Category: USA

Maui Whales and Hilo Sunrise

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On Wednesday, December 26 we anchored at the island of Maui in the harbour off the coast of Lahaina. Our mission, to see some whales. Six of the tenders, otherwise known as ship’s survival craft or life boats, were lowered into the sea as the ship came to its anchorage. They begin by transporting to shore the shelters and supplies to be used ashore, with that complete, passengers become the  cargo. Passengers on ship’s tours congregate at designated locations on the ship and are moved to the tenders in groups. Those passengers without tour reservations are expected to collect numbered tickets and board the tenders as they become available. This practice often gets unthinking passengers somewhat angry. Apparently they would prefer the chaos of a few thousand people fighting for queue space.

Since over one hundred of us were booked on the whale watching tour, two tenders were used. Those of us on the first tender waited ashore under the very warm Maui sun while the remainder came ashore. The tenders were operating on about a 10  minute interval which doesn’t seem like a long time, however, the sun made it feel much longer. Once everyone was ashore, boarding the tour boat was very swift and there was shelter from the heat.

It took about 20 minutes to travel to the area near Molokai where there always seem to be plenty of whales and this year was no exception. Waiting for the first whale to show itself seemed like forever. Suddenly, they were all around. We did not get as close to them as we sometimes have but there was plenty of activity and I managed to get a few photos worth posting. You should be able to find them in the collection displayed in the right hand sidebar near the bottom of this web page.

The return trip was quick and Gail used the afternoon to do some laundry. There are some tasks that are difficult to avoid even on vacation. A second batch of laundry was sent to the ship’s laundry service but that won’t return for a day or so.

On Thursday, December 27 we visit our last Hawaiian port, Hilo on the island of Hawaii in the state of Hawaii. Confusing? I’m sure that’s why it is more often referred to as simply “The Big Island”. While this is true at this point in history, the island of Maui was once much bigger. The islands now known as Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe were once a single island much larger than today’s “Big Island”. Over the millennia Maui has sunk and its valleys filled by the ocean. These valleys are now between 100 and 300 feet deep and very warm, probably the reason the humpbacks find it such an attractive birthing centre; that and perhaps the absence of predators.

As we sailed into Hilo I was up very early and managed to get a sequence of photos of the most spectacular sunrise so far. They too are posted for you to see. 

Assuming the ship’s internet shows no improvement on the return trip this may be the last of the photos I post until returning. I will likely be able to do a couple more text only posts. As I finish writing this we are getting ready to go ashore to find macadamia nuts and some free WiFi to upload the photos and post this to the journal. 

Our next stop will be in Ensenada on January 2 so we will wish you a Happy New Year in advance.

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Nawiliwili, Kauai

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December 24 was the first day that was really warm. The sun was brilliant. Having been in Honolulu many times we took no tours and simply enjoyed the warmth as we spent part of the afternoon in the Spa pool and hot tubs. As you saw, I did get a journal post and a few photos uploaded. To do that I took the 15 minute walk from Pier 2 to the Aloha Tower where free WiFi was available. It required less than 10 minutes to do what had taken nearly an hour using the ship’s internet service.

Since departure from Honolulu was not until 11 PM a group of girls aged six to 16 came aboard to show us how the Hula was done. I think we have watched some of these children grow and develop over the last three years. Once again they were amazing. The group attempts to keep Hula in the forefront of Hawaiian culture. I honoured their request to take no photos but, as you might imagine, the five six and seven year old dancers captivated the audience. 

There are quite a number of passengers who, like us, have taken this Christmas Cruise before. We concluded the evening doing a little dancing and chatting with people we recognized from past years.

Christmas morning began at about 6:30 AM with the usual coffee. The lights of Nawiliwili, our Kauai port, were just visible in the darkness. As the sun rose the Captain and Pilot maneuvered the ship through the narrow harbour entrance and gradually rotated the Emerald Princess through more than 180 degrees and brought it to a gentle stop alongside the berth. From the channel to the harbour entrance to the berth is actually nearly 345 degrees. There was one tug visible, firmly moored and definitely not assisting with the docking. In Honolulu where there seemed to be plenty of manoeuvring room we had tugs pushing and pulling. Hmmm!

From the ship’s upper deck we can see Kalapaki Beach and the hotel beyond which is the tallest building on the island. After two attempts to build tall buildings on the island were demolished by successive hurricanes building height was limited to “the height of the palm tree”. The hotel is the only remaining structure exceeding that height restriction.

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Embarkation Day

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Ok, so we officially hate time changes—again. I suppose it is the rate of change that’s the real problem. We have travelled across two oceans by ship, no problem. The same distance by plane and it takes one day per hour of change to get back to normal. Despite the difference in time our bodies put us to sleep this night at about the same time as at home. Then we awoke feeling rested only to discover we’re still in the same time zone as we began and now have three hours to wait for 7 AM local time and seven hours until our cruise port transportation is ready.

There are some positives I suppose. Our luggage will depart ahead of us and may be waiting in our stateroom when we arrive. We also have considerable loyalty status with the cruise line so pier side checkin usually happens quickly. In retrospect what does the time change really matter? For the next two weeks we have virtually no time sensitive events on the calendar anyway. Ah yes, I remember now. It’s the reverse trip where we do have things scheduled only now our bodies are working three hours late.

We managed breakfast, cereal purchased at a nearby shop where we also purchased wine, the real reason for visiting the shop. Our suitcases were picked up before 8:30 AM but we had to wait several cups of coffee until 11:45 for our turn to travel to the port. The actual bus trip took 30 minutes, check in was over and done with in 15 minutes, the longest wait was on the gangway where the identity pictures seemed to be taking extra time. Never-the-less, approximately one hour got us from the hotel room to stateroom. Despite the head start our luggage did not beat us to the room, for that we had to wait until 2:30 PM, meanwhile we had our embarkation day cheeseburger…and ice cream. The only minor glitch was the room setup with twin beds rather than queen. The steward fixed that but as it turns out, that was how it was booked and neither of us noticed.

The evening unfolded with a couple more “glitches”. At dinner I presented one of our gift coupons for a bottle of wine. Apparently, the particular item is no longer stocked. I was offered a chardonnay as a replacement for the cab sauvignon. Really? No! When a couple of other suggestions (at least red) failed in my opinion I asked the head waiter to simply refund the value of the gift certificate to my room account. I think I could have asked the head waiter to punch the captain and he would have been less offended. Eventually, he promised he would find a suitable alternative and send it to our room. That was how it was left until about 9 PM. The knock at the door was from room service with a bottle of the Mondavi originally ordered but twice the volume. I both won and lost that battle.

Battle number two occurred a few minutes after the wine arrived when a person arrived to deal with the balky TV remote with only half of the buttons operational. He seemed incapable of understanding why I wanted to disable closed captioning, one of the failed buttons. After a brief “discussion” he ran away and returned in a few minutes with an almost completely working remote—except for the on/off button. Oh well!

Backing up a bit, during the evening we renewed acquaintance with entertainers Dave and Leialoha who are again operating the Hawaiian Cultural program on board. We missed the only performance by the Sun Shine Duo but as we exited the theatre to escape a rather unfunny comedian, we heard a voice call out to us, we turned and it was Anna, one of the two women who are the Sun Shine Duo who made us promise to come and dance with them on Thursday. 

I believe that pretty much finished the day.

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Mountains

Toronto AM – Los Angeles PM

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Don’t forget to visit the web page to see any photos. The photo above is the first view of mountains as we approached California.

We went to sleep with a wake up call set for 5 AM and the iPhone alarm set for 4:50 AM. Neither was necessary. We awoke almost simultaneously at 4:40 AM. Shower, coffee, repack and off to find the airport shuttle. Terminal 1 was busy when we arrived at about 6 AM. Of course the checkin for USA flights was at the opposite end of the terminal where the shuttle discharged us. For those of you unfamiliar, all shuttles discharge passengers in the sub basement and take the trip to the departures level in a freight elevator large enough to handle a small car. However, it makes for a very short trip between terminals.

The check-in kiosks seem to have improved so we didn’t need to fight with it to get our luggage tags. The luggage drop-off machines were a different story and needed an Air Canada employee to intervene. Perhaps the airport folks need to take lessons from FedEx.

We are always grateful for Nexus. The line to security for the non-Nexus folks seemed to have no end. There were 10 people in the Nexus line and we didn’t have to take out our bag of liquids or take off our shoes.

When we did the actual Nexus check-in we were both directed to passport control rather than the “hi – goodbye” line but that added only about two minutes to the trip. With all formalities completed, we found a breakfast venue that actually served to the table rather than having to order through a faceless tablet device. The prices were typical of airports—way too high.

Boarding was simple enough but there was really no way to get a good photo of the first Dreamliner in which we have been able to travel. When the time came for us to push back from the gate we were informed that security and Border Protection services were running slowly and 50 passengers were being held captive by the delays so wait we would. Push back was delayed only about 15 minutes but its seemed much longer. Once the cabin crew managed to herd errant passengers to their seats away we went.

The Dreamliner is a BIG plane with between 240 and 350 seats. I think ours was a 350 seat version with nine seats across the economy class cabin. Using two doors did seem to help with boarding. In flight, the airplane is noticeably quieter than others and the cabin air seems fresher but nose and leg room is no better. This flight carried quite a large number of children some of whom were barely noticeable while others were quite noticeable. Who knew that some kids can cry for 5 hours. The music in the earbuds helped. The flight itself was smooth except for a couple of bumps as we passed over the mountains.

It took a while for our luggage to fall off the carousel. I had been convinced to gate check a third suitcase (at no cost) and it was, of course, late coming off the belt. Our Princess Cruises representative met us, waited patiently for the luggage and waited even more patiently for the hotel shuttle to arrive at the curb.

It is only a 10 minute ride to the LAX Marriott and although check-in time is normally 3 PM they found a room just after our noon arrival. That’s 3 PM in Ontario isn’t it? After check-in came lunch at a little restaurant operated by a Korean family. Good food, good price.

We managed to wait until after 5 PM to go for dinner, that’s 8 PM at home and we rarely eat dinner at 8 PM. When we arrived in the Marriott Hotel lobby the Princess Cruises representatives were there so we stopped by to get our morning instructions. That delayed dinner by 10 minutes. The plan now is to try to stay awake for a while and avoid the 4 AM automatic wake up.

Today’s photos are in the right sidebar.

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