10/1 Addendum

Added Pictures from 10/1

9/30 Addendum

New Pictures added from 9/30

10/13

We went to Pearl Harbor this morning and then spent most of the afternoon on Waikiki Beach.  Our plane took off at 6pm to go back to Atlanta.

10/12

On this day we left the island of Kauai to travel to Honolulu. I was able to take pictures of Nawiliwili harbor as the plane took off. 

We arrived on the Island of Oahu at 12:00 pm.  We were so lucky that the Waikiki Beachside hotel allowed us to check in early.  After unpacking, we went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.  This was the best place we went snorkeling during the whole trip.  I promise our underwater pictures will be even better than the ones taken at Kona. Well, when we get them developed.  They will be in an addendum.

10/4 Addendum

Snorkeling pictures taken underwater in Kona 10/4 (yes, this town was the epicenter of the 10/15 earthquake)!  The Captain Cook monument is located on the beach next to where we were snorkeling.

 

FYI.... Due to the lack of internet access, I was not able to upload all of our pictures during our trip.  So, as I go through this blog adding pictures I will add them as addendums.  This way I won't bore the faithful with having to review the pictures that were loaded.

10/10 and 10/11

Yesterday and today we toured the north shore of Kauai.  This is probably everyones ideal Hawaii.   Many movies were filmed in this part, South Pacific, Blue Hawaii and I believe Lost is filmed close by.

 

Enjoy the pictures!

10/9/2006

We toured the Western shore of Kauai.  This includes theWaimea Canyon.  Mark Twain called it Hawaii's grand canyon.   It is very similar to the grand canyon on the mainland but with green!

 

Enjoy the pictures!

10/8/2006

Today we started out with snorkeling at the beach next to us in Lyngate park.  It is a small beach surrounded by rocks.  

We toured the south shore of Kauai around Poipu beach.  We went snorkeling there hoping to see some sea turtles.  No such luck!

Please be patient.  We are working through dial up. UGH!

10/7/2006

We arrive at our condo in Kapaa, HI on the Island of Kauai.  We are beach front with no air conditioning.  In theory the ocean breeze should keep us cool. That remains to be seen.

10/6/2006

Our second day in Kauai!  We didn't plan any excursions from the ship because we are planning to come back tomorrow and stay for 5 nights.  We drove around to see some of the sights south of the harbor.  We came across a beautiful waterfall where many people were jumping from rocks and ropes.  We didn't have our bathing suits, so we didn't jump. 

One of the added benefits of being on a ship is it can serve as a scenic tour.  Much to our surprise the ship left in the early afternoon for the purpose of viewing the Na Pali coast on the north side of the island.

 

10/5/2006

Our boat docked in Nawilliwilli Harbor in Kauai at 8 am.  The scene from our cabin was spectacular.  We got our "Kauai" rental car.  We reserved a compact and much to our surprise they upgraded us to a PT Cruiser Convertable.  This is the same car we had on the road to Hana.  We are so enjoying Hawaii with our top down :)

10/4/2006

Today we arrived in Kona, HI.  It is on the west side of the Big Island of Hawai'i.  The adventure of the day was raft and snorkle trip to Kealakekua Bay.   I was in search of a Dori fish but never found one.  I saw lots of yellow ones.  We have no pictures, yet. Because we used an under water camera.  We will try to get those developed when we are in Kauai.

10/3/2006

In Maui, we biked 21 miles today.   Fortunatley it was down Mt. Haleakala. So, I peddled about 4 rotations in the hour and a half trip.   We were 10,000 feet at the top of the Mountain where  we viewed a large crater.

10/2/2006

THE ROAD TO HANA

Hana is a samll town on the east coast of Maui. The road leading to it has 600 curves in 30 miles and 59 one way bridges. AAA estimates the time to take 3 1/2 hours. Well, we stopped a lot. and made in 4 hours. The scenerary really was very impressive. The road hugs the coastline similar to A1A in California. However, the road in much much narrower. The coast is mostly made up of mosly cliffes with rocks and bolders. No real beach to speak of

10/01/2006

Well I was told that cruise ships made more money off of food and activities. The internet connection is no exception,. They wanted to charge us 100 for 240 minutes of connection time. So, my blog entries are going to be a little late. I believe we can find FREE internet cafe's at the various docks.

 

Right now, we are sitting on our balcony as we sail away from Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. We took an excursion called "Kilauea Volcano Lava viewing adventure hike". It was really neat when we got there. We could see miles and miles of hardened lava. In the distance on the shore we could see a very large cloud. The source of the cloud was lava flowing into the ocean. We soon learned to our true excitement this would be the destination of our hike. So we anixiously started down a road that ended abruptly at a wall of hardened black lava. Yep, we had to hike over this lava field and yep that large cloud was bigger than I thought. It was about 4 miles away.So, we started walking it took two hours to reach a line of caution tape that wouldn't let us go any closer than 1 1/2 miles from the base of the cloud. We tried hard, even with binoculars, but no red lava. Our boat sails by tonight we are hoping to see it then.

We saw red glowing lava as the ship passed Hawaii Volcano National Partk. It was really great to see but not all the photogenic. Our pictures turned out all black with tiny orange specs. We actually got to see them from our balcony so that was a pleasant surprise.

9/30/2006

Well, 9 1/2 hours on a plane was tiring. I just don't get how sitting and doing nothing is so exhausting. Again, the flight was uneventful. We only watched about 2 hours of the approximately 100 hours of DVDs we brought with us. The Honolulu airport reminded me a lot of Tampa's. Honolulu reminded me of Chicago with it's many high rises . Our boat was docked in Honolulu Harbour which I thought was Pearl Harbor the whole time until I consulted one of my 5 hawaii books and driving maps.

 

It was at dinner that I realized that according to the local time we had been up since 10pm the evening before. We vowed to try to stay up for a full 24 hours., Our boat sailed away around 8pm. We sailed down the coast of Waikiki Beach and Diamond head. We then decided to call it a night never making it to our our 24 hour goal. But silly me and my internal clock I awoke a 3:30 am.