Honolulu's leaving a sour taste

When we arrived we found out that Honolulu "public" transport does not allow luggage on buses, so you have no choice but to pay a commercial travel company to get you from the airport to anywhere. No where else we have been in the world have we found this particular kind of rip off. I wonder how many Honolulu councillors are payed for by the transport companies to protect their interests?

This morning we got up early to get down to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbour, where there are supposed to be 1300 free public tickets available every day, to find out they had all gone by 07:15. Really? 1300 people turned up here in person by that time of day? Or did they all get scalped by commercial tour companies, plenty of whom can book me on a tour of the Arizona memorial if I'm willing to pay them.....NO, if you are willing to let commercial operators profit from your memorials, then I too will lose all respect for what they are supposed to be remembering.

If we had been in Badger we would have moved on from this place pretty sharpish......

Even in the tropics standard must be maintained....

Hawaiians stock up for Xmas early......

There seems to have been a bit of a run on the local delicacy.....Hawaiians eat more Spam per capita than anywhere else in the US, and get more varieties, some of which are only sold here...Portuguese sausage spam anyone? (Portuguese agricultural workers from the Azores and Madeira settled here and introduced Hawaiians to what became the ukulele....)

I settled for a tin of classic to go with eggs for breakfast one day - it's still got to be better than American bacon....

Yuletide low tide

Yuletide greetings from one of the last places on earth to see the solstice  sunrise, not that we were up early enough to see it ourselves.

Our first Oceanside solstice in 5 years - last one was at Sam and Gav's in Manly 2012....

Hawaii - Big Island adventure

After a busy couple of weeks getting Badger ready to hand over to his new owners, packing up / selling off / giving away our personal belongings then schlepping around DC and the Smithsonian, it was nice to spend a week chilling out in Kona on the west side of the island. We rented a small apartment and this was the view from the lanai (balcony)

spent time at the beach and saw some local wildlife (Green sea turtles)

ate lots of fish and poke (raw ahi tuna/other fish mixed with soy sauce,  sesame oil and other ingredients - an Hawaiian specialty and very tasty),

drank with the locals

attended a luau and ate the pig (well, not the whole one) and saw some excellent sunsets

and wound right down.

We hired a car for the second week and drove to Hilo on the east coast.  The climate on this side of the island is completely different, has rainforests and is very green as the weather systems don't normally make it across the mountains. We saw rain for the first time since leaving Glacier National Park in August. Hilo is the wettest city in the US as it receives 128 inches of rain a year (but its warm rain). This was our base for visiting Mauna Kea and the observatories. As Mark has already commented on our visit, here are a few more photos

and he got to have a bit of snow (ice really)

We also spent a few days at Volcanoes National Park. Kilauea is still active and we could only see the steam during the day, although at dusk, the glow from the lava was visible.

Lava flowing into the sea ceased about two months ago, so we splurged on a "doors off" helicopter tour. We saw a few small flows and could feel the heat rising up from below.

and saw where the lava had previously flown into the sea

We also got to see some nice waterfalls too

We drove the Chain of Craters Road down as far as we could and decided to walk the rest of the way to where the lava had crossed the road in hope of seeing it flowing up close (a 12 mile hike, at least). We got 2 miles in and decided to turn back as everyone we met said they hadn't seen anything. The landscape was quite alien and very serene

The north Hamakua coast is wild and rugged

and leads to the Waipi'o Valley. At a 23% grade drive down to the valley below, we stayed at the top and took in the view

At the top of the island, this was the view from Pololu Valley lookout

Now we're off to Honolulu for a look at the island of Oahu. Flying with Hawaiian Airways Mark commented that he's never had a seat belt so large and it was at least a foot too long. I heard one chap say the bigger the Hawaiian, the happier the Hawaiian. Just goes to show some of the locals are rather large... 

high point of the trip so far

at 13,803 feet Mauna Kea (white mountain) is literally the highest above sea level we have ever been and, if you are into that sort of thing, is also the largest mountain on earth as measured from its base - taller than Everest.

It is also home to some of the coolest telescopes in the world, including the Keck twins.

Built in the late 80s and early 90s, they are pretty much the latest generation of telescopes actually in use, and have paved the way to move from single mirrors like the Hale at Palomar to segmented mirrors where the components are moved by actuators to compensate for gravity and sagging. The next generation like the Giant Magellan telescope mirrors we saw being cast and ground at the University of Arizona Mirror Lab in 2014 will combine large mirror segments with corrective movement in a similar way, but that is still years from being built

There are no official tours but there is a viewing gallery and we were lucky enough to see them slewing and tracking the scope for some reason - it's amazing how quickly, smoothly and quietly such a massive machine can move

And then while we were waiting for sunset they slewed one of the domes and opened the doors ready for observation. Very lucky

We had to spend $150 to rent a 4x4 pickup from a specialist to get us up there as normal hire cars are not allowed on the 23% grade dirt road to the summit, and you have to go up and especially down in low ratio so that engine braking can save your brakes from cooking, and there is 40% less oxygen up there so anything was a struggle - some of the telescope support technicians wear oxygen tubes so they can actually function - but seeing the sunset  from above the cloud layer was very cool.

In fact at -3c (27f) and a wind at about 55mph, it was positively freezing....

its all down hill from here

Washington DC - done

We visited DC briefly last summer and always said we would return as we didn't have time to visit the Smithsonian. This time we did a few of the museums but still didn't see everything as you could spend weeks here and only scratch the surface. We were so lucky with the weather too, with bright, frosty days and no rain or snow in sight.

Day 1
First stop - the Castle (otherwise known as the Smithsonian Institution building ). This is now mainly administrative offices and information centre, so a good place to plan our days. Next stop - National Air and Space museum (again) but this time we did the docent tour. They are always knowledgeable and each one has a different story to tell. Our docent was an engineer on the Minute Man 3 missile at Ellsworth airforce base in South Dakota and was so pleased to hear we had visited there. We spent the afternoon seeing new exhibits (and some old ones too) that weren't on display last year.

Day 2
First stop - National Museum of American History and the highlights tour by one of the docents. We cut that short as we wanted to see the newest museum and second stop, the National Museum of  African American History and Culture which was on a timed ticket entry only. It opened in September 2016 which was after our trip to DC last year. It was so well done (and heartbreaking to see in places) with three floors showing the time line from c. 1400 to present day, the slave trade and the struggle for freedom, segregation and civil rights. Two more floors covered visual and performing arts and community.

Day 3
Back to the National Museum of American History for the day and still didn't get to see it all. I liked the display on the First Ladies and their gowns  (well, I am a girl after all). One of the things Mark noticed was that the current First Lady, Melania Trump, doesn't have her maiden name (Knauss) on display. None of the staff had noticed or could explain why, so a question will be put forward to the committee.  Who said Mark wasn't a trouble maker?

In the evening we stopped by the White House to see the national Christmas tree and 56 smaller ones representing each state, territory and District of Columbia

Day 4
We spent all day at the National Museum of Natural History and barely scratched the surface.  I spent nearly two hours in the Gems and Minerals section which I found fascinating and displaying every conceivable colour, shape and texture imaginable.

We saw the Hope diamond and many other large stones

Then there was the natural world, dinosaurs and evolution, including Lucy a 3.2 million year old early human skeleton found in Ethiopia

We walked many, many miles every day which was evidenced by our achibg, throbbing feet, but it was worth it and we're so glad we did it.

Now we're off to Hawaii to relax and chill out...

All points south

A couple of people have asked about our plans after Hawaii, so here is a rough guesstimate...

We should be back in Palm Springs from Hawai'i in mid-January to pick up the car and say goodbye to Pris and Bill for a couple of days, then we will head south through Tijuana to Baja California and Cabo San Lucas. Lots of people have given us various places to see and visit on the Baja peninsular and sea of Cortez, so we will probably drive back up and round rather than taking the ferry across the Gulf of California - after all, the purpose is to see the actual country, right?

I'm sure there will be a few inland jaunts but generally I think we will follow the Pacific coast down past Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta, then at some point head inland to Mexico City and then back to the coast at Acapulco to continue south through Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and on to Panama City.

We do want to take some spanish classes once we have been in Mexico for a couple of weeks, once we have had a chance to listen to the language CDs a few times and for our ears to become accustomed to the accent, plus Mexico is probably cheaper to stay in than Costa Rica and others, so we will probably spend about 4 months in Mexico on the way down, taking us to around early May 2018.Then we will have 3 months to Panama and back up via Belize on the Atlantic coast. Then we will come back into Mexico to get up to Cancun for another couple of months around July/August. 

We will also try to get across to Cuba for a week or so from Cancun - there are some short, cheap flights and I would like to see Havana before the americans start going there again and ruin it.Thought after the Obama thaw in relations was announced it might be too late, but we'll give it a go now drumpf has put that on hold again. So, if anyone is planning Cuba or the Mexican gulf resorts for their next summer holidays let us know.

It looks impossible to sell a US vehicle in any of the countries we are visiting so we then need to bring the toad warrior back to the US to sell it, maybe around Dallas as its a flight hub and closer than driving it back to California, but we shall see - just need to leave it on consignment as we figure it will be almost worthless by then, if it even survives the other drivers...

We will then aim to fly down to Columbia to start the South American leg, sometime in September 2018 and work our way down the Pacific coast, with definite trips inland to Machu Picchu and LaPaz, and down to Santiago, Chile around christmas 2018. We've pretty much decided to skip trying to get across to the Galapagos as its so expensive, has to be booked so far in advance and we are not that much into small wildlife. Ditto with Patagonia (looks just  like Alaska) and Antarctica (saw glaciers calving in Alaska and penguins in Australia), so we will put the funds towards getting out to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) to see the giant heads for a couple of days - haven't worked out how to do the rest of the south Pacific yet, but very few cruises go to Easter Island so probably easiest to do it flying direct from Santiago.

Then across to the Atlantic coast at Buenos Aires, and up to Rio for carnival in Feb/March 2019. We will then have to work out how we are going to get up to the amazon and if we are going to do the smaller states like Guyana and Surinam. Definitely not going to Venezuela at the moment unless it changes dramatically in the next year....then home for mid-late April 2019 in time for our Mycenae Road tenants to move out and we can do some more maintenance and plan the next adventures.....

Of course if we get to Panama and there is a ferry across the Darian Gap to Columbia (there are no roads) that we can take the car on, then it may all change and we can drive the complete Pan American highway...