Mike: A very good day. 

We got up early again, had no immediate plans but wanted to either hike up Diamond Head or spend the day doing city things, like museums, the Palace, have a look at the original missionary settlement, etc. We still have about 8 days camping so decided to do the city things. But most of all,

. . . watch the sun go down
Hear the sea roll in
But I’ll be thinking of you
And how it might have been

no kidding.  Those are the lyrics of Back to the Island by Leon Russell. A song we both love, perhaps for its irony, but love nonetheless.

Back to the Island for those who want to experience the original.

We finally made use of our rental car, a KIA Soul. About as far from my ideal car as one could get.  But I actually like it. Small to fit the narrow driving lanes and tiny parking spaces in Honolulu. Passed on the Mustang convert, not at all because of price, but because a convertible top is like gravity to a miserable human with a sharp instrument. And it would all be on my insurance as I checked and upgraded our insurance policy to cover such.  Much cheaper than the rental car insurance and better coverage.

We started with a fairly easy drive downtown to the Iolani Palace area. (This is where several generations of the Hawaiian Royal Family lived.) Found a Bank parking garage only a block away after circling the block a couple of times to get the one-way right. Friday so the Royal Hawaiian Band gave a free concert just outside the Palace on a grassy area under one of those amazing huge shade trees.

Our tour guide was quite patriotic to Hawaii and we all stood silently as the band played the Hawaiian state song… or national anthem as some seem to think. She is a short blond woman of maybe 55 years and clearly into the history of colonial oppression of the stone-age people the Brits and others found here in 1778. Many deaths from European diseases for which they had no immunity.

Same as happened in North America and one wonders if today is any different but from the reverse direction?

Susan: this tour guide was quite interesting to me. A short, blond, blue-eyed American lady but she was bigly into Hawaiian native culture. She’d gone native, for sure. Lots of talk about respecting the floors, the memories, the ground we walked on. She almost got teary-eyed when they played the ‘national” anthem.

She wasn’t the only one. One of our companions on this tour was another American lady, originally from Montana, who’d moved to Hawaii years ago after all her children were grown.

She lives on Hawaii the Big Island and had come over to be a tourist on Oahu. She actually did cry a bit when she talked about how Waikiki Beach highrises have taken over. She said, where did Hawaii go? I asked if there were people here who want to separate from the States and she said, yes, WE want our country back. It’s a bit like Quebec, I think. A passionate desperation to hang onto a culture. Can’t say I blame them, but wonder if that ever works.

Tall Tom, our tour guide from yesterday, also mentioned this resurgence of native sovereignty. It’s preventing some infrastructure projects the same as we are experiencing in Canada.

Mike: The Palace is beyond amazing. Beautiful design, incredible wood throughout, paintings and artifacts from the King’s around the world trips and adoption of European and American culture and art. 

Susan: the building in similar in some respects to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia in terms of its design. They are about the same vintage and both designers had to consider how to cope with hot, humid climates in the days before air conditioning. So they both have long open hallways that act like wind tunnels running under the houses where the kitchens and store rooms are. The windows are really as big as doors and can slide up so you basically have an open air house. Nice, nice houses!

In the basement now is a little mini-museum of artifacts. There is this present-day longing for “authentic” Hawaiian culture, but back when this palace was built, the Royal Family wanted to be just like European royalty. Which was Queen Victoria, so they adopted Victorian fashion and social institutions like Freemasonry and Protestant Christianity. There is one room that contains what is essentially the crown jewels, and a bunch of honorific insignias like the kind of thing you see Queen Elizabeth wearing in official portraits when she’s decked out in jewels. The Hawaiian king created four of them specific to his reign and then he and the European royalty all had a good time presenting them to each other.

I asked the tour guide where they got the money to build a palace and buy a bunch of jewelry. Just like the British, the royal family owned all the land, and, as the sugar cane industry started essentially the day after Captain Cook landed, they actually were quite wealthy.

And we found out why there was/is such a big population of Japanese people here: they imported workers from Japan for the sugarcane and pineapple plantations. There is actually a lot of interesting Japanese history here, which maybe helps explain the many Japanese tourists.

Mike: Went to some other buildings (early settlement of Christian missionaries, church built of blocks of coral, territorial office from days before statehood) nearby but sore feet drove us “Back to the Island.”

Quick nap and out to the beach to have drink and watch the “sun go down.” Found a nice beach bar at the Moana Surfrider, the original and oldest hotel on the beach. Nice view of the sunset, sailboats, and all the Hawaii things.  Couple of Japanese wedding parties with the bridesmaids and groomsmen decked out in Hawaiian dresses and shirts. Maybe it’s a thing in Japan?

A nice touch to our last day in the luxury of Waikiki and Honolulu.

Back to our AIRBnB for dinner of Whole Food surf and turf. Fabulous!

The crowds are back again on the evening sidewalks. Crowded streets thick with people having a fine time shopping and doing whatever it is to fill the sidewalks and streets with –mostly Asian people- having a fine time and mostly in their finery.  Rather fun as it is something quite different from our usual lives.

Tomorrow we pack up and leave. Not sure what the wifi situation will be, so if we don’t post anything, it’s probably because there isn’t any.

Mike’s writing:

The day started off early, about 5am (8 Cochrane time) so we still aren’t completely time adjusted.  Made some excellent coffee from local grinds. Had a hearty breakfast of 2 Whole Food eggs, shrimp, broccoli, and rice leftovers.

Got picked up at 7am by the driver for our tour of Pearl Harbor and all the attendant museums and Battleship Missouri.

Quite a massacre by Japan on a sleeping giant. And largely because the US and allies had cut off Japan’s access to oil and coal markets and thus choked off their economy.  Sound familiar? Certainly not to justify what they did, but without energy they had no economy and felt themselves desperate. Sounds even more familiar. They had to keep the US out of their war on other Asian nations while they recaptured their energy sources if not by markets, then by force.  Boy did they blow that decision!  Yes they did destroy more than half the US fleet and were able to attack and conquer many Asian locales before the US handed them their head at Midway. Sadly, very sadly, the war raged on with horrible results for several years before the big bomb brought even the fanatical Emperor Hirohito to his senses.  The battleship Missouri that is now decommissioned here was the location of the unconditional surrender in Tokyo Bay.  The setting on the ship is kind of ordinary, but the volunteer ship tour guide gave a very moving account of it all.

I have to admit to my more-than-passing interest in all this.  My dad was on the aircraft carrier Yorktown, which was also parked in Tokyo Bay at the surrender after taking many hits and innumerable Kamikaze attacks at Okinawa and other numerous attacks and battles.  He was working right on the flight deck the whole time, unarmed, operating the arresting gear which stops planes from skidding right across into the island or right off the other side of the ship.  If they are lucky. 

My biological father was a Marine who fought on several Pacific Islands as part of the Marine Raiders who operated behind the scenes with secret early landings prior to the invasion for reconnaissance and sabotage. His wounds got infected into his lymph glands so he was sent to hospital in Washington DC where he mostly recovered but later died when I was 3. Not looking for sympathy, only to explain why this was kind of a pilgrimage for me.

Many people crowding the various sites were of Asian extraction and many families from Japan who were approximately my age were likely visiting the site for similar reasons to my own. War sucks way beyond description in no small part because after millions of ordinary people have been sent to die, the reason for fighting gets blurred and forgotten and we become friends. I’ve owned 4 Subarus, a Toyota and Datsun, hundreds of “made in Japan” items and actually felt close to the Japanese family I helped out with directions today (3 generations) who were obviously confused. Only the youngest girl could speak English. So I talked to her and gestured to the eldest man which line to get into to match his tickets to the boat in order to visit the Arizona memorial out near Ford Island.  Two humans from completely different cultures, possibly with parents/grandparents who tried and often succeeded in killing one another, interacting pleasantly and productively.

Reminded me a bit of the Vietnamese man, also close to my age but a bit younger, who climbed on our slippery steel roof to fix a leaking rain gutter 3 floors up from the ground. I had advised him about it and he said it was no problem for his 100 pound self.  We chatted for nearly an hour after he completed the work.

Our tour guide driver was named Tom and wanted us to remember him as Tall Tom.  6 foot 7 to be exact. He not merely drove us to and from Pearl, he kept a running account, and an interesting one, of every fascinating historic personage and location and event in Hawaii’s rich history. He took us through all parts of Honolulu, perhaps most memorable was the mural district which was recently home to an international event of wall art people who painted the most artistic and fabulous paintings on the sides of buildings for blocks on end, mostly on small industrial and commercial buildings large and small.  Simply amazing! 

Took us to a huge military cemetery up on the Punch Bowl volcanic crater high above the city. He even knew the various species of exotic birds people randomly asked him about; likewise strange trees.  One of the passengers, from Wisconsin as it turned out, asked Tall Tom about real estate prices.  Average $600k for beat up bungalow. Apartments $1800-2400 per month depending. Because she was from Wisconsin, she asked where Tall Tom lived, given a shuttle bus job. He hesitated, and then said “in all honesty, I live out of my car.”  Since I am not from Wisconsin I bit my tongue and did not ask him “what kind of car.”  Though I really wanted to know. All in all he helped make our day by providing at least a high school education on Hawaii, a street level education of Honolulu and Hawaii in all its historic glory and sometimes tragic outcomes. Very cool.

Now maybe I was hungry, but thanks to Tall Tom’s subtle suggestion, we had hot dogs on the way into touring the Battleship Missouri. I noticed that I had not recorded eating a hot dog in the entire time I’ve had a Fitbit, going back to 2011.  But I have to say this was the best damn hot dog I can remember. OK maybe Yankee Stadium.

Susan: it was here that I discovered that the elusive scent I have been smelling is hibiscus flowers. A bit like durian fruit: perfume with an undercurrent of decaying garbage.

Mike: we have toured large Navy ships before, but one of the interesting things about this one was the foot+ thick steel doors protecting the central command center of the ship. The command center was about the size of a large ensuite closet these days, but presumably could control the ship right up until it was being blown to bits.  Obviously this did not happen to this ship, but they had planned for it. Another thing I did not know was that the nine 16-inch guns could each launch a shell the weight of a Volkswagen at 2800 feet per second.  I know a fair bit about hunting rifles having reloaded my own ammo for many years, and 2800 fps is a good load for a 30-06 or 308 rifle, firing a tiny speck of a bullet compared the Volkswagen. Weight of the radio knob kind of tiny. Incredible!

Finally back to our AirBnB. 10 hours out and about non-stop. Susan’s ankle is severely swollen and my right foot is sore as hell.  But not as bad as yesterday for me.  Shoes and sox off, Susan put her feet well up and a relaxing dinner of Whole Foods, grass fed, pure as the driven snow, huge STEAK!  We’ll figure out tomorrow when it comes.

Susan: today was a bit of an eye-opener for me re Honolulu as we drove through some not great areas of town, like right by the freeway, where the buildings speak loudly of poverty. After the luxury of Waikiki, it’s sad to see. This town runs on tourism and military, and maybe that’s not the best for supporting upward mobility for ordinary people. Today we also saw homeless tent encampments in the parks. Not on the scale of what there is in San Francisco or Victoria, but some.

On the way back, we were driven through the downtown core where the state capital building and the historical palace of the Hawaiian royal family are. Also other great buildings like 120-year old churches made out of coral blocks and the like, are. Tall Tom gave us chapter and verse on the destruction of the Hawaiian way of life when the Europeans arrived. Very similar to what happened to the natives in Canada. And according to Tall Tom, the social and political problems are similar for their descendants today.

The Pearl Harbor memorial site is necessary but it’s getting far in the past now. Very few people around any more who have first-hand memories of the fateful day. The sunken battleship Arizona, on which 1100 sailors died, 900 of whom still rest in the wreckage, is encased in coral and sea weed. And it still leaks oil. All that pain and sorrow and rage and bravado fades, the bravery and loss is forgotten, it all becomes strange and distant. I can only imagine how not-immediate it is for kids who are 9 or 10 today. Do we care about the signing of the Magna Carta? That was an event of enormous historical import, not least to the principals involved, and it’s only a few lines in a book now that we never think about.

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the population of Oahu was about one third Japanese or of Japanese ethnicity. Many of them were taken off to internment camps and lost everything. I’m not American, nor do I have a family history of major military service like Mike has, and yet I can feel rageful about what happened here 70+ years ago. So many kids dead, noble ships crippled or killed. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the numerous Japanese tourists are secretly elated at the success of their grandfathers here.

Two interesting things: the first line of the speech Roosevelt made with the famous phrase “a day that shall live in infamy” originally read “a day that shall live in world history.” Well done, whoever made that edit! (They have the draft, marked up speech on display.)

The other thing was a big signpost with distances to various places marked on it. Hawaii is remote! The remotest place on earth, according to one thing I read. Here are the distances from Oahu to: North America, 2150 miles, South America, 5250 miles, Asia, 4150 miles, Australia, 4500 miles. It is the headquarters of the Pacific fleet, whose area of responsibility covers more than half of the globe.

Much as we might wish this is just a beachy paradise, it is not.

Tomorrow we’ll do something a little less intense.

Wow, that felt like a long day! In fact, it feels like we’ve been here for much longer than one day. Which is a good thing! Ice and snow is magically a distant memory.

We were awake fairly early because of street noise and banging around outside but mostly because we are time-shifted by three hours still. Having ascertained that Whole Foods would be open at 8 am, we set off in search of food.

The day was again grey, windy, and mildly rainy. After 20 minutes of navigating rush-hour traffic, we arrived and entered the attached parkade. Street parking is basically impossible here so that was a bonus.

I got hung up in the meat section. Such beautiful seafood and meat! They actually raise beef cattle in the north of the island where apparently there are grassy valleys. But no feedlots!

There was a 5-point animal welfare plan posted having to do with how they are transported, antibiotics and growth hormone use, no confinement, and ??? if they are going to be part of Whole Foods retailing. It wasn’t ridiculously more expensive than Alberta beef, and they also had quite a bit of lamb, which is hard to come by at home. Good, nutrient-dense food makes me happy! We also got exotic cheese, and other basics like eggs, cream, coffee, and butter. Then we filled up the cardboard boxes with buffet breakfast items and cashed out, averting our eyes from the total bill.

We were up on the third floor of the parkade, but there was an ingenious escalator that would latch onto the shopping cart and bring it up with you. Smart!

Having enjoyed the Whole Foods experience, we returned home and gorged. Then it felt like nap time though it was only about 11 am local time.

We did rest a short while. This guy

was about four stories up in a cherry picker whacking away at the dead and dying fronds on the palm trees. We saw one fall driving to Whole Foods so I think this is necessary. It would hurt if one fell on your head, and the wind is making it happen.

The sky cleared up and the sun came out, so we decided to walk over to Waikiki Beach. Being lily-white Canadians from the frozen north we covered up, mostly. After about a block, it became clear that it’s a *lot* warmer when the sun is out!

About two blocks from our bnb, we crossed Kalakaua Avenue and were into the heart of 5-star hotel Waikiki Beach. It was lovely! Giant trees providing cool and shade, winding paths and flowers and lava rock pools and waterfalls, with a faintly Asian ambiance.

There are a lot of Asian-looking people here: Chinese and Japanese tourists for sure, but lots of Hawaiian people who might be a mix of those and Polynesian. People who look like us are very much in the minority on the streets in this part of town, anyway. Bi- and trilingual signs everywhere.

We continued toward the beach but got distracted by the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a big pink pile that’s been there since early in the 1900’s. We wandered around in the lobby and various wings and hallways and it was very beautiful!

They were handing out leis to the registered guests. We thought we’d check out their swimming pool so went down another hallway and out and encountered this!

Sadly, nothing good to read in there.

We made our way through a thicket of loungers and curtained gazebos hosting languid, sweating guests and behold! An ocean! Beach! And my first whiff of ocean smell. Diamond Head loomed in the distance, looking misty and green.

The beach was wall-to-wall bodies stretched out in the sun, and a goodly number bobbing in the surf. Lots of bums in Brazilian-style bikini bottoms. I immediately wanted to run back and change into my swimming suit but we will have plenty of beach time in a few days.

We were maybe not supposed to be there as the hotels like to pretend it is exclusively their beach, for their guests. Not sure what the legalities of it are. But we were feeling uncomfortable, not least because we had so many more clothes on than 99% of the other people, so we left.

A refreshing stop for coffee for Mike and iced coffee for me. No disposable straws, so I am now the proud but involuntary owner of a metal straw which I won’t remember to take with me.

We wandered in and out of various hotel compounds until we came to a stretch of park abutting the beach. Not so many beautiful bodies, a few rough sleepers here and there. But all the beaches were all very clean and clutter-free.

Eventually we came to a big marina where you could walk past all the boats. Mostly sailboats. This is my boat.

This is Mike’s.

By now, our feet were feeling the steps, so we turned for home. In a hotel maze, a cute young woman offered us a tray of Ferro Roche chocolates and smoothly lured me into a skincare salon, where she passed me off to Talia, who promised to work magic on my eye bags with her serum of “plant stem cells.”

You can totally tell the difference, right??? I think she suspected I wasn’t going to buy it when I said it’s probably ridiculously expensive, right? She said, it’s not exactly cheap.

Many hours later, it still feels like there’s a thin layer of plastic there.

Stopped into an ABC store on the way home to buy sun screen and a few other things. Only on the way out did we discover that they charged us $9 for a simple paper bag to put the stuff in. Sigh.

We are going to have a long day tomorrow at Pearl Harbor so we are having a early night. We can’t decide if we want to eat again, so may not.

14,000 steps, no sunburns. A good day.

• 

Up at six and out the door almost when we intended to be!

We were the first ones to check in for our flight to San Francisco and had plenty of time, so Mike grabbed some breakfast. I had eaten leftovers at home in an ultimately doomed attempt to stick to my carnivore way of eating. I looked for a book and found the newest (and, it turns out, the last*) Jack Reacher book, but it was hardcover and $40, so no.

We left a half hour late (due to de-icing) on a small Bombardier jet (two tiny seats on each side) and winged our way south past snowy Mt Shasta (very impressive) to the land of green lawns and open air swimming pools. I dozed a bit — it was dark-ish because people had their blinds closed so they could watch movies and the engine noise was substantial.

We had about an hour to make our connection so we bought plane food (no beef to be seen anywhere) and tried to find a Wells Fargo ATM so we could get American cash, but failed. Then we had to hustle to get to gate F22 from gate zero, all the way around a very big airport.

We boarded a massive plushy Boeing 777 and were in a little row of two seats by ourselves. Much more leg room and bigger, better seats than the first leg. Boy, you can fit a lot of people on that plane! They have phased out seat-back screens. Now, you download the United app and they’ll stream movies and tv shows for you on your own device.

The five hour flight to Hawaii went by quickly. I watched a documentary about General Magic, a company that played a big role in the early days of Silicon Valley, Mike read and watched for great white sharks. Then we looked at all our phone photos for a while. We have selfies and sunsets from many different places!

It was a cloudy day over the Pacific. Maybe it always is?

How do they even find Hawaii? The captain announced that it was windy in Honolulu and we got bounced around a bit on the approach.

Our first view was of cloud shrouded green mountains, taller than I expected. And then we were down, into a blustery twilight with scattered rain. My heart was thrilled at the sight of palm trees waving in the wind with bougainvillea at their feet.

Then followed a slog of recovering our luggage and schlepping it way too far to pick up the rental car. Mike’s Fitbit was reading 11,000 plus steps by then and how we managed that when we spent the day on planes, I don’t know.

The guy offered us a Mustang convertible but we ended up with a cheaper Kia Soul. Our pre-programmed Nuvi GPS got us out of the airport and on the road to our Airbnb. It was actually raining now and after a long day it was disorienting to drive through the construction on the big busy highway through the dark and seamy port and dock area. Saw one fire engine, one police car flashing lights, one ambulance, and something happening in a marina. I guess Honolulu is a big city after all.

Our place to stay seems pleasant enough, although there was a cockroach in the cutlery drawer. We journeyed out in search of more food and found a market where I got a burger on rice (which I didn’t eat) and Mike got a small flatbread pizza. $37 US! Tomorrow we will go in search of Whole Foods and stock up.

Still raining off and on, but there are throngs of people about. It smells like sandalwood and ??? Quite different from Virginia (honey and wet canvas) and whatever the Caribbean smelled like. I don’t remember! But I’ve never smelled anything like this before.

Looking forward to adventures tomorrow!

*Lee Child is retiring, so no more Reacher books from him. But apparently his brother, who is also a novelist, is going to take over.

Ps: Happy birthday, Sarah!