E Komo Mai

Jan 07, 2010 23:36

I promised y'all a Hawaii post, and here it is. It's not always the most entertaining thing in the world, and I did it by days so it's pretty long, but it's a summary of our trip to Hawaii. Enjoy. :3

TUESDAY

Man this has been a long past two days. |D

So yes, getting up at four was fantastic. ._. We got to our flight on time, however, and that went pretty uneventfully. We arrived in Hawaii at 3:30, which was 6:30 by my watch and more than enough to throw me off, after six and a half hours of flight. About the only thing accomplished were a forty-minute nap and me realizing that Inglourious Basterds or however you spell it is not a good movie for me. I discovered this, of course, after glancing over my brother’s shoulder just in time to see Brad Pitt carve a swastika into some guy’s forehead. While he was still alive. And conscious. Oh, Tarantino.

But yes! Uneventful flight was uneventful, followed by uneventful drive and uneventful checking in and then the Barefoot Bar. Ohhhhhhh the Barefoot Bar. It’s an entirely outdoor bar with a low hedge and the beach literally ten feet away. Best Mai Tai (and just about every other cocktail imaginable) on the planet. I officially like rum now because of those Mai Tais.

And the food around here is fantastic. There’s a little grab-and-go in the hotel called Happy’s. It’s got a whole bunch of grill stuff - burgers, hot dogs, chicken, pizza - a good selection of salads and breads, and a whole bunch of Chinese and Japanese food, which is pretty common in Hawaii. They also have the best steamed rice I have ever had. I have no idea how you make steamed rice taste this good, but they’ve managed to do it, and they give you a scoop about four inches in diameter for a buck and a quarter. They call it Happy’s for a reason, I suppose. :Db

And then there’s Duke’s. Duke’s is a Hawaii tradition for my family - we always go at least once, and we always eat at the bar. For those of you who’ve been to the one in Malibu, the one in Waikiki is about a hundred times better at the least. If you ever get the chance to try Opa, Hawaiian Moon Fish, do it. Just. Do it.

I really think I need to do a picture tour. Walk around with my camera, take a bunch of pictures of everything, and put them all up. That would be awesome. I shall do that.

After spending hours just lying in the sun today and watching my brothers do their best and funniest impersonations of synchronized swimmers, I am bushed. Yeah, I know, real tough life, huh? The fact that it’s one in the morning Colorado time might have something to do with it. More tomorrow after awesome stuff happens. :Db

THURSDAY

IIIIIIII missed a day. Blame it on being exhausted. The North Shore will do that to you.

Yesterday we were supposed to head down to the swap meet, which is this huge market they hold down at Aloha Stadium. Unfortunately, when Dad was coming back from golf, our rental car bit it - it wouldn’t go over fifteen mph without overheating and it was leaking water out the back, which was weird. Cue calling Avis and waiting for them to show up with a replacement, and by the time that rolled in it was two p.m., too late to go to the swap meet, which ended at three.

Instead, we piled in the car and rolled up to the North Shore. The North Shore is pretty well known for its surfing - it can have ideal wave heights, and it can get waves up to and sometimes beyond forty feet high. This place is all sorts of awesome.

We had an hour and some change before our reservations at Jameson’s By the Sea, the restaurant we eat at every time we trundle to the North Shore, so we headed down to the beach instead. Since we weren’t going to be there long and we weren’t going swimming - waves were high and they had a NO SWIMMING/BEWARE THE REEF/SERIOUSLY GUYS THIS CAN BE DANGEROUS sign up - I figured I’d just walk around in my shorts, not get wet past my knees, and be fine.

Yeah, you can all see where this one’s going. My mom likes to take pictures and my dad likes practical jokes.

MOM: Everyone get together for a picture!
DAD: Come stand in the waves!
MOM: Yeah, those will make really good pictures!
ME: I really don’t want to go that deep…
DAD: Oh, come on, it’s for a picture.
ME: Oh-kay… *goes*
MOM: Okay, look at the camera! Three, two…
GIGANTIC WAVE BEHIND ME: HAI THAR
ME: al;sdkfjaljgalksfjak *soaked*
MOM: One! *picture get*
REMNANTS OF GIGANTIC WAVE: NAIS TO MEET U! BAI NAO
DAD: Now wasn’t that fun?
Me: *in wet denim* Yeeeeeeah.

Yes, the waves here do talk like Clover.

The upside of all this is, in Hawaii, nobody thinks it’s weird if you wear a sarong instead of pants, even in an upscale restaurant. Guess who took advantage of that. 8Db Jameson’s, of course, was fantastic (and if y’all are tired of hearing that word, you might want to stop reading now, because that’s what just about everything here is: fantastic :D). The seafood is incredible because we’re in Hawaii, duh and the taro rolls were just as good as I remember. Of course, using taro in a baked good makes it purple, so it’s dinner and a photo op.

Seriously, I’m going to need to have a not-dialup-friendly post just to dump pictures on everyone. This whole island is one giant photo op. It’s also where they film Lost, if anyone’s interested.

Last night ended with another trip to the Barefoot Bar, where we had drinks and marked time until the entertainment ended at eight p.m. I have no idea why a guy who plays acoustic nineties music with extra depression on top gets billed as “live Hawaiian music,” but there you go. Nobody’s perfect. Seriously, though, unless you’re Oasis, you don’t play Wonderwall at an outdoor tropical bar, and unless you’re Dean Gray, you don’t mash it up with Boulevard of Broken Dreams. At least the booze is good, though I suppose it’d have to be to make up for that. The radio the bartender plays once the nightly entertainment leaves is better, and when the radio outdoes the live performance, you know the performer’s got issues. |Db

Fantastic mixed drinks. Really. So good.

This morning was the Armed Forces Bowl, AFA versus Texas, which meant my parents got up at seven and headed down the beach to the Shorebird, the only bar in the vicinity with a breakfast buffet and a TV. I joined them a few hours later and watched Air Force clobber Texas, 47-20, with seven or eight interceptions and an epic 101 yard runback on Air Force’s part. I love my team. :D

Then, after rolling my brothers out of bed, it was off to Hanauma Bay, one of the local wildlife preserves and a prime snorkeling spot. Parking was awful, as parking is apt to be in a tourist environment, but snorkeling was tons of fun. We buddied up, just like the inane nine-minute safety video insisted we do…in song. This video sang about how we didn’t need to feed the fish or harass the turtles and please do remember not to step on the coral~! I swear, they made that thing in the seventies sometime and have not bothered to update. It’s hilariously bad.

That last paragraph is a testament to just how off-topic I can get when something sporkable comes to mind.

But yes, I waltzed into snorkeling with one goal in mind: I wanted to see a Humuhumunukunukuapua’a. Yes, that is a word. Yes, it exists. It’s the Hawaiian state fish, and it’s about six different colors and all face. Plus, it’s fun to say - that name is phonetic. I partnered with Dad, and we went swimming around in the bay for a while, during which we saw an entire school of brightly colored fish, a ton of individual ones, and a few that were entirely see-through and looked like three-foot-long pipe cleaners. Those were hysterical. Dad also felt the need to point out every single sea urchin we came across, and let me tell you, those things are a dime a dozen. They’re also neon purple. You wouldn’t think an urchin would be so brightly colored, but…yep. Purple. Neon seems to be nature’s way of saying it’s your own damn fault if you step on me. 8D

Then again, that doesn’t explain why half the fish we saw were entirely harmless and neon colors. Hawaii just does its own thing, I think. |D Of course, my brother managed to cut his knee on some very dully-colored coral, so. I guess you never know. That’s what happens when you snorkel in six inches of water at low tide.

And. About ten minutes before we got out of the water. Guess what I saw.

A Humuhumunukunukuapua’a. :Db

Of course, making a squeeing noise into my snorkel was probably a bad plan, since it scared the bejeezus out of the fish and made my dad turn around and wonder what was wrong, but. I saw my fish. I am happy. :D No sea turtles, but I think they’re out beyond the riptide and I’m not that crazy.

Now I am off to celebrate the New Year down at the Barefoot Bar. I just love this place. :Db

SUNDAY MORNING

New Year’s Celebration didn’t go quite as planned, unfortunately. I wound up randomly getting sick again, crashed out early, woke up for the fireworks show at midnight, and crashed out again. This is the fourth time that’s happened - my parents are starting to think it’s something to do with my blood sugar, and I’m heading to a doctor once we get back home. Huz-zah.

Luckily, it didn’t last too long, which was good since we woke up at six to catch a flight to the Big Island, where we spent the day. The Big Island is known for its active volcanoes, and walking on a volcano is on Mom’s bucket list, so away we went.

We started off at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where evidently a huge vent was going off and blowing all sorts of sulfurous air towards the visitor’s center. The park rangers called it “code purple,” which lead to more jokes from my brothers than I can remember, and my mom likened it, on a minor scale, to Jews being gassed at concentration camps.

Nazi volcanoes, ladies and gentlemen. Guess what I’ll remember for the rest of my life. 8D

We drove up to the vent itself, which was actually pretty clean - all the steam was being blown away. It’s tough to describe just how ridiculously big this thing was - we’re talking Old Faithful multiplied by several hundred, with added sulfur for flair. Man this thing was huge.

The best part of the park, though, was the lava tube. It’s a huge five-hundred-year old tube that was hollowed out by lava and sports vegetation growing in random places, a fantastic jungle growing around it (“unravaged by destructive feral pigs,” says the sign. Note to self: Destructive Feral Pigs is a great name for a metal band), and just enough strategically-placed electric lights to keep visitors from tripping over the uneven ground. This place is incredible.

TBH, I feel like the Big Island - steam vents, lava tubes, black sand beach, and active lava flows - deserves more credit than I can give it in words. This is why we shall have a picture post. 8Db That said, there was tons of hiking involved. I’m starting to realize I’m getting a lot more exercise on my tropical vacation then I usually get over school breaks. Funny how that works. Either way, Friday was an incredibly long day that wound up with some pretty awesome pictures and one more item crossed off Mom’s bucket list. Good times.

Saturday, we got our tourist hats on and went to the Swap Meet, a huge market put on at Aloha Stadium. Basically, there’s dozens, probably going on hundreds, of booths and tents set up in the parking lot in a ring around the stadium, every one selling something and a lot of them selling the same stuff at the same or similar prices. This is the place to get souvenirs, or four-week temporary tattoos if you’re one of my brothers. This is also not the place to hesitate in getting something, because if you come back too late in the afternoon, the booth selling what you want may already be gone. Guess who found that out the hard way. 8D One and a half rings around the stadium later, souvenirs were acquired and I managed to nab myself a Totoro. In Hawaii. Stranger things have happened; plus, he’s cute. :3

We hit Duke’s again that night, only to discover that grilled opa is much better than baked and, after we’d given my little brother a ton of grief for ordering only hamburgers, that Duke’s serves a pretty fantastic burger. It’s no Ted’s, but it’s still pretty dang good.

This morning, we discovered a church service on the beach! I was there for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. It wound up being something between a cruise ship lounge performance, a mass conversion meet, and Convo. I was not about to hang out there for long.

We leave tomorrow night. ;~;

SUNDAY AND MONDAY

Metric ton of lying by the pool with a book, getting good food from Happy’s, and lying in the sun, getting an incredibly inopportune sunburn on my shoulders. Getting burned in a halter top when one usually wears spaghetti straps is quite unpleasant. |D Either way, it was a relaxing two days.

Monday morning Mom and I went down to the Hilton Hawaii, which is maybe a five-minute walk down the beach from the Hale Koa, to find cookies. On the flight to the Big Island, I’d seen an ad in the in-flight magazine for pineapple-shaped Hawaiian shortbread cookies, and it said they had a store in the Hilton Hawaii, so Mom and I decided to head over.

Having a cookie shop smell like baking cookies is a fantastic marketing ploy. It helped that the cookies are incredible. We now have around two dozen in a tin, awaiting eating. Om nom. :Db

Also, the Hilton has a metric ton of birds on the property. We’re not talking the rats with wings that plague the outside tables at the Hale Koa; we’re talking tropical birds in habitats. Flamingoes. Ibises. Macaws. Parrots. Penguins.

Yes. There are penguins at the Hilton. I squeed myself silly and took a ton of pictures.

And then we took a red-eye that took off at ten p.m. Hawaii time and landed after 7 a.m. in Salt Lake. One layover and short flight later, we hit Denver and then drove home, finally making it back at about 12:30. Guess who only slept for about three hours that entire time. I was loopy that day. 8D

All in all, the vacation was just incredible. There are places I’d visit again in a heartbeat, places I’d be okay not seeing again, food I’d go back for multiple times and food I’d never want to see again, and great times with my family. The Ugly Hawaiian Shirt Contest will not soon be forgotten.

A++, would go again.

PICTURE POST TO COME LATER 8Db

family, yay, hawaii, mother

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