The S’man does the scuba. I’m proud of him. The second highlight was a free dive. Grabbing a lung full I pointed head down and kicked fins for the bottom. My arrival suprised a divemaster and her gang. I received silent underwater applause and, via hand signal, the depth from her wrist meter — 27 ft.

I don’t know why I was thinking our excursion today would be an lazy African Queen style sight see. The brochure didn’t specifically give away the surprise. Our Na Pali coastline exploration was aboard a HIGH SPEED Zodiac piloted by great-BIG-Polynesian guy. He gunned his twin outboards just outside of the breakwater jetty and in a flash of foaming spray we were leaping from wave to wave hanging on with both hands and a least one toe looped under a hike out line. So. This is what it’s like to be a Green Peace commando… Aside from the thrills we did see some shoreline cliffs that rated very high on our scenic beauty and splendor meters. Too bad that the famed waterfalls were mostly dry. The tour operator could have doubled their rates. The sun shone brightly on us today. What a rush!

a.k.a. Fanning Island is an atoll with population 150. Their main economic link to the world was a relay station for the Trans-Pacific cable until NCL started weekly lifeline visits. The people here don’t exactly rely on the tourists who arrive like clock work every Wednesday but an anthropologist could certainly do an interesting study on how outsiders have made an impact. Especially, when the cruise line one day (now that cabotage rules are being re-written) ups and stops coming. I’d read derogatory reports about this stop on the cruise so my expectations were rather low. Never the less, first born child and I decided to brave the life boat tender for a look see. We were pleasantly surprised and enjoyed our visit to this unspoiled place afterall.

We are enroute to the South Pacific. 110 miles from Hilo. Only 987 miles to go, which means that we’ll be entertaining ourselves shipboard for the next two nights and all of one day. Seas are reported ‘Rough’ which equates to 7.5 to 12 foot swell. Sure doesn’t look it from our station, deck 11. The wind is piping, however. 32 knots from the NE. You can see the spray blown off of some of the whitecaps in the turbulence of the lee side of the ship. Even still the boat is making 23 knots. Not too shabby.

AR standing amidst the carnage takes a healthy power bar break. Slipstream from a passing tourbus caused a little wobble from her front wheel. ‘Course, it didn’t help that she’d left the handle bars unattended while making a friendly wave and salute. (Don’t scare me like that next time 🙂 We enjoyed a beautiful ride on the crater rim of the Kilauea Caldera passing through rainforest and desert. Included was a side excursion tip-toe through the dark Thurston Lava Tube. Our guide described a lot about what makes the earth tick and offered up many explanations for what we saw before us. (Pele’s fault mostly) The desert area was in stark contrast to the typical and expected Hawaiian lush green tree fern flora. This devastation trail resembled a rock strewn Martian lunarscape. Steam, volcanic smoke, and sulfur gas oozed from primordial rocks. I overheard a bit of humor on the trek out of this historic natural hell. A woman perceived the volume of steam to have intensified from her observations when going in. Someone, in his calmest gentlemanly school teacher voice assured her: “okay everyone — let’s hurry back to the bicycles…”