We took off again on another cruise, round trip from San Pedro, CA to Hawaii. I know you are thinking, “didn’t they just do that?” Well, yes, we did do that almost exactly a year ago. We really like cruising and didn’t have anything else to do at the time so we thought, why not.
We got to San Pedro a day early so we took a tour of the battleship USS Iowa that is docked near the cruise terminal.
Just before we sailed, the moon rose over the San Pedro bridge.
Our first stop was in Honolulu. The cruise ship docks are just across the street from some high rise buildings in the downtown area.
Our next stop was in Nawiliwili harbor. Yep, it is pronounced just like it looks,”Na-wili-wili.” You will notice that there are two jetties here, one on the left and one you can see the end of, just to the left front of the ship. There is not much space there to maneuver a 1000 foot long ship. They made a 90 degree left turn just past the first jetty, then a 90 degree right turn just past the second jetty. They then swung the stern of the ship around, just missing the small boats you see anchored there, making a 180 degree pivot so that we were headed back the way we came in. After that, they moved the ship sideways into a dock that was just large enough for the ship. It was an amazing maneuver to watch and it is all done by eye and hand. They use no GPS, computer or other electronic help.
Our third stop was on Maui. We took a tour to Haleakala National Park and had a great view of the crater on top of the mountain.
We were above the clouds.
This is the land of the Silver Sword plant. This one was growing at about 9700 ft. in elevation.
Driving down the mountain, just before we entered the clouds, we saw a “cloud bow”.
This is part of the area around the restaurant where we had lunch.
I try to learn one interesting fact a year. I don’t want to tire myself out. This year’s fact is that there are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet. That is one reason there are so many syllables in some of their words. There are not many sounds to work with.
I outdid myself this year. In addition to one fact, I came to one conclusion. If I were, by some cruel quirk of fate, made to listen only to Hawaiian music for the rest of my life, I would just shoot myself.
Our last stop was on the Big Island at Hilo. We rented a car and drove to the small town that was recently threatened by a lava flow. The flow had stopped by the time we got there and the National Guard had all the roads closed to the flow so we did not get to see much. We were able to drive along the coast, to an area where an older flow had crossed a road and were able to walk around on it. We drove to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. We had a good view of the active crater. There are a lot of very dangerous gases that come out of an active crater so we could not get very close.
There is a road that goes all the way around the crater. About 2/3rds of it was closed. I guess that it would not be good for tourism to have a bunch gassed tourist laying on the road.
When the lava flows, it does not come out of this crater. It comes out of cracks further down the mountain. Unfortunately, there was no lava flowing anywhere when we were there. Maybe next time.
We saw a lot of rainbows on this trip. Because we spend most of the winter in the desert, seeing a rainbow is a special event for us.
The last stop on our cruise was at Ensenada, Mexico.
We were back in the land of the gulls. There are no gulls in Hawaii. We kind of missed them.
It seems that none of my posts would be complete without a few photos of colorful sunrises and sunsets. I consider them one of nature’s greatest spectacles.
Where are we off to next? Perhaps down to the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize to visit some Mayan ruins.
