tinkr.net

On our fourth day in Hawaii we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay.  This was only my second time ever snorkeling, and my best experience.  The Wife said it was nicer when she went snorkeling in Mexico though.  The water and beach were so nice.  I could have spent all day there, but we only had two hours, so I was out in the water basically the whole time.

We got back to our room around noon, so then we got cleaned up, grabbed a bite it eat, then spent a little more time on the beach.

That evening we went on a sunset catamaran ride.  It was a pretty sweet boat, and a nice little group of people on it.  We had an amazing view of downtown Honolulu, Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head Crater from out on the boat.  It wasn’t whale season, so we didn’t see any whales, but we did see a few dolphins briefly.  It was probably one of my favorite things we did in Hawaii, and it was the cheapest thing we did also.

On our third day in Honolulu we were picked up by another tour guide in the morning.  We went on a “circle island” tour.  We basically went around the island stopping off at different points.  We saw very nice and less crowded beaches.  We went up into the mountains and saw some incredible views.  We saw the Dole plantations, and stopped and had the best pineapple ice cream I have ever had.

Then we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  I wasn’t sure what to expect there, but everything I read was that it was a must visit.  I don’t know if I agree, but we did have a good time.  The Polynesian Cultural Center is actually located on a BYU campus, and it pretty much ran by the students.  When we first got there we watched a little parade on a river when students were demonstrating different island cultural dances.

After the parade it was a little boring.  We walked around looking at different cultural demonstrations of different things.

Evenings at the Cultural Center they have a luau.  The luau was interesting, and it was nice to have some good local food, but it did seem very commercialized.  Later talking to other people I leaned that pretty much all the luaus on the island are that way now.

After the luau was watched an amazing show that included a lot of fire dancing.  The Polynesian Cultural Center may have been a little boring during the day, the food and show definitely made it worth the price.

Day two our tour guide picked us up at 6:00 AM to visit Pearl Harbor.  We wanted to see as much of Pearl Harbor as possible, so we choose the “Day at Pearl Harbor” package. 

First we saw the Arizona Memorial, which was smaller and more unimpressive as I would have thought, but still pretty cool to see.  It was sad seeing all the names, and knowing many were still on the ship below us.

We then toured the USS Bowfin Submarine.  It was pretty cool, but I have toured other submarines, and it wasn’t much different. 

Then we toured the USS Missouri Battleship.  I have also toured many navel ships, so this one wasn’t much different.  We had a great tour guide that pointed out a dent in the side of the ship that was caused by a Japanese Kamikaze plane.  The dent was the only damage to the ship, but the dead Japanese pilot was left laying on the ship.  The thing that was cool was they gave him a proper burial at sea.  Although he was the enemy, he died fighting for his country and deserved a proper burial.  It felt weird standing in the spot where so much chaos happened so many years ago.  I felt that way the whole time we were in Pearl Harbor.

We then toured the Pacific Aviation Museum.  There they are restoring many planes, mostly by volunteers.  We saw many that were done, and then went into another building as saw some in the process of being restored.  The building still has bullet holes, and shot out windows from World War II.  Some of the planes were used as props in the movie, and we saw the lookout tower that’s in the movie.  I probably should see the movie now.

After all that our tour guide brought us back to our hotel, but we hit terrible rush hour traffic.  All the stopping and going was getting me car sick.  I rarely get car sick, but after the long day, I was.  I was lucky enough to make it back to our hotel before I throwing up.  I felt much better after that, but wanted a decent meal, that I knew would be good, so we ate at Margaritaville.  We wanted to avoid chains, but we have never ate at one before, and we knew the food would be good, and it was — best tuna steak I have ever had.

So I am kind of sick about talking about our Hawaii vacation.  Everybody I run across wants to know all about it.  That is probably the main reason I have put off blogging about it.  I should probably start blogging about it while it’s all fresh in my head, not just for you to read, but for me to look back upon.

Hawaii is probably the first vacation spot that I have been to that I really want to go back to some time.  The weather there is perfect.  I’m not a big fan of hot weather, and was a little worried it would be too hot for me.  There always seemed to be a nice little breeze, and never once was I ever really hot.

One downside is it’s so far away.  It took 14 hours to get there, but surprisingly, it didn’t seem to take that long, probably because we kept turning our clocks back at each layover.  We had two one hour layovers, one in Denver, and one  in San Francisco.  One hour layovers are basically nothing.  Once you find your gate, find the bathroom, and find a place to sit, it’s about time to board the plane.  I thought having the two layovers was rather nice.  It was nice to get out and stretch our legs, and pee in a normal bathroom.  I have actually never been in a airplane bathroom before.  Plus now I can say I have been to California.  Just spent a hour at the airport, but I have now been to California.

We left at 6:00 AM and fourteen hours later it was 3:00 PM in Hawaii.  We knew the sunsets early there, but were planning on hitting the beach before that.  The traffic and parking in Honolulu was crazy.  I am glad we were smart and didn’t bother renting a car.  We were two blocks from the beach, and all of our activities picked us up in from of our hotel.

Our hotel wasn’t the nicest in the world, but it worked for us.  It was in a great location, and we were hardly ever there anyway.  It was clean, had a comfortable bed, and was reasonable priced.

Right after we checked into our room we hit the beach, and walked along the beachfront looking for something to eat.  It was kind of annoying walking the beachfront.  So many people trying to push stuff on you.  We only did the walk once, and didn’t find anyplace interesting to eat, so we just went back and ate at our hotel.  It was worst meal of our vacation.  I had mahi-mahi, and the wife had chicken, and neither of us really liked it.  It was a long day, so we just ate what we could and went back to our room to crash.

I have been meaning to blog about our Hawaii vacation, but I have been busy catching up on everything I missed while I was gone.  This isn’t that post either.

This post is mostly about the technology of our vacation.  I saw my first iPad and iPhones it the wild.  I was kind of amazed at how many people have iPhones.  I guess that’s what happens in states that you can buy them.

I renting a mifi for my internet access over there.  It was cheaper than the hotel’s internet, and I could take it with me.  For the most part it worked really well.  I did run into the “unlimited” cap problem once though, and had to watch my usage for the rest of the week.  Companies should not be allowed to advertize “unlimited” when it clearly isn’t.  In the documentation it clearly stated that I have “unlimited” bandwidth as long as I don’t download or stream videos.  So I made sure not to stream or download video, and after just one day having iTunes open and downloading my podcasts, I got an email saying I was way over the “unlimited” limit.  So for the rest of the week I limited my podcast downloads.  In Honolulu my speeds were decent.  Slower than what I am use to, but usable.  In Hilo speeds were miserable, but for the most part were were out doing stuff, so I didn’t matter too much.  It would have sucked it I really needed to use the internet a lot there.

When we got home we were one iPod short of what we left with.  The wife left her Nano on the plane.  That kind of sucked, but she still has her Touch and Mini, so she will survive.  People that clean planes must get all kinds of goodies.