The rest of my Hawaii holiday is spent seeing places I’ve not been before.
On Kauai, Waimea Canyon.
To Mark Twain is attributed the term the ‘Grand Canyon of the Pacific’. However, he apparently was never here or said this resembled the Grand Canyon. That hasn’t deterred either tourist businesses or bazillions of visitors from claiming he did. I watch a gaggle of helicopters …
… and a guy who seems more absorbed in his phone than natural splendours.
Mind you, he can wear an aloha shirt without embarrassment, which I can’t.
On Maui, I’m impressed by the scenery …
… a simply huge banyan tree (inevitably disrespected by simpletons) …
… and hang glider mesmerizingly aloft on the wind.
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However, I’m not overly impressed by a plague of t-shirt shops and their offerings…
… or one particular truck making painfully slow progress along Lahaina’s congested main street (to which, yes, I’m adding) …
… while I avoid Segways. (On return home, a friend scathingly comments, “Everyone looks like a dork on a Segway. I think to many this counts as ‘adventure travel’ cuz they had to wear a helmet.”)
Speaking of adventure travel, a quick diversion of more than twenty-five years and a long way from Hawaii. Having chatted with Sir Edmund Hillary, I decided to go to Mount Everest. Not, I hasten to add, to the summit, but as far up as was advisable for a decidedly cautious, unfit, inexperienced trekker. This, following Hillary’s 1953 route from Kathmandu, turned out to be 5,643 metres or 18,514 feet.
With Everest behind - and well above - me, I somewhat unsteadily pose and think, ‘Not one damn step higher!’
Until planning this current trip, it hadn’t sunk in there are some rather high mountains here. One is Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. This is the highest - bar air travel - I’ve been since Everest. Getting to Everest Base Camp took weeks of increasingly breathless walking; getting to the top of Mauna Kea, 4,205 metres or 13,796 feet, involved a couple of hours of driving with brief stop to ‘acclimatize’ and, more important, use a bathroom.
The summit, with a number of telescopes, including one funded by Canada, is reasonably impressive and a touch surreal.
(I’m slightly ashamed it’s only later I discover the mountain is considered sacred by native Hawaiians and there has been opposition to a new telescope being built.)
Now, it’s ‘aloha’, ‘goodbye’ to Hawaii. I gather ‘aloha’ can mean ‘hello’, ‘welcome’ and also ‘farewell’. On miserable Toronto winter days, memories of Hawaii will keep me warm for a few seconds.
It was delightful seeing Kathy & Mike. Maybe someday they’ll persuade me to get an aloha shirt. However, I do regret not buying a $7.95 pencil holder to add to my collection of kitsch.
One last post on Eurodam, the ship I'm aboard, coming up.
