Some Goblin is at Work Here

This morning, as we were just ready to leave our room for our tour about 7:15, the power went out all over the ship. Emergency lighting in the halls, one teeny LED light in the rooms, no elevators and....no kitchen! It was OK, we had already had breakfast. But it was a slow descent by stairs from the 10th floor to the fourth. Oh, for the days when I could pound those two steps at a time.

In any event, we got to our tour meeting, to the tender boat, and deposited on the dock in Lahaina leaving the power issue to the experts. And then, because there was a marathon this fine Sunday on Maui, we got to traipse across the highway to where they allowed cars to park this morning. The bus was nicely air-conditioned for which I was very grateful.

We had an all day tour up the side of Haleakala, which is the big (9700 ft) dormant volcano on the east side of the island. We went from 0 to 9700 in about two hours and 45 million hairpin turns in a 45' bus. I think Disney has a similar ride in either Toontown or Radiator Springs. Seriously, a couple of times I could look out the window and see at least five switchbacks below me. Very beautiful up there above the clouds, and chilly, too. I finally got to see the silversword plant, which I have been hearing about since I was a girl. They live up to their name better than I expected, which was a nice surprise. They are just beautiful, shining in the sunlight as if made of fine silver hairs.

We descended the same winding road, stopped for a nice Italian buffet lunch, and made our way back to the dock. Tom and Jim stayed in town to shop a little, while Susan and I jumped on a tender back to the ship. We hadn't been in the rooms more than a few minutes when....we lost power, again. This time it was out for about 30 minutes, and it has come back on while I was writing this blog entry. Interetingly, the stuff comes back on in parts. First was the outlets, then the A/C, then the lights, then the water, the vaccum system and finally, the drains have just finished gurgling.

I do have some pictures for this day, but again, the app does not allow me to update until I am on a wifi signal....which I may or may not find in the next couple of days....in the meantime, i will put a few on Facebook and will update the blog when I can.

Pearl Harbor

Today was a very sobering day, but one which I have wanted to do for many years now. Well we've been to Hawaii several times, we have never been to Honolulu together. We were able to obtain early tickets to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor so that's where we spent the morning. I've got a few photos, but this app keeps crahing when I try to load them, so I will put a couple on Facebook.

We return to the ship for lunch, whereupon I decided to take a shower, put my feet up and rest for the afternoon. I was dripping all morning long and I'm sorry to say, I just don't have the stamina and the wherewithal that I used to. Tom, however, is out and about as I type this. He's going shopping, it will be interesting to see what he returns with.

A week....already?

Continuing with my every-now-and-then nature of this blog, I am back on this lazy afternoon at sea to fill you in on what we have been doing. (This isn't going to take long).

The weather has continued to improve on a daily basis. What started out as a cool and rocky Pacific has become the warm, humid and smooth Pacific, and for the last two days has turned the most beautiful shade of sapphire blue. We've partly cloudy skies today, which means bright blue sky interspersed with big puffy white clouds....very similar to our New Mexico skies. Folks are out on deck for the last two days, sunning in the loungers and watching the big screen and ocean.

We have attended quite a few of the enrichment lectures, not so many of the games/crafts/ukelele/hula lessons. I now can tell you that the big island of Hawaii is the youngest (and still growing) of the Hawaiian islands, all five of the islands are connected below the sea having been formed by the same Hot Spot underwater, and that the full chain of Hawaiian islands stretches northwest all the way to what we know as Midway due to the movement of the Pacific tectonic plate at something like 4" per year. A Hot Spot is basically an underwater volcano, which over a very long geologic time builds up and forms a new island. And yes, there is a new island 'only' 3,000 feet below the water, forming to the bottom of the big island. The name of this newest island about to burst forth escapes me. It is something like 5 letters long with at least one i, and probably a k,l,and/or n. But since the entire Hawaiian alphabet is only 12 letters long, and 5 of those are the vowels, just pick something sort of resembling the word Liki'i. or Kilei. or Iliki. Or google it, if you really want to know. Just don't hold your breath because we're still talking geologic time frames, here.

I do know that there are two types of lava flow, the first being a'a, which is sort of looks like little charcoal briquets tumbling over on each other. The second type looks like syrup, all liquid and gooey. Its name is much longer, but it will come as no surprise that I cannot remember it, nor can I remember a nui nui from akai akai or pono kui kui. One of those is probably the name of a bird or maybe a rainbow. In fact, despite a Hawaiian word of the day session every day, the only two words I have learned all week are 'pono' which sort of means the same thing as the Navajo 'walk in beauty' and 'makai', which is supposed to mean 'towards the water'. I am not going to embarass myself further and attempt to attend any of the Hawaiian language classes onboard, because I would only mangle things worse than I already have and instead of saying 'Pleased to meet you' it would come out closer to 'Your monkey is eating my taco'.

Tomorrow we arrive in Hilo and will be visiting Volcano National Park and seeing some lava flows. It sounds dangerous until you realize lava has been flowing out of Kilauea for 33 years, continuously. They have grown used to making permanent road detours, finding valleys filled in and building on top after it all cools off. It should be a fun day.

I Had Good Intentions

Let's all just face facts now, I am a terrible travel blogger. Here we are three days into the trip and this is my first post. Fortunately, you are not relying on me for food or medical care or anything of a survival nature. I would promise to try and be better for the rest of the trip, but I don't think I should lie to you right off the bat. So....we'll see what the future brings.

Here's a quick wrap-up of the past few days: We had uneventful flights to LA, a bit of a kerfuffle with transportation from LAX to the port, and a restful night's sleep at the port hotel. Uber was a huge fail at LAX, our fallback plan of a walk-up Super Shuttle was not available either and even if it had been, would have cost $70, so we took a taxi to San Pedro for $75 including tip.

Our hotel was a bit hit and miss. They upgraded us to a corner suite, but half the lights and one of the two telephones did not work. Had a large living area with uncomfortable, old sofas. Had a sliding door to a nice patio overlooking the pool, but the door was so hard to move on the track we gave up after two inches and just locked it. We've decided to change to the other port hotel for our next trip out of here, as our friends who booked there had a great experience.

The good news is that all of our traveling companions made it to the port, we boarded about the same time and connected up with each other, and we were correctly assigned together at the same table for dinner on the cruise. And the best part is that everyone enjoys each other and this is a great mix of people.

Today is our first full day at sea, with three more before we arrive in Hilo, Hawaii on Friday. The weather has been overcast since leaving LA, but the temperatures are in the low 70's. We have a slight sea swell, which is noticable and makes for some wobbly walking, but nobody seems to be having any real difficulty, and it did make for a really nice rocking cradle effect last night. Today has brought a full list of onboard activities ranging from volcano science lectures, journal arts and craft project, culinary show, three kinds of trivia, movies on deck, bowling in the lobby, wine tasting, shopping and other assorted keep-you-from-boredom events.

Tom is down at the military meet and greet as I type, and I am sitting on the balcony just enjoying the sounds of the ship cutting through the water and the ocean breeze. I could sit out here and do absolutely nothing but lull myself into a zen zone for hours. And I might just do that.

A little Catching Up

OK, having had it mentioned to me that I failed to Blog on this last trip (thank you Art), I am now going to give you a small taste of what we saw during our trip. And, this is a little chance for me to brush up on my blogging skills for the upcoming trip to the South Pacific.

First off, we went to Navajo Lake for five days. Lovely weather, nice lake view site, read a lot of books as we had two (?) whole TV channels and no internet.

Here is the new restaurant at the marina:

I would write more, but we really didn't do much more. Had thought we might fish a little, but never quite got around to that. We really did just sleep late, lounge around all day and watch the shadows change as the sun moved across.

After five days at the lake, we headed north to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We took a pretty small back road, which was absolutely beautiful and it went past the Chimney Rock National Monument. I had never even heard of this monument until we went by it. We also shared the road with a few farmers who were baling hay.

We spent just one night at Pagosa Springs, but we did walk around town a bit, and refilled the gas tank and the refrigerator.

The next day we headed all of 50 miles down to Chama, NM. We had never ridden the Cumbres and Toltec narrow gauge train, so decided to make this stop in order to do that. Our RV park was right on the river and just next door to the train station. Every morning at 10 and every afternoon at 4 the train goes by and the park residents wander over to the track to wave at the train and take pictures.

While we were waiting for the afternoon train, we saw this mother and her baby getting a drink in the river.

And here comes the train...

The next day we took our ride, and enjoyed not only the scenery but the nice lunch at the midway station. I don't have pictures of that stop, but here are pictures from the ride.

The picture above is when the engineer performs a 'blowdown'. Its sort of a high pressure rinse of the bottom of the steam boiler to rid it of particulates and whatever other sediment might have accumulated.

All in all, a very enjoyable day and we're very glad we finally took this ride after living in NM for 25 years.

The following day we headed over to Angel Fire. It was an interesting drive, only 115 miles, but you do go over a high pass and for us, through the clouds, too.

One thing we saw on our way was an actual, genuine cattle round up. With real cowboys on horses and cattle dogs. It was like being in the movies, only real.

At Angel Fire, we met up with Tom's brother Jim, and his wife Doty. I guess we must have been so excited to see each other that I failed to take pictures of our pretty view, Doty or Jim or the things we did. Absolutley nada, zip squat to show we were there. 😩

On our ride home, we ran into a morning thundershower just above Espanola...

So...there you have it. A summary of our trip and a little blogging practice for me. Stay tuned for the next installment in 19 days.

Our Last Day in Peru

Well, I have another wonderful post showing yesterday's activities, but of course I'm having trouble getting it to upload. So I'll just have to send it off after we get home.

Today is our last half-day in Peru, we depart tonight at 5:30 PM and spend the next 24 hours taking three different flights to get back to Albuquerque. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cuzco

We arrived back in Cusco late on Sunday evening. We will be here until we depart for the US late Wednesday. We were very fortunate to see the Corpus Christi parade when we arrived a little over a week ago. Yesterday and today the main square was again filled with parades and celebrations. We are told we are very fortunate to see these celebrations, but I'm afraid that my only memory of Cusco will be crowded squares filled with colorful costumes. It isn't going to be anything like a normal, everyday life.

Yesterday, we went to see Saqsayhuaman (pronounced very much like 'sexy woman') ruins. This is very close to the city of Cusco, about a 15 minute drive up into the mountains. And it is now surrounded by the city itself.

One of the more interesting traditions here is that people will go into a park area, dig out a big mound of dirt, form it into an horno oven shape. Then they stoke a fire, let the coals die down, bury potatoes inside and cook them inside this hot, earthen mound.

We spent Monday morning on a walking tour of Cusco's central area. We saw Qoricancha which was originally a golden Inca temple. It was looted by the Spanish, who then build a church on top of the Inca foundations.

We also toured the Cathedral, which is filled with Cusco baroque gold furnishings. They are very elaborate and over-the-top. We did get to see the 14 Saints from last Sunday's parade who will spend the rest of this week inside the cathedral, before returning to their home churches…yes, in yet another parade!

We have a free afternoon today, and I am going to use it to rest my legs and take a nap. Tom is heading back over to the artisan market, to negotiate hat and T-shirt prices with the vendors, LOL. I'll post pictures of his winnings.