As I write this, we are pulling away from the dock after two days on the "big island" of Hawaii. It's been an eventful few days. We arrived yesterday morning on our first real sunny day. It has finally started to feel like we are in the tropics. I got up early and went up on deck to see a few others looking at the distant lights of the city of Hilo. As the sun rose we could see the island stretching off our port side while summit of the volcano dominated the starboard. While the pilot boat pulled alongside, students were shouting from the stern that there were whales. We spotted several humpbacks a couple of hundred meters from the ship and as we watched, they began get more active, with one of them breaching to the cheers and shouts from the students. An auspicious start to our first port of call!
Breakfast on board is usually pretty sleepy. Five or so students will be in line with most tables in the dining hall standing empty as the ship begins to rise. This particular morning, there were at least 50 students standing in line as the breakfast line opened up, and that was in the upper, Garden Lounge. The lower (and larger) dining room had equally long lines. Folks were ready to go play ashore!
Unfortunately, we had to wait for US Customs, which took another nearly three hours before we were allowed off the ship. Once cleared, my task for the day was to join 40 students and one other faculty member on a short bus trip to a Hawaiian Cultural Center in Hilo. We were met there by a group of men and women who divided the students into small groups and began to give them instructions into traditional Hawaiian skills such as weaving long leaves into necklaces, traditional dancing and instructions on how to play the ukulele. The students really seemed to enjoy the session and the morning went quickly. We then were presented with a lecture/performance from a local native couple who are teachers on the island. She is a Hawaiian/Chinese/Irish woman who performed traditional dance while her Hawaiian/Spanish husband played the traditional Hawaiian nose flute and interpreted her movements. It was a fascinating discussion that highlighted the multi-cultural/multi-ethnic flavor of the Hawaiian Islands. Following a group lunch, we got back on the bus and headed nearby to a beach area where the students were given instructions in a traditional beach game and paddling outrigger canoes.
I participated in both activities and had a lot of fun. I had the high score at the game of throwing a large piece of wood into a small target. It was sort of a Hawaiian version of Bacci ball - so perhaps my Italian heritage was playing to my favor. Paddling the outrigger was a great deal of fun and we were able to get it going pretty darn fast. It's a completely different way to experience the water than a sail or motor boat and while I have spent a lot of time paddling a kayak, this sort of team effort to make a narrow vessel zip along was new to me. It was a lot of fun and very zen-like. You dig in quickly, trying to follow the front paddler who calls the stroke. I guess we were going something like 20 miles an hour at one point - a lot faster than I can get my kayak going for sure! Our time along the water gave me a chance to pick up a sample from the black sand beach for my collection - my third Hawaiian Island.
We left the beach and returned to the pavilion where our hosts from the morning had transformed themselves to become the Octogenarian Hula band. This is a group of Elders on the island who perform traditional hula (not the Don Ho kind) for educational groups. We watched and listened to them and then had a traditional meal which included kalua pork, taro and very fresh pineapple. The students really enjoyed the program.
The following day I took a rental car with several members of the Program's staff and we went up to Hawaii Volcanos National Park. The day before had been raining up in the park, but today we were greeted with beautiful sunshine. Much of the park was currently blocked off due to volcanic activity, but we were able to get up to the rim of the caldera and look down and see the steam and gasses rising from the largest volcano on the planet. We took several short hikes including one through a lava tube. This is the remnant of a large lava flow that cools to rock on the outside while the hot lava is still flowing inside. Once the lava drains out, you have a bizarre tunnel through solid rock. This one was large enough for three people to walk side-by-side without ducking. Very cool.
Afterwards we drove down through scrub forest interspersed with bare rock lava flows all the way from the summit to the edge of the sea. There old lava flows meet the ocean as twenty-foot high sea cliffs. The blue, blue, blue tropical ocean beats itself against rock that might only be fifty years old. Geology and oceanography are right in your face here in a natural spectacle that I just find fascinating. Turning our backs to the ocean and facing uphill, we could see the paths of one lava flow after another passing through scrub brush and small trees that had managed to gain a foothold on older flows. Mother Nature just hits the reset button on the successional process again and again.
After a fantastic fish lunch and a quick retail experience to pick up last-minute forgotten things, we left our last US strip mall for the next three months. After a quick refueling stop in Honolulu tomorrow morning, we head out into the vast Pacific, heading for Japan.
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