Part 1: Motoring to San Diego, enroute to Hawaii, 05.01.10 *****
Part 2: Washington and Oregon, Enroute to San Diego & Ship 05.01.11 ****
Part 3: Klamath Lake, and then on into California, 05.02.25 *****
Part 4: The Ship ms Ryndam, Holland America Line, 05.02.26 ****
Part 5: Starting the Sea Voyage to Hawaii, 05.03.05 *****
December 10, 2004 and some days afterward, aboard the MS Ryndam
The clock goes back an hour again, tonight. Tomorrow we dock in the port of Hilo, Hawaii. 42,000 population. Ben and I have a volcano visit booked.
I was late for dinner tonight because I was unusually tired. Later it turned out that it was because I was getting sick. I finally managed to dress adequately
and to arrive, and I found myself in the doghouse. Ben was pretty cool and restrained, and rather annoyed with me because I was now out of sinc with the dishes that had been served to the rest of them. I skipped a couple of courses to catch up which was no problem to me. Fortunately, neither of us holds a grudge so
he wasn't mad long and I will try to do better in future.
Last night Ben and I struggled our windy way across the sports deck at the bow of the ship in a 9 gale force wind! We only did it for the fun of it. What an incredible struggle it became. It was all I could do to manage to make it. I wondered what Ben would do if I finally gave up and just clung there pasted against the front of the ship by wind, and unable to go either forward or backward. It
was near midnight and we were on the fairly dark top deck. Inside was the Crowsnest Lounge. It was dimly lit. I tried to hold to any little projection along
the way, especially some edges of windows of the lounge. The wind felt about twice as strong as it did one time when I trudged through loose coarse gravel with friends, in order to cross the narrow isthmus between Barrow and Point Barrow,
Alaska in the high Arctic. The wind there also blew our feet out from under us
every time we took a step forward. I learned why so many pictures taken of Inuit show them leaning far forward into the wind, at an angle that if you try it with no wind will make you fall flat on your face.
Dinners aboard have all been very good, well presented, and nicely served. Today I skipped lunch due to some pain that struck, although I did make it to the Feng Shui seminar and was well enough for dinner. After dinner we sat and talked
with Don the business professor about world affairs, for awhile in the card room
. He *still* doesn't believe that global warming is happening. His tall blond wife Lara was seasick again, and not at dinner.
Ben is tired tonight. He is one of the rare few still swimming in the pools. There's a lot of sloshing going on. Sometimes the pools have nets over them to keep the waves down, I suppose, and the people out. This whole trip has been rough. Apparently the big storm we were always driving two days ahead of on our trip down to San Diego had hit, and these waves are from 900 miles away and are now our portion. Tonight and all day long they've been 7 - 12 feet.
Right now I'm not particularly excited about going ashore in Hilo tomorrow. Today the wind has been an 8, which is almost gale force.
It's Sunday now. Yesterday, (Saturday), I talked with Mat, our cabin steward.
The stewards work on contract and have no pensions. He has three children, all
girls. They are ages 14, 11 and 6-1/2. He and his wife hope for a boy the next
time, as Indonesia has no old age security. He didn't offer the information in
order to solicit tips. I asked him about it. No wonder girls aren't wanted, and boys are!
I suddenly became painfully ill so I wasn't able to go on the tour. We lost the
$40.00 my share cost. Ben went alone. I read and slept for five hours until he
returned He saw lots of lava. All old. It was cold at 4,000 feet. He hadn't
expected to be so high and wore a light jacket. He wasn't thrilled with the tour, although the highlight was the big lava tube through which he walked. It was
wide and high enough for a train engine, and the floor was quite rough with many puddles. He said all the lava he saw was black. It looked like the slabs of
granite on the Canadian Shield, and in the cracks little plants were beginning to grow. The lava tube was lighted inside by electric lights that had an orange
glow. They were set into both sides of the tube. Nothing fancy. The walls inside were rough. I think I was better off on the the ship.
I've been needing extra sleep and doing quite a bit of dry coughing. Also my throat and sinuses have been giving trouble. Yesterday I took an Aerius antihistamine in the morning and a sinus antihistamine before sleep. My nose continually
just drips with clear fluid. It may be severe allergies, or a bad cold, and I
don't know which. It's usually difficult to tell the difference.
The sea has been rough. It gets a bit annoying, and then you get used to staggering and learn better how to walk with the movement. Short, quick steps give me
more control, and I don't mind it at all. I really enjoy it at night when I'm
in bed before I go to sleep. I guess it's like being rocked in a
cradle or swinging in a hammock.
Last night I watched the Johnny Depp movie "Pirates of the Carribean" on the room tv, while tired Ben slept. He has always been an early bird, anyway. It was
highly recommended by Lara and Don, our dinner tablemates. We are six. Fortunately we are congenial together. One man looks like our old German neighbour, Freddie. He's Joe, the Hollander. His wife is Lu, the American, and she has a lovely face and eyes.
Yesterday Ben had an hour's talk about the Baha'i Faith with a retired Roman Catholic priest named Norman. Norman is employed by Holland America Line to perform mass at certain times for Roman Catholic passengers. There is also a Jewish Rabbi and his wife aboard.
The lava tube is really spectacular after all! Ben showed me a coloured picture
of it in his Lonely Planet book about Hawaii. I didn't know that sometimes lava runs in great rivulets and the outside cools quickly while the inside continues to be liquid, and to run on out, leaving the cooled outer layer as a tube. Now that we've returned home I discovered that there are some small lava tubes on
both ends of our mountain on which our house is built. Ours is very, very ancient lava, thank heavens. It isn't black, either.
Today at 7 am we docked in Honolulu. We face the quayside, so I haven't seen anything yet. Now it's later, and we've been out for a three hour walk along the
shore and through a park. So far we don't like what we see of this big city of 800,000. It's pleasant and modern, but just a big city. We were able cross a busy road and go straight into the heart of the city where we picked up a couple of items from Long's Drugs. Skip Honolulu. A big city is just another big city.
We saw the famous Diamond Head on our walk. I've seen similar and better mountains where I live. The beaches we've seen aren't very good or very attractive,
either. We have better ones at home, and in Mazatlan where we sometimes visit they are far more spectacular! I suppose there's much more to see, but I don't care.
The view of the "wild coast" was interesting as viewed from the ship's rail. Lots of spray shooting up high through holes in giant rocks near the coast. Vertically pleated mountains. Kaui.
Today we're at Lahaina. I sent Ben ashore to scout things out. He came back about 11 am. He enjoys doing that anyway, and it gave me a chance to nurse the blasted cold. I must have caught it aboard. Have a very bad chest cough now and I
'm certainly glad I brought some of the right medications.
When you borrow books from the library, a $25.00 per book security deposit is charged to your account for every book checked out, and you are credited when the
book is returned. Charges are only placed on your credit card if you don't return the book(s) before disembarking. There is really quite a good library aboard
ship. :-))
We receive the Times Digest each morning when it is slipped under our door. It consists of 8 pages about 8-1/2 x 11 inches, the size of a page from a school notebook, or of a standard business letter. The issue for December 17, 2004 has three front page headlines: "British Court Rules Against Detentions." This is about not continuing to indefinitely detain foreigners suspected of terrorism without charges or trying them. "Kremlin Reasserts Hold over Oil and Gas," and "donors consider large rise in aid to palestinians." It's amazing how much American and International news it has, as well as sports, crossword, stock market news, and even an editorial page with three editorials.
The third editorial is titled "A New World Order" and is about the dismantling of American textile quotas and the beginning of free trade from China, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Turkey, India, and other countries producing textiles and apparel. As
of 12.01 am on Jan. 1, 2005 ships begin to sail to the USA with the goods. Theoretically they can ship as much as they want to the United States, but in trying to protect their own dying textile industry the US trade officials have negotiated "surge protections" into the agreement. "So if clothing imports -- from China, specifically -- surge, the Americans can close the door again. But gone are
the days when President John Kennedy, seeking to coddle New England knitting mills in Fall River, Woonsocket and New Bedford, first introduced the world to the
quota program that has severely limited American imports of clothing from other
countries. It'a a new world order now, where Thailand and Turkey will compete
furiously to reduce costs and eliminate unnecessary red tape, all so they can be
the ones awarded the contract to run up your next pair of jeans. Let's pull up
anchor; it's time for those ships to sail." I miss Canadian news.
Here on my journal page I just found a round, bright orange sticker with the black prow and outline of a ship and a big number 9 on it. That's my identifier marker I'm to wear to catch the right the tender to go on land. We plan to see the fish and ocean bottom
through a glass-bottomed boat. Now having done so, I can report that it was excellent, and a nice, clean and natural part of things to do. The highlight for
me was when we saw a beautiful sea turtle. My heart filled with love for that beautiful creature. It was such a graceful, gorgeous being. I was glad we bought the exquisite sea turtles postcard which shall be framed. And now I have a little framed colour photograph of a couple of swimming sea turtles on my kitchen
window-sill at the sink, to remind me of this wonderful experience.
Yesterday we bought a colourful fish ceramic napkin holder made to the shape and
colour of Hawaii's state fish, the Picasso Trigger Fish. The tail, dorsal fin
and the fin on the bottom are dark blue. It's body is purple, orange, orange and yellow and creamy white, with torquoise blue at the bottom. Around it's mouth
is a thick blue line. It has yellow lips and a black fin with a small orange stripe on its side fins, its eye is ringed by torquoise blue. There are also two
and a half torquoise stripes lined with black across its body. *Now* do you know why it's called a Picasso Fish??? It is very beautiful.
We saw many kinds of colourful fish of various sizes and shapes as we watched what we passed over, through the bottom of the glass bottomed boat. We crossed over coral and sand at various levels in order to observe the kinds of fish that
dwelt in various settings. Delicious cold drinks were served. We were supplied
with cards that had colour photographs of fish so that we could identify whatever we saw. A continuous and interesting talk about what we were seeing was given by the owner of the boat. The deeper the water, the less you can see bright colours on fish and other creatures. The water was clean and clear. It has to do with the way light enters the water and rays bend and illuminate them. Therefore, what we saw was usually much less colourful than it is in reality, although
always fascinating to gaze into a different world.
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