Aloha Hawaii

Day 36 was pretty much a travel day getting from Calgary to Honolulu. After a 16 hour journey (including a lengthy layover in LA) we landed in Honolulu around 8.30pm. Just enough time for a quick beer with the Toomers in Waikiki before hitting the sack!
Day 37 was another cruisey one just kicking around Waikiki with the family. We have done Waikiki several times before so weren't too fussed on doing anything in particular. We spent some time shopping, lounging by the pool with cocktails and exploring the war museum by the beach. We managed to catch the Friday night fireworks put on by the Hilton on Waikiki Beach which was absolutely packed!
Day 38 was cruise day! We spent a chunk of the day getting to the port and checking on to the boat (Norwegian Pride of America) and getting ourselves oriented with it. It's been fairly recently rennovated and is very OTT American themed. It was a much smaller boat than our cruise line through Alaska, there was no LED screen on the pool deck for movies under the Stars like Princess does, which is a shame as the girls would have loved it. They also dont have a casino on board as gambling is illegal in Hawaii, which isnt a bad thing but it's kind of a cool novelty on the ships we have been on. We all acted in nicely and enjoyed the food and entertainment, although we missed the start of the show as they took almost 3 hours to serve us dinner (just the start of a multitude of service issues onboard).
Day 39 we were straight into our first port, Kahului on the Island of Maui. We were here for 2 days so there was no time pressure. We rented a people mover and the whole whanau went to Lahaina for the day, which is a cute little village about 45 minutes drive on the other side of the Island. We had heard it was good shopping and worth a visit, so we spent most of our first day there. The shops are all on the waterfront so it is really pretty, and loads of arts galleries and outlet type shops. They also have a massive Banyan Tree in the middle of town that was planted in 1873. They are fascinating trees and it looked like we were walking through a park with multiple trees at first, then we realised they were all joined and it was actually all one tree. They send shoots down off their branches that tap into the ground and then over time as they establish they get so big they look like trunks in their own right. On arriving back on the ship we found our rooms all made up with various little towel animals on them. This became a standard every day where it was a different animal, and none of us had the same ones!
Day 40 was our second day in Kahului and most of the family were keen to relax on the ship, so Logan, Hayden and I ventured out to check out the local town that we hadn't seen the day before. It was not particularly exciting, just a couple of shopping malls and a very small beach.....but it is much cheaper to drink off the ship than on, so after laundry and shopping we headed for the pub. We found a massage place in the mall that did massages for a third of the price as on the boat do we thought we would give it a crack. It turned our pretty well....great massage and the first time I have ever had anyone walk on my back and massage my shoulders with their knees lol. We all walked out pretty happy and relaxed so must have been worthwhile.
Today was also Grant's birthday so we all did a show and dinner on the boat as we sailed for the next destination. Dinner was lovely and much faster than the previous time we were in the main restaurant but unfortunately they forgot to bring Grant's cake and do the Happy Birthday song. We were waiting all through dinner and it just never happened. It was meant to be a surprise and there were little birthday parties going on around us as well, so when we asked at the end of the night they said they would deliver it to the room, so we had our own little party there.
We also found out there was a slight change in the schedule for the week. We were supposed to be in Kona, but with the approach of Hurricane Olivia all of the ports were shut down as a precaution so we couldn't get there. They had been following Olivia all week and keeping us updated, by this point it had been downgraded from a Cat 1 to a tropical storm but they were still being cautious. Because of the direction it was heading and the anticipated time of landfall being the following morning, they let us into Nawiliwili (on the Island of Kauai). We would now only have the 1 day in Kauai instead of the 1.5 days and we would miss the afternoon of cruising past the Napali Coast which is supposed to be beautiful, and only visible by plane or boat. The ship then had to scramble to reorganise everyone's shore excursions for the following day and the rest of the week as the whole itinerary ended up being flipped upside down. Some peoples got cancelled but thankfully all of ours managed to be rescheduled.
Day 41 we made it to Nawiliwili and the whole family were off on a tour to Waimea Canyon. Our first stop was Spouting Horn which is basically a blowhole formed by lava tubes. The waves push through the bottom of the rocks and through a connecting hole in the top. There were a couple in the rocks we were looking at going at the same time. We had a brief stop in Hanapele at a little shop that must have been one if the cuzzies so we shot over the road to grab some food at a local deli. They did local Asian and Hawaiian food so along with some ribs Hawaiian style, we got some Lilikoi Pie which the lady serving told us we had to try. We had never heard of it but later in the tour our tour guide mentioned and and told everyone they had to try it. Lilikoi is their local Hawaiian passionfruit and the pie is made from it. It's like a sweet pastry base with a very light filling...almost like cheesecake but not as heavy. Ours had some cream on top which I think was also flavoured with the passionfruit but the whole thing had an extremely delicate flavour, and not really sweet at all! From there it was up the mountain to the canyon. I can liken it to the Grand Canyon only a lot smaller and greener. It's very pretty with many waterfalls, and very red dirt. It is the biggest canyon after the Grand canyon do still a reasonable size, and the area is inspiration for a lot of films including the likes of Avatar.
Because we were only getting the 1 day in Nawilieili we headed into town after the tour to have a look at the tiny beach and tow ship there. There were heaps of surfers and paddle boarders out on foilboards which was quite fascinating to watch. The other thing we noticed in Kauai was the massive number of wild roosters and chickens roaming everywhere (it explains why there was a guy dressed as a giant chicken for us to have photos with when we arrived). Apparently cock fighting was and still is a popular sport in Hawaii. People keep the roosters on cages on their property and some have up to 30. A few years back there was a hurricane that blew through the island and ruined a head of these setups effectively setting huge amounts of roosters free. The population has since exploded and they are also protected so you aren't allowed to eat them.
Day 42 we spent at sea. This was the day the storm was expected to make landfall so for our safety we sailed right out to the west of the islands and towards the south in readiness for Hilo the following day.
Day 43 we were docked in Hilo (on the island of Hawaii) which is the wettest city in America. It always rains, and the day we were there was pretty overcast with a few showers....apparently a fairly normal Hilo day. They had introduced a new tour at the start of the cruise to go to the new lava flow from the July eruption, so we couldn't pass it up! Hawaii (the Island) is made up of 5 volcanoes, and Kilaeua is only the 3rd largest. Of the 5, 2 are active and 1 is erupting. We started off visiting the lava flow from the 2014 eruption which is right by the transfer station. You can see its path right down the valley and where is crossed the road they have cleared it with a bulldozer so you can drive through it. This was quite a hot oozing eruption and you can see where it has oozed, it's quite smooth and easy to walk on. 4 years on there is a pretty reasonable amount of greenery already growing through the cracks - mainly ferns and a few small trees. There is a house still standing in the area that the lava missed on all sides but it has been abandoned as the lava completely surrounded it.
After this we drove over the rift zone of Fissure 8 (what the current eruption is called). The road that goes through it had cracked and they have patched it with steel strips do you can still drive over it. The whole area is steaming still and it looks like a scene from an apocalypse movie. If you follow the steam up the hill you would end up at the Fissure 8 cone.
From there we headed to the coast where the lava flow was dropping into the sea as that has all hardened now. This was quite a different lava flow, a lot cooler so it's not oozing lava, but big chunks of lava being pushed down the mountain. We got to walk over part of it but it is pretty lethal, super sharp and unstable to walk on as it is just oddly shaped loose rock. The area looks pretty desolate as it is so new and it looks a little like the lava fields on Tongariro. Our tour guide happened to be at the crater when it all happened with a tour group! It was pretty interesting hearing it first hand from a local and how much the media hypes things up! They are pretty casual about it all over there, it's just part of life on the Big Island. There was a little place called Uncle Robert's just out of Pahoa which is like a hippy area with little make shift shops and bars with tarpaulin grooves and chilly bins for fridges. The rest of the houses got wiped out by a lava flow in the nineties and Uncle Robert's was the only place that was spared. He had a heap of land, so he invited everyone who lost their homes to share his land. We stopped by the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory on our way through to Rainbow Falls.....not much interest to us having done all of that in Aussie. Rainbow Falls was pretty, unfortunately there was no sun, which means no rainbows. In the cloudy weather though it creates a mist at the bottom from the water spray as the water has so much power behind it. The water was red and the falls were much wider than normal because of the heavy rainfall from the storm. Apparently the day we were there was windier than it had been all week 🤨
We got back pretty late from our tour so never had the time to go into Hilo township as it was a couple of miles away from the port as we wouldn't have had any time to look around by the time we got there and back. We at least drove through on the tour so got to see some of it, including the remaining damage from Hurricane Lane. Hawaii (the island) also has wild chickens but nowhere near the number in Kauai.....their thing is wild pigs. There are 6 pigs to every human on that island!
We got back to the ship yo a message offering us free dinner and wine at one of the ships fancy pay restaurants as an apology to the situation in our stateroom where we kept loosing hot water. This had been an ongoing saga, at one point we had no hot water for almost 2 days and had to shower at the spa. Anyway, it meant we had a lovely dinner at the steakhouse....our first steak in 7 weeks!
Day 44 was just on the other side of the same island in Kailua-Kona. This is a pretty little town, with the complete opposite weather patterns to Hilo. Hilo is all lava rocks, black sand beaches and rain, where Kona is desert and forest, white sand beaches and sunshine!
We had to tender in to the pier and as soon as we walked down the pier towards town Logan spotted a Green Sea Turtle hanging by the rocks. It's a really quaint little town with lots of random little shopping alleys and markets. Today's tour was to do some hiking. We started off heading to Kaloko-Honokahau National Park to see some old Petroglyphs. This is located in a desert by the beach and boy was it hot!! The sun was beating down at 30°c with no shade and high humidity. The petroglyphs haven't been carbon dated and they are less tha 1000 years old but they are probably from around the time the early European settlers came. They were quite hard to see so we didn't bother trying to catch them on camera. The beach is part of the park and it's where the Green Sea Turtles hang on the beach to dry out and harden their shells, so we saw a couple more of them on the beach and in the water. On that same beach are the remains from the old Hawaiian fish traps that they built out of rocks. They would build them up to water level at low tide and then at high tide the fish would was into the area and be trapped there at the next low tide. The walls would have small holes in them for the smaller fish to get back out, and then they would sort the fish in the sorting ponds, which were also made out of rocks. From the beach we made our way Makala (up the mountain) to the forest. Thus is where the rain and clouds hang. We went hiking in Cloud Forest which is actually someones private property. The guy who owns it is a botanist and planted it all back in the 90s. It's really well established and feels like you are walking in a forest that's been established for hundreds of years! It was a pretty rugged track climbing over trees roots and up and down muddy paths, and then the heavens opened half way through. We had taken wet weather gear but Logan didn't want his do he got drenched. No one else had taken anything so I was the only dry one!
Once we got out of there we went pretty much across the road to Mountain Thunder Coffee Farm. Here we got to do coffee tasting, do a tour of the processing plant and spend a ludicrous amount of money for Kona Coffee. This farm is when all of the coffee growers send their coffee for processing. They have all of the expensive gear do they can do all of it or just bits. They only keep the biggest and best beans to sell and the lower grade beans go to places like McDonalds. Because of the growing climate and the sorting climate Kona Coffee is some of the best in the world.....that's why it's so expensive. It can only be Kona Coffee if it is specifically grown the the Kona region.
The roasting process is pretty interesting...it just like making popcorn, where you roast it and wait for it to crack or pop. This is a light roast, then a dark roast is when it cracks a second time. Medium is when they pull it out between the two cracks and that what they call their cupping blend. The cupping blend is what roasters have to submit to competitions as it is the most flavoursome. The bitter coffee taste is when the coffee is dark roasted or burnt, it's not actually the flavour if the coffee, and it also has the least caffeine in in ad the oils containing the caffeine have been stripped in the roasting process. So you should drink a light roast in the morning to wake you up, and a dark roast at night do it doesn't keep you awake......you learn something new every day! Also coffee is technically a fruit....so it has to be good for you! We had a few drinks in town when we got back to make the most of $4 beers and were the second to last people on the last tender boat of the day!
Day 45 brings us to today......finally time to make our way home 😥 We had cheap flights with Hawaiian where you get your seats assigned at the gate. It can mean you get whatever is left and it's not guaranteed that you will sit together but worked out pretty well for us as what they had left was in Premium Econony....BOOM! That should make our long flight a bit more pleasant!

Photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AsbHvsl8mGaZgd9AZm9kqYvnjd4ZOg

Vancouver Eh

Wow....what an amazing week it has been! Canada has offered no opportunity for me to blog so here I go again on the plane! (It's a great way to kill time while flying.)
Days 27 and 28 were pretty well written off as travel days. Both of our flights to get to Vancouver were delayed so on top of the whole flight being changed on us a month or so ago we arrived even later than expected. Between having to do our night in Seattle which was not originally planned be basically lost 1 whole day from Vancouver that was in our original plan. We crammed in as much as we could but missed doing a lot of things in Vancouver as we simply didn't have enough time! It is a lovely city though. After taking over an hour to get through immigration at the airport we jumped on the train to the city that we had sussed out when we did our quick stopover 2 weeks ago. Our hotel was a quaint little 1920s building a few blocks from Stanley Park and a really short walk to English Bay. By the time we had checked in and got ourselves sorted it was already 3pm so we wasted no time in heading straight out. English Bay was our first stop as it was only a 5 minute walk down the road down Denman Street. It's a really cute area with lots of shops and eateries to choose from. There are a heap of massive logs that have been placed on the beach itself to create seats or leaners for people lazing on the beach, and they also have a mat that runs from the boardwalk all the way down to the water for wheelchairs to gain access which is such a great idea!
From the end of English Bay we spotted the water taxis heading over to Granville Island so we jumped on one and headed over to check it out. It is a strange little island that sits under an bridge and is surrounded by marinas. It is super close to the main body of land and is well connected with a vast array of bridges for cars, bikes and pedestrians. That is one thing that struck us about Vancouver in general.is that so many people cycle, and it is really well catered for! Granville Island is very arty, there are lots of boutique bars, eateries, breweries and shops as well as theatres and markets. We had a wander through Granville Island Public Market which was one of the best markets I have been to! It is all food of various forms, similar to the food part of Queen Vic Markets in Melborne but a lot more boutique and much bigger. They have every kind of meat you could ever imagine! They even had some A5 grade Wagu for $199 a pound 😳 We got some handmade fudge at one of the fudgeries which was absolutely divine. Cheese was another specialty with any kind of cheese you could want (except for good old NZ tasty) and fruit we had never seen before. There were various places that were like delis and it was like a pick n mix of olives every way, stuffed peppers, cheeses...pretty much anything you could ever want on an antipasto platter.
We spotted a theatre complex across the road from the markets called The Improv Centre, so headed in for  nosey. Turns out they had a show on that night.....theatresports! The show was 45 minutes away so we zapped across the road to get some famed Poutine before it started. We have never had it before and I have to say we are not really fans. The concept seems good but the combo of the gravy and cheese curds made it super salty! The theatresports was great fun
...it was run in exactly the same way as 'Who's Line is it Anyway?' And as it turns out Colin and Ryan got their start there (Vancouver Theatresports).
By the time we had finished there the water taxis had finished for the night so we made our way home on foot via downtown (quite a hike as it turns out).
As a city it is very multicultural which is something that is distinctly lacking in most American cities. We probably wouldn't have noticed as much if we hadn't been in America for several weeks prior.
Day 29 was Stanley Park exploration. Stanley Park is the biggest city park in the world....bigger than Central Park, but much easier to  navigate than central Park! We hired bikes, and because the park is very flat we got 1 speed, pedal brake cruisers. They are so much more comfortable than mountain bikes! It took a few hours to do the whole perimeter and all of the little spots in the middle...and of course a few beer stops 😉
There are such beautiful views of the harbour and different parts of the city all the way around, and we even called in to see The Fish House where Rach used to work when she lived there. It's all derelict now and looks like they might be tearing down.
The Rockies roadtrip is on it's way...another flight to fill in.