Aloha from HILO & HONOLULU, HAWAII!
The weather’s been good for sitting by the pool although we’ve had some dreary, cloudy days -- but it sure beats Incline snow!!! Our day in HILO was pretty short, and about half the ship headed for the bus to WalMart!! We did our big shopping of toiletries, wine, medications etc. and headed out to find an internet café -- which we missed by 5 minutes! It rained a little as was expected -- Hilo is the wettest place in the U.S. with over 200 inches of rain a year -- so we decided to go back to the ship. Even the concrete is black from the lava the island is made of, and the rain made the hills look even lusher and greener than usual. We even saw a rainbow for good luck!
HO
NOLULU was partly cloudy, 80 degrees, and calm seas. We found an internet café where we did our bill paying, banking and answering emails -- what a treat to look out over the ocean, sipping our iced tea, knowing that our connection was working!! (It’s amazing what little things bring us pleasure when we’re traveling …) We wandered through the Aloha Tower Marketplace shops which were decorated for Chinese New Year, 
then visited Costco where we bought a suitcase to replace the one that was damaged on the way to the ship. We’d visited most of the places of interest on past trips, so were happy to just enjoy the harbor and beautiful flowers and decorations in the shops. Another little triumph was finding a salon and getting our nails done!! The shopkeepers were very different from the Mexican merchants -- they politely let us browse and didn’t follow us down the street dropping prices even lower, the farther we got from their shop… We were ready for the poolside barbeque and mai tai’s back on board.
MISCELLANEOUS TRIVIA:
We traveled almost 3,000 nautical miles from L.A. to Hilo, and we’ll go another 3,030 from Honolulu to Espirtu Santo in Vanuatu. This is an island where the Americans had a base in WW II. It’s a small island, with beautiful beaches, rain forests, water falls and lagoons. They’re the only South Pacific island nation that has ever received a grant ($65 million dollars) from the U.S. Millenium Fund for emerging nations. Michener lived here and wrote Tales of the South Pacific in 1946, the book that the movie South Pacific was based on.
Thank goodness for the rugs in the elevators -- every day they change them to let us know what day of the week it is! That, along with the daily schedules that remind me of high school timetables, are the only way we know what day of the week it is and where we should be at what time to make our lectures and classes!!
Nautical miles are slightly longer than land miles -- 6,076 feet vs. 5280 feet.
In early sailing days they calculated speed by dropping a log line with knots at equal distances from the stern, and then they counted the number of knots that were used in a certain time frame. Today it’s done with Doppler radar, bouncing back underwater signals from the ground or a water layer back to the ship. We traveled 3,000 miles at approximately 20 mph and loved the pace!! Sixteen knots converts to about 18.5 statute miles per hour.
Captain Olav has calculated his course so that at exactly noon on Friday, January 30th we will cross the “GOLDEN LINE” -- the intersection of the International Date Line and the Equator. At that time, we lose a day, going from noon Friday to noon Saturday!!! So to celebrate that, they’re planning a “Thank Goodness It’s Not Friday” cocktail party -- any excuse for a party!
The weather’s been good for sitting by the pool although we’ve had some dreary, cloudy days -- but it sure beats Incline snow!!! Our day in HILO was pretty short, and about half the ship headed for the bus to WalMart!! We did our big shopping of toiletries, wine, medications etc. and headed out to find an internet café -- which we missed by 5 minutes! It rained a little as was expected -- Hilo is the wettest place in the U.S. with over 200 inches of rain a year -- so we decided to go back to the ship. Even the concrete is black from the lava the island is made of, and the rain made the hills look even lusher and greener than usual. We even saw a rainbow for good luck!HO
NOLULU was partly cloudy, 80 degrees, and calm seas. We found an internet café where we did our bill paying, banking and answering emails -- what a treat to look out over the ocean, sipping our iced tea, knowing that our connection was working!! (It’s amazing what little things bring us pleasure when we’re traveling …) We wandered through the Aloha Tower Marketplace shops which were decorated for Chinese New Year, 
then visited Costco where we bought a suitcase to replace the one that was damaged on the way to the ship. We’d visited most of the places of interest on past trips, so were happy to just enjoy the harbor and beautiful flowers and decorations in the shops. Another little triumph was finding a salon and getting our nails done!! The shopkeepers were very different from the Mexican merchants -- they politely let us browse and didn’t follow us down the street dropping prices even lower, the farther we got from their shop… We were ready for the poolside barbeque and mai tai’s back on board.MISCELLANEOUS TRIVIA:
We traveled almost 3,000 nautical miles from L.A. to Hilo, and we’ll go another 3,030 from Honolulu to Espirtu Santo in Vanuatu. This is an island where the Americans had a base in WW II. It’s a small island, with beautiful beaches, rain forests, water falls and lagoons. They’re the only South Pacific island nation that has ever received a grant ($65 million dollars) from the U.S. Millenium Fund for emerging nations. Michener lived here and wrote Tales of the South Pacific in 1946, the book that the movie South Pacific was based on.
Thank goodness for the rugs in the elevators -- every day they change them to let us know what day of the week it is! That, along with the daily schedules that remind me of high school timetables, are the only way we know what day of the week it is and where we should be at what time to make our lectures and classes!!
Nautical miles are slightly longer than land miles -- 6,076 feet vs. 5280 feet.
In early sailing days they calculated speed by dropping a log line with knots at equal distances from the stern, and then they counted the number of knots that were used in a certain time frame. Today it’s done with Doppler radar, bouncing back underwater signals from the ground or a water layer back to the ship. We traveled 3,000 miles at approximately 20 mph and loved the pace!! Sixteen knots converts to about 18.5 statute miles per hour.
Captain Olav has calculated his course so that at exactly noon on Friday, January 30th we will cross the “GOLDEN LINE” -- the intersection of the International Date Line and the Equator. At that time, we lose a day, going from noon Friday to noon Saturday!!! So to celebrate that, they’re planning a “Thank Goodness It’s Not Friday” cocktail party -- any excuse for a party!
great!I like it!
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