I apologise profusely for the lack of new photos. The ‘net connection at the current hotel is sketchy at best, and uploading pictures is just turning into a major pain in the butt.
However, today we spent the day on the beach in Kailua. It’s apparently been voted the best beach in the US, if you believe the hype.
I believe. It’s just like the beaches you see in the movies. The sand is superfine, the water is crystal blue and clear. Unfortunately it was a little cloudy, but you can’t blame the beach for the weather. It was certainly warm enough for swimming and a tiny bit of sunburn.
So tomorrow is our last full day in the USA before we head home. Suddenly the list of things I want to squeeze in is very long, and despite the fact that we’ve been on this island for over a week, there’s still a bunch of stuff we didn’t get to see.
We went driving today, driving down the Kamehamaha Highway mainly to see sights and visit various roadside food establishments.
Yes, we are back on food. I have already been chastised for my pre-occupation with food here in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Not-Fat-Free. In my defence, every one of these places was identified and scoped out by D. First there was the bakery that serves up this inhumanly tasty chocolate coconut cake. No single person could possibly finish one without feeling sightly ill with sweetness overload. Then there was the smoothie place. And yesterday, before our item of news, we went to a shop that serves up flavoured shaved ice. With ice cream and sugared red beans. Yeah, it is actually as kinda yucky as it sounds; the flavouring mixes with the beans and the ice cream and it is really really sweet, but chewy from the beans. But the ice by itself is amazing with a panoply of flavours more extensive that the human taste senses can discern.
We wrapped up the day with a luau. There’s a big Polynesian Cultural Centre about twenty minutes down the road from where we are staying with exhibitions of the sundry Polynesian islands. We wandered the exhibits after getting to the centre later than we would have wanted to, so we didn’t really exhaust the possibilities before we had to front up for the luau part of the evening. Lots of traditional and non-traditional Hawaiian food, including the dish D and Em had been waiting all day for, the pit-roasted pig. There was also poi - which nobody tried - and a raw fish dish - again, not tried - and some taro rolls. There was also a dish with raw salmon, tomato and onion; I haven’t the heart to tell Em that she ate the raw salmon. I’m sure she’ll find out via this post eventually, but it won’t be via me.
Today we started the final days of our world tour. There will be no more shows, all dates are final, we simply cannot stay even if venues are sold out. Sorry, fans, but the show must go on even if going on means eventually stopping. Study the Dao and you will get it.
We drove from the south side, or the leeward side of Oahu today to the North Shore or windward side. The names are stunningly meaningful. Where Honolulu is warm and humid and calm, where we are now, which is just a few minutes down the road from the Banzai Pipeline and the beach village set in Lost, it is warm and not really humid because the wind is blowing all the humidity away.
I’m actually not too sure how it works, because as I understand it, humidity is moisture in the air. I took a short stroll down to the beach - and I do mean short, like 20 metres - after I unpacked the boot - it is a boot, people, not a trunk! - and the waves were coming in like shells from the main gun of a battleship. They were big, they were loud and they kicked up so much spray that you are left wondering why you can still see. We took a drive later and it really did look like a light mist rolling across the yard between the bungalows.
There’s a story that one night, during a particularly strong blow, one of the bungalows in the complex we are in was washed away by a rogue wave.
That drive we took? Up the road to Papa’iloa Beach. It is pretty tough to find, you have to know where you are going, what with it squirreled away down a street off the highway, and then the only access a tiny alley between some private homes that I’m sure you have to be involved in some trade that involves the selling - overt or not - of a part of your soul in order to be able to afford. Then you get to walk about half a kilometer up the beach, dodging waves because they are big waves that if you listen real closely to have the moaning voices of the damned, lost sailors of yore beckoning you down to the depths of the sea for an eternity of looking like a cheap Cthulhu. But then there it is - albeit behind a fence - the set of Lost, the beach village. Many photos were taken and particular care taken to identify not just Sawyer’s hut but also Sawyer’s reading tree.
There’s a little beach town just off the highway were we went afterwards for dinner. Lots of little craft shops, lots of surf shops and lots of evidence of having been ripped directly from the reels of a sixties surfing movie by some Frinkian Stereotypifier. Right down to the tiny cafe staffed by the muscley, laidback surf dude and the cute girl in the ridiculously short shorts.
So today, we hit the Waikele Premium Outlet Centre. And we shopped. And shopped, and ate and shopped. There were many bargains to be had, and we even resisted some of them.
Not too many, though.
Then we came home, tired, worn out and hungry. We went to dinner, and decided to each order pancakes. (yeah, healthy Weight Watchers approved meal. Not.)
The waiter advised us that we may not want to order one plate each.
Thank Heavens he warned us. The pancakes are 14″ across. Those are normal sized syrup pitchers for perspective. Nearly half the serving came home with us, uneaten.
Finally, a day spent on the beach. Yesterday was spent shopping, and there was some shopping - or at least browsing - done this morning, but we made it down to Waikiki beach this morning and…relaxed.
Now, just in case the details of the Earth’s tilt escape you, it is winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. Rapidly coming up to the middle of winter, actually; the dead of winter, if you like. We sunbathed. And it was hot. Get that? It was hot. I sweated. In the dead of winter. There is some lingering doubt, some small chance that I will find a way to escape the inevitable and remain on this island paradise for ever. No more cold walks to the train station for me, just hot hot sun. Wonder if work will go for the idea.
Anyway, we were on the beach. Emily and I swam, I believe D allowed the water to touch her knees before chickening out; I’ll admit that after the sun, the water was initially cold, but once immersed it was damn nice.
Afterwards we walked down the street to Honolulu Zoo which - if you have been looking at our photographs - is nestled amongst the expanse of greenery that can be seen from the balcony of our room. It’s a good sized zoo, not as big as Taronga Zoo and not as small as Central Park Zoo, making it perfect for walking around in an afternoon. Big focus on the standards: elephant; giraffe; sundry primates; rhino; hippo; various avians and reptiles. They have a komodo dragon and a kookaburra that started to laugh when D sang a kookaburra-based song the title of which escapes me but appears to question the heterosexuality of the species.
PS Even though one of the leading stories in the newspaper today was of a lava flow continuing to invade a housing estate, I still want to stay. Hey! It was on a different island, the big one that all the locals call “The Big Island” in a surprising twist that I just can’t figure out.
And would you blame me? Here’s the view from our window.
It’s the middle of winter, it’s 11pm and I’m still wearing shorts and a t-shirt. What’s not to love?
Today we wandered lots of shopping centres. We took the bus to the centre of Honolulu, looking for two yarn stores. We found them both, but they were both closed.
We visited the ‘Iolani Palace, which is just lovely.
It’s so green and lush and quiet, it’s hard to believe it’s in the middle of the city. We then walked down to the Ala Moana shopping centre, where we whiled away the afternoon, then walked up to the Ward Center, where we looked about some more, then had dinner before I met up with a Hawaiian knitting group to enjoy the evening while David and Emily relaxed in Borders.
We then came home via the webcam at the Duke Kahanamoku statue. Again, my sister Natasha kindly grabbed some screenshots for you all.
(I’d also like to point out what excellent timing she has. The email with the screenshots arrived just as I started typing about the webcam!)
The other store I have to mention is the ABC store.
In New York, there’s a Duane Reade on every almost every block. In California there’s a Starbucks on every block. In Waikiki, every block has at least one, and usually two ABC stores. Seriously, you can’t even use them to navigate, because they’re everywhere. They stock the necessities. You know, sunscreen, milk, bread, phone cards, fake lei’s, t-shirts, beer.
We didn’t do much yesterday. Got up at 4.30 in the morning, drove to LAX airport - about an hour - and boarded a plane to leave the mainland for Hawai’i.
Somehow we managed to end up in a different hotel to the one we booked and about twelve stories higher than they wanted to put us; so now we have a fantastic view of the surf and the interior mountains.
In the afternoon we took a walk along the beach and came down from the flight. Today, I am told, there is shopping. In some huge shopping centre.
It was our last full day on the mainland today; tomorrow we leave for Hawaii at some god awful time in the morning, an hour so dire I’m surprised the guv’mint even allows it.
I wasn’t really sure what we should do today; there was only so much driving about LA using knitting stores as a macguffin for seeing the city that as tenable. So instead we decided to try and get back some of the photos we lost during our second day in Disneyland. We went back, this time with a mission to hunt down and capture the furries within the confines of the photographic frame.
Actually, that was basically all we did today. There are photos.
I did fall in love with a new device, despite a recent egregious accusation of ludditism; D’s friend Jill loaned us her GPS navigation device yesterday and today and it makes driving around even easier than the Google maps we’ve been using up till now. The dulcet, stilted tones of Betsy, the navigation device, telling me where I to be exactly 0.8 miles before I need to be there. And if I miss the turn? She’ll sigh with an exasperated tone and dream me up a new route. Bliss.
Ah, this is how Southern California is supposed to be. The sun is shining, the highways are only moderately jammed…
Today we moved in on my friend Jill, after checking out of Beverly Hills. I do think that David failed to mention that the first guest we saw at the hotel at Beverly Hills was a guy with a baseball cap pulled low over his face and the purple lines from the plastic surgeon still visible.
That’s when I really knew we were in Beverly Hills.
So today the sun was shining, so we decided to do the Pacific Coast Highway run. Not the whole thing, just the part between Malibu and Santa Monica.
Gorgeous. The whole stretch of road is beautiful. I could live here.
In fact, I picked up a Real Estate guide, and I’ve even picked out my house. Anyone wanna loan me $16,500,000?
