My last trip to Hawaii ended close to a month ago, and I have since returned to the snowy arctic that is Massachusetts. It has been downright brutal. No snow, but when the temperatures are being called “unseasonably cold,” you know that it’s bad.
Let me start from the beginning.
I arrived in Honolulu for the second time this year in the early afternoon. It was sunny and beautiful and it made me forget all about the screaming children and broken entertainment systems on both of my flights. (What a coincidence! TWO flights with nonfunctioning systems.) I hopped on the shuttle and napped until I got dropped off at my hotel, where I checked in, got settled, and hopped across the street to snooze on the beach.
I got some dinner just as the sun was setting at a take-away place my sister and I had eaten when we were there in March, and had a happy little picnic on the beach. Got to do exactly what I wanted to, which was watch jets land and take off over the ocean. I think I like watching that as much as I like being on a beach.
GC made it to the hotel a few hours later, and we got caught-up, made a list of stuff we wanted to do, and crashed.
The next morning, our phone went off at 530. I couldn’t understand the person on the other end of the line. I figured that she had the wrong number and was about to hang up when I recognized the words “dolphin tour.” And then she said, “No worry. Everyone speak English.” The rest was in Japanese. She was calling to wake us up to make sure we’d be at the shuttle pickup on time. She called 45 minutes early. We had a two minute walk. Gah.
GC and I got onto the shuttle and something felt… off. The tour guide looked a little panicky. She leaned over and repeated, “No worry. Everyone speak English.” And now GC and I were really concerned. We looked around. We were the only non-Asian people on the bus. Our tour guide handed us a release form, and the bus took off for a part of the North Shore, while she played a video (in Japanese).
The deckhands turned out to be the only people on the boat who spoke English. They laughed at us a bunch and wanted to know how we’d managed to pick them; they specifically cater to Japanese tourists. As that information wasn’t included on their website, there was no way for us to know that.
We eventually got to see a couple pods of dolphins. And while it was really very beautiful and extremely cool, I was a little disappointed that we didn’t spend more time in the water. I guess most of them had a hard time swimming; the deckhands were visibly relieved when we told them we could both swim well. The dolphins chased the boat for a while, and they jumped and spun, and it was really, really beautiful.
One of the deckhands hooked us up with a great discount at the luau he danced at. He told us he was a world champion firedancer, and had danced at a private recital for Oprah the week before. So, that evening, that’s where we went. The dancing was astounding. The dancers were awesome, and the music was really very interesting. I was a little skeeved out by the narrator and many of his comments. There was just this undertone of fetishizing the exotic brown sexy dancers that made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if anyone else noticed.
The other high light of the trip was going to the North Shore. That was really very different from our time in Waikiki. GC and I rented a car, and went to Waimea Falls and Waimea Bay. Her parents had been married at the falls, and so went to see it, oddly the day before their anniversary. As expected, it was gorgeous, green, lush, and extremely beautiful.
I ended up spending a bunch of time at the North Shore after GC went to the airport. She left a whole day before I did. I got to watch a surf competition from Haleiwa. Spent the whole day in the sun on the beach, and kept seeing these four turtles around. They were always really close to each other, and mostly up at the same time. They reminded me of my fam.
Anyway, loved it. The trip was too short, but a lot of fun.
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