This is the first fact you need to know that I have lately discovered. It is a glorious fact, and I intend to use it from now on in the winning of arguments, à la, "Your argument is invalid. I am the Dolphin Whisperer," and, "Speaking as Dolphin Whisperer, I can say with that authority that you're totally wrong." I am, however, getting ahead of myself.
I revel in your literacy, dear readers, from the Honolulu Coffee Company in Waikiki, on the island of Oahu. I have next to me an iced latte of such high quality I grant it probationary Neat equivalency. I know, right? I have two hours of purchased internet time in which to regale you with the voyage from Connecticut to Kona coffee.
For those unfamiliar with the current voyage, I am in the second day of a six week journey around the world, three days of which will be spent here, then it's off to Seoul, Bangkok, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Three of those locations are work appointments, and the other three are recovery from the ludicrous number of timezones we're crossing to get there. (I am rapidly becoming a supporter of Timezone Imperialism. EST, baby, that's where it's at). So here I am, recovering in Hawaii.
Yesterday - was it? - yes, definitely yesterday, we departed chez nous at the tender hour of 7:00, for our 10:00 a.m. flight. If you are anything like me, dear reader, you are panicking just looking at that sentence. 3 HOURS IS NOT ENOUGH TIME. Aha, but you forget (as I did, repeatedly), Hawaii is domestic! So it was plenty of time, and despite having to get gingerly patted because the density of my dress sash was a threat to national security, we had time to twiddle our thumbs in the Delta lounge before boarding.
Ahh, boarding. We are flying business class, and would therefore be afforded Better-Than-Plebe status even if we were not Medallion bearers (I would, by the way, prefer to have a fabulous actual medallion, of silver - my level - that I can show like the seal of the emperor or something. Delta, take note). So we get to board first, right after the infirm and those who are or are with children (Deb, aren't you glad I made those separate categories? I feel I've grown as a person). My seat - carefully selected in the weeks prior - was 1A. It doesn't get firster than that, baby.
You would think, with all this seating and numbering, that there was method to the madness. That 1A would be able to depart first upon disembarking, that it would be asked first what it wanted for lunch. You would think that, dear reader, and you would be wrong. So for a meal that had the option of salmon, steak, or polenta lasagna (a crime against starches in any kitchen), I, loather of polenta and person trying to stay away from bread/starchy things, received a big ol' bowl o' polenta.
While it rolls trippingly OFF the tongue, it does not roll trippingly onto it. At least not when the tongue is mine. Ah well. There was a salad. And goat cheese to shmear on my crostini, liberally salted with my tears at the injustice of it all.
Upon landing, it was decided to release the vacationing hounds through the door between coach and business class, making me, in fact, the LAST person to leave that seating area. 1A was a snare and a delusion. Luckily, I got a second leg, from SFO to HNL, to try a variation on the theme: 2A, there I came!
Okay, so I have this brother-in-law. He is famous in my tribe for coining the phrase, "Words have meaning!" To be delivered with a shade of desperation peeking around the frustration of dealing with someone who does not understand this axiom. "Business class" and "first class" are sets of words. They are supposed to have meaning. I can only assume that some horrible translation catastrophe befell the Delta officials when they were interpreting these difficult phrases. I have enjoyed equal comfort levels on Amtrak.
My seat may have reclined a full 6.5˚, but it only felt like 6˚. Through my distressed-finish window, however, I got to see this over the Pacific:
That's pretty sweet, right? I don't know if it was a result of our altitude (such that even mid-ocean whitecaps were smoothed by distance) or a very calm sea, but the reflections from those flat sheets of cloud were really nifty.
2A is currently winning. Got a burger, a quite decent one, and some potato salad! (For those of you unfamiliar with my ways, prepare yourself: yes, I am going to talk extensively about ALL the food).
In the creepily abandoned airport, we finally found our luggage carousel (farthest possible from our gate, natch) and how to collect our rental car, and drove to Waikiki, where we discovered our rooms were actually roomses (I play the linguist card. We each had a "room" and each room was rooms. You pluralize that better! Yeah, that's what I thought):
Nice view of towers and my balcony wall. In the daytime, there are mountains back there, it is sweet.
This morning was the morning of The Surprise. Last week, my dad was all, "I have a surprise scheduled in Hawaii, and I can tell you what it is now or you can wait." I said I would wait, because I believe that words have meaning, and saying you have a surprise and then telling me what it is is not in keeping with living by that tenet. Also, I prefer the suspense. And am spectacularly bad at guessing. Said surprise required a departure from the hotel at 6:00 a.m. This was easy, as for my lagbrain, it was noon.
This right here is a view from the car as we hurtled sedately westward toward Waianae on HW1 (hilariously, this road is called an interstate). Cool clouds, nice sunrise. What I failed to capture, despite best intentions, was the western mountain range tipped with sunlight from behind us as we raced daylight across the island (we lost, but our noble Nissan steed gave it its best):
Here is a power plant we passed, for Max:
Here we are on the west side of said mountains, appreciating the brightness. I guess that means we won, then, actually.
This one is actually my favorite, because you can see the contrast and the brightness really well. Also the reflection in the car window. The sign of a true artist.
IT WAS BRIGHT. Is what I'm saying.
The surprise was swimming with things that live near Hawaii! It was an eco-friendly company that only deals with wild critters, so they couldn't guarantee that we'd actually see anything, because they don't train the animals to approach them or come hang out and/or do tricks. Also, they only do groups of six, which was awesome, rather than bobbing around with 24 of your nearest and dearest. And by that I mean strangers, for those unclear on the concept or who actually have 24 nearest and dearest (Max's family, I'm lookin' at you). We got an underwater camera, a disposable one, and used that sucker up, but it has real film and has to be developed (my historical linguistics isn't that strong, are these the correct spellings of these archaic words?). When I get the CD-rom of digital images from its development, they will go up here.
Expect photos of spinner dolphins, because that is what we saw, about five minutes out of port. A whole pod were chillin' in the bay, and we hopped in with our snorkels and paddled. There were at least three baby dolphins in the pod (someone said there were four, but I wasn't paying much attention to all of them). Most were well-behaved, keeping close to their moms, and not being terribly creative or athletic. Then there was Poly. I named him that because Roly would be too obvious. He did loops around his mom, blew bubbles, was having a fine time. His mom and one other adult (probably also a lady dolphin, as we were told this was a nursing pod, just ladies and their children) seemed to be the leaders, so when they turned, the rest would follow. I happened to be interested in them, so I was able to follow them pretty well. They did figure-8 patterns and circles and stuff, and while they can book it when they want to, I was able to keep up with only minimal admission that perhaps I should do more cardio. It was this event that established me as the Dolphin Whisperer. The guide so christened me because I was so super awesome at following/keeping up with the pod. She said that whenever she wasn't sure where they'd gone, she looked for me, and found them. I choose to focus on my rad dolphin whispering powers, rather than the fact that the easiest way to pick me out from the surface of the water would have been the round blue island of my butt sticking up as I ogled the marine life.
After a good chunk of time chillin' with the dolphins, we all hopped back in the boat (or beached ourselves on it, my preferred method) and cruised up the coast to a reef known for its turtle cleaning station. It's a real thing, I checked. Go ahead, Google it, I'll wait.
So we saw a whole bunch of turtles, too! Some were pretty far out, close to where the boat idled, and not into getting clean. One I found about halfway between the boat and the cleaning station was half under a rock, sulking. I have decided he was a hipster turtle, and the cleaning station was too mainstream. At the cleaning station, there were up to 4 turtles at a time! And little fish whuffling all around them! It was truly awesome, but there were a lot more people there, probably because keeping up with a sea turtle is not the cardiovascular challenge that keeping up with a dolphin can be. They... they blorp. Got some great photos when one came up to breathe, and when it was just sort of hanging in the water, a few feet down (rather than all the way on the bottom, where they eat things that live on the coral).
While I am the dolphin whisperer, I appear to have no such gifts with sea urchins. The guide very kindly went down and collected an urchin for us to hold, if we so wanted, and as soon as he felt my palm, the "eject ballast" part of his fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. Our association was brief.
One cool thing about the reef was the sound. The area with the dolphins had a plain white sandy bottom, and the only sounds we heard were one another and the dolphins, a bit. The reef sounded like it was made of Pop Rocks. Apparently, that sound comes from the shrimp chomping the coral. When I drifted over the edge of the reef where it goes back to sand, it got quieter. The ocean is cool.
Post turtles and pop rocks, we headed out to sea, following the rumor of spotted dolphins, larger cousins of the dolphins we'd seen. We didn't find any. Instead we found WHALES!
Well, not baleen whales. We saw pilot whales, which are actually big dolphins (toothed whales, if you're into that nomenclature). A huge pod, made up of several nursery sub-pods, and a big male were all around the boat, and we got into the water with them. The water was extraordinarily clear, though it was too deep to see the bottom, and although they were ~30 feet away, we could see them beautifully. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. We continued to follow them in the boat for quite a while. They come up to breathe, of course, but they also do something called "spyhopping," when one of them bobs up head-first, looking for/at would-be oglers. They think they are ninjas. It is adorable. The natural curve of their mouths makes them look like they are smiling the whole time as if to say, "Aren't I crafty!" Tragically, I never got to my camera in time to capture this, and as I said, the waterproof camera was all done, so I didn't get any of my own photos of the whales. Google Images has my back, though, on the spyhopping, so here's the closest to what we saw:
Ignore those copyright shenanigans all over my adorable whale buddy here.
On our way back in, a glorious 4 hours after departure, we got some great views of the coastal mountains, which I have tried to capture, mostly unsuccessfully. I blame the sun, which was averting its gaze from the frame. Here are the best of the attempted lot:
The little dark peak is actually the largest free-standing mountain in the state, maybe the world, because it gets to count its undersea height, too (cheater):
The only photos of my sunburn are unprintable by the Times, so you'll just have to believe that I got a little Trogdor'd on my back. The other consequence of this day is seen below, eyelid mini-hickies from the suction of the mask:
TOTALLY WORTH IT
BEST JET-LAG RECOVERY EVER
