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Okay, folks, this is what you've all been waiting for: my Hawai'i pictures! Unfortunetely, although I took about three rolls of pictures, only about thirty come out any good. But here are those thirty.
Start: The Island of O'ahu
I'm surprised this picture showed up, given that the octopus was in a tank and I had the flash on. But it turned out to be a damn decent picture. So yeah. The Hawaiian word for octopus is "he'e", and I saw this one at Sea Life Park in Honolulu. Sea Life Park is pretty much like Sea World, minus the rides and the orcas. Speaking of octopi, I had to carry a stuffed one back from this park for my little brother. All the way from fucking Honolulu. That was a pain too. And I had to put it through security, and it was a carry-on. I got some funny looks, I can tell you.
Sea turtles! Aren't they neat? They're protected by law in Hawai'i now, which is awesome because they're neat things. Hawaiian word for turtle is "honu".
Next: Island of Kaua'i (The Garden Island)
These are all pictures of Waimea Canyon, which is called the Little Grand Canyon. It's just gorgeous there, I could've spent hours and hours just looking at the scenery. Sadly, I didn't have hours and hours. But I gots pictures. ^^
This is called the Spouting Horn. When the waves come in, they push water into some old volcanic tubes, causing the water to spurt up from the rocks on the sea. There was a Hawaiian legend that there were two sisters and a brother who were exploring the islands. The brother went to Kaua'i to explore, and the two sisters went to Ni'ihau (the Forbidden Island, which is very near Kaua'i). After a while, the brother got worried about his sisters and swam to Ni'ihau and found them on the beach. They had fallen asleep and baked alive in the desert sun, so they were like stone. The brother swam back to Kaua'i, but was so wracked by grief that he did not pay attention and got sucked into one of the Spouting Horn's volcanic tubes. They say that, to this day, you can hear his cries from inside the tubes. And you really can hear a very strange noise coming from inside them...
Opaekaa Falls in the distance here. You can only just see the three streams of it, but I couldn't get any closer than this. There were two artists who were painting out by it there. One of them had painted a woman's face in between two of the falls, and it was gorgeous.
These are pictures of the Fern Grotto. There used to be many more of the long ferns you can see, which were all at least fifteen feet long and covered most of the grotto. However, when the hurricanes in 1982 and 1992 hit, they tore off many of these ferns, and some of them were burned off by the sunlight as a result of the damage. The whole area has natually good accoustics, and they had a band down there who played the Hawaiian wedding song. Apparently, many people get married down in there. I must say, if I was to get married, Fern Grotto would certainly be high up on my list of places to do it.
Next: The Island of Hawai'i (a.k.a. The Big Island)
Kona:
Arch of the first church to ever be built in Hawai'i. Not that I have any particular liking for churches, but I thought this was a neat piece of architecture.
Submarine pictures! We all live in a yellow submarine...
The fish get increasingly harder to see in these pictures. They were taken through very thick glass though, and not all of them will swim up next to the submarine, so I have an excuse.
There are striped fish in the center of this, and a yellow one at the left side. What I found interesting was that some of the predatory fish actually use the submarine as camoflauge and swim along side a lot.
There's a big school of fish in this one, but it's hard to see. Kudos if you find them, they're left of the reef thingy in the middle of the picture.
IT'S EVERYWHERE.
Hilo:
The beginnings of the Wailuku River, which is the largest river that runs through Hawai'i. This, and the rest of the photos taken on Hawai'i were taken from a helicopter, so they might be a little hard to see.
Steam vent on top of part of the volcano.
This is how new parts of the island are formed: when the lava meets the sea and cools. If you look close on these two pictures, you can see some of the lava inside the crevaces.
Maui:
This is Haleakala Crater, which is about 10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the steepest points in the world. It is really fucking cold up at the top of that thing. The rest of Maui is about 76 or so (which I thought was nice, although a lot of people said it was too hot), but the top of that was about 50 when I was up there. Apparently it can get below 0 though, which doesn't surprise me. It's also very, very windy. The entirety of Maui is windy, and happens to be the second windiest place in the world at sea level. Yeah. But it was used for a lot of religious ceremonies, and still is today. The first one of those pictures was taken outside, and the second was taken inside. I got too cold.
Fish from inside the Maui Ocean Center. All the marine life in that aquarium is taken from the waters of Hawai'i. Which is neat.
I did a whole lot of other things that I didn't get pictures of. I went snorkeling (which I did get pictures of, just not very good ones), horseback riding, shopping (of course), swam with the dolphins, and went to a luau and Pearl Harbor. I got this really neat shell bracelet made from Ni'ihau shells. Ni'ihau is the "forbidden island", as the Robinson family bought it from the king of Hawai'i in the 1800's and now permit only native Hawaiians who live the traditional way on it. But they have these special shells that are extremely beautiful that wash up on shore there, and shell leis and other jewelry are made from these. The Ni'ihau shell leis are the only leis that can be insured, as they cost thousands of dollars. Some of the other jewelry is cheaper, but not cheap. Still. Was quite neat.
I also saw these flowers called Nalpaka which grow there. The juice from their leaves is the best anti-fog for lenses, and the flowers come in halves, for you can put two together to make a whole one. The Hawaiian legend about these flowers is that once a Hawaiian princess fell in love with a fisherman. This was kapu, absolutely forbidden, that they be together and the king said that if he ever caught them together again, he would send the fisherman to the highest hills of the island, and the princess would remain on the beach. Of course, they were caught together again, but before they were separated, they split apart the Nalpaka flower so that when they were alone, they could put the flower back together again and be reminded of the time they spent together. The flower grows on all the hilltops and beaches of the islands.
Hawaiian state bird: Nene goose, which is a decendant of Canadian geese, although much prettier.
Hawaiian state fish: Humuhumu nukunuku apua'a, or the Pig Nosed Trigger Fish. The Hawaiian name actually means "fish with a nose like a pig that grunts".
Yep.
~Skysong~