were back to the ship by lunch time. After lunch Phil spent time working on his project of lettering the tee-shirts won by a team trivia group. While he took his project upstairs to work on I cut my thumb really bad and as I am on blood thinner I had a lot of trouble getting it stopped. So now I am trying to type with a huge bandage & tape around my thumb. Later we enjoyed time on the fantail playing cards and eating our ice cream treats. This afternoon we have enjoyed the movie “Cowboys and Aliens” and searched through the photos displays looking for ones of us.
After dinner tonight we played Trivia with our group of trivia friends then spent time listening to the beautiful Hawaiian music and watching the hulu dancers up on the pool deck. They were supposed to having dancing under the stars but with the cloud cover we had there were no stars to be seen. At 11 PM they opened up a huge buffet of food on the pool deck so even though we didn’t need it we enjoyed what they offered. The Captain was trying to keep us all up and awake as he cruised closer and closer to the Mount Kilauea Volcano where everyone was hoping to get a good view of the active Volcano. At midnight we saw it. Only a red glow but large enough so that we knew what we were seeing. Only problem was that it was really cold and windy standing on the outside decks waiting for this special treat. Also midnight was a bit late for us. We got up the next morning with colds.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The best thing we could have done was stay in bed for the day but we had prepurchased
Excursion tickets to tour the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park so it was up early, 6:30, breakfast and off the ship to meet our tour group by 7:45. We have a 4 ½ hour tour today.
A long but very interesting ride up to the National Park. The driver kept us entertained with his spiel about the island, which by the way, is the Big Island and the town we are visiting is Hilo. Of course because of the activity we could not get to close to the Volcanoes but we could see the size of the crater with lots of steam coming out of it.
On the way down we stopped at the Thurston Lava Tube. A long walk thru a very wet and cold tube..interesting but it was not good for us to get chilled. Our final stop was at the Macadamia nut factory. Which was nothing but a shopping stop as the factory was not operating.
This afternoon we both took long naps and tried to restore some of our energy for tonight.
Tonight was “The Wedding Vow Renewal” It was done up really nice in the Colony Club. A lot of people were celebrating birthdays and anniversary in addition to the 40 couples wanting to renew their vows. They had champagne for everyone and a large beautiful cake. Each group was celebrated out in the middle of the dance floor, invited to pick up their champagne and pose for individual pictures with the cake. They did the 40 couples in groups starting with the people on their honeymoon, groups of anniversary between 1 & 15 then 16 & 29, then it was our group 30 & 49 and so on. The final couple was by themselves celebrating 61 years. Each group recited the wedding vows put a lei on each other and kissed. After everyone was done they played the Hawaiian Wedding Song which we all danced to. Afterwards they cut that beautiful cake for everyone to share. We were surprised that all 4 of our table mates showed up to support us. And hopefully the pictures that Bill took of us turned out better than mine.
A wonderful evening but soon I retired to our room for some much needed medicine and sleep. Phil, on the other hand stayed out for a couple of more hours playing his Ukulele with some of the Hawaiian guys who were entertaining the people sitting around.
We set out for Vancouver at 3:30 this afternoon but during dinner an announcement was made that due to a medical emergency we had turned around & were headed back to Hilo.
At 9:30 while I was lying in bed, I could hear the ship pulling up to the dock. But I was asleep before they pulled back out.
We now have 5 nights at sea before pulling into Vancouver on Friday morning.
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