Timeshare tour day

So, you may ask, “Why the heck did you do the timeshare tour?”  And let’s be honest, 20% of meals, alcohol and other assorted sundries (plus subsidized diving) was worth 90 minutes.  At the end of the spiel, we both declined, and got the “But if you sign right now, we’ll throw in the jacuzzi tub, too!!” spiel.  Plus a last minute offer of a two year option to use the facilities in Mexico once a year.  I had to laugh.  Instead, I smiled and said this wasn’t our normal place for vacations, Micronesia was, and we wouldn’t use the two year option at all, as we didn’t plan a return trip for many, many years.  When they got to the point where the talked about the cost of their time in showing us everything, I tuned out completely.

That done, we got our gold cards out, went and got lunch, and relaxed!  Bottom line from that experience, although the discounts are nice, from now on it is most definitely “Heck, no!” when they ask us to do a timeshare tour ever again.  At least for a while.  You never know about Kona....

The day went pretty smoothly.  We walked down to town on the beach (sunscreened and hatted, yes), looking for the dive shops.  We were approached by dozens of folks hawking their wares, food, whatever, but kept on going.  Then we made it to the marina, and were similarly accosted.  I haven’t been approached by so many people since Marmaris.  And when you say no, it’s similar to the time share mafia folks in the airport, they step in your way and shove things in your face.  I felt a bit of New York coming out!

We made it to the dive shop, Sunshine Dive, in the Hotel Tesoro (Bob, you made it on a vacation with us finally!).  The dive shop owner’s wife greeted us pleasantly, had us sign our PADI waivers, introduced us to the divemaster, and then didn’t even pull out any papers for signing a multi day contract!  Nice atmosphere.  And free Nitrox!  Looking forward to tomorrow.  They got a good write up in the Undercurrent diving magazine, too.  Hopefully, we shall see the sand waterfalls tomorrow, can’t wait.

Walked back along the beach later in the evening, making it back to the Del Arco by sunset.  Light supper, and a margarita or two, and then came back to post and to watch Date Night.  Funny movie.

Off to bed, looking forward to the day beginning.

Oh what a circus, oh what a show!

A frantic Thursday followed by frenetic Friday!

I spent the past week catching up with the solar folks, Sunetric, to get our meters accurately reading and transmitting.  After installation, there was one broken reader that needed to be replaced.  Nearly a month later, after some prompting on my part, the company realized the order was in and that we needed to get it installed.  Shree volunteered to be at the house for the installation, thankfully, and then we would work over the phone to get everything talking to one another.  What a nightmare.  We work longer hours than company does business during the day, and they do not work weekends.  So I stayed home to get it done.  After lots of button pushing, resetting, and about 3 phone calls, it worked!  Now both are registering, and it looks like we are powering the house solely through Solar!

Tuesday through Thursday was a lot of work with spreadsheets (can you say headache?), and getting things done before leaving for a week’s vacation in Cabo San Lucas, part of which was arranging for an alternate set of drill dates for September.  Scored!  It’s going to be a wild a crazy month here.  I also got city and county approval to conduct an above and below the ocean cleanup as part of the International Ocean Cleanup Day, September 25th.  Now it’s time to advertise it - both on the Dive Network and at Booz Allen.  We shall see the number of volunteers I can get.

School has started, too, and I raced to attend about 2/3 of my Thursday class before getting to the airport on time.  And off to Cabo we were, we hoped...our  flight was delayed by 1 1/2 hours due to a maintenance problem, so as we took off, we didn’t know if we would make our connecting flight.  As luck would have it, we woke up to see we would be arriving only about 40 minutes late - so we didn’t get to see Jodi and Matt due to an overnight stay in Houston (and Lore!), but we got on our plane to Mexico.  Which was delayed by 30 minutes due to thunderstorms in Houston.

And then we got to Cabo, luggage already at luggage claim as we walked through immigration, and then out into the cacophony of the airport.

Small word of advice if you are coming here -- either rent a car, or - if you do the hotel shuttle - walk out the exit, turn firmly to the right and out the group exit door.  If you don’t, you will be manhandled and pulled over to a counter where the never ending time share sales pitch begins.  And yes, for the record, we are going to sit through one here at our hotel, but we are both firmly prepared to say no, as we don’t want to be tied down to one location!  But it does get you discounts in town, and since we are here to kayak and dive (and not in that order), it is helpful.

More on our hotel later!

Honaunau and Dragonfly Ranch

We came back two weeks ago from five days on the Big Island.  We initially planned it to coincide with the visit of Fred & Pat Sawicki, friends of the family, so we could show them around Kona a little bit.  It was the prime opportunity to check out a B&B we saw advertised on the iPhone app, InnTouch.  Nestled in Honaunau, a wonderful place with historic significance to Hawaiians, the ranch (www.dragonflyranch.com) seemed perfect for a weekend visit.

After our trip to Midway, we contacted Jack’s Diving Locker in order to schedule a dive called Pelagic Magic, led by one of our cohorts in disaster on the Midway trip, Matthew D’Avella (www.mdavella.com).  That scheduled, we packed our dive bags, got on the plane, and headed over for an extended weekend.

The ranch itself is lovely, populated by Siamese kittens, and run by Barbara, who has done the majority of art work decorating the place.  The rooms are clean, our shower was unusual in that it was outside, along with our bathtub, and there are niceties in every room.  The breakfast offered is all organic, lots of fruits, quinoa, ionized water, organic coffee.  And the kittens abound, wreaking mischief.  Barbara offers various services ranging from laser treatments to meditation, to an afternoon with her. There is a labyrinth above the property where you are encouraged to abandon everything in your mind, move through it, and come out mentally refreshed. 

There were lots of good places to eat near the ranch in Kealakekua and Captain Cook.  One place where we had dinner was the Manago Hotel, where they are famous for their pork chops with gravy and fried onions.  I must say, it was a spectacular meal, reminiscent of schnitzels in Germany.  Inexpensive as well! 

The ranch is up the road from the national park Place of Refuge, where you could reside in order to be forgiven for violating any kapu, or for waging war against your cousin, who was a really mean dude by the name of Kamehameha the Great.  It overlooks the bay at Honaunau, as well as Kealakekua, affording a view of the Captain Cook monument.  Very peaceful, we were serenaded by cows, horses, roosters, dogs and cats daily, and we were able to indulge in some much needed rest as well as a little diving.  I highly recommend the ranch!

The dive with Matthew was absolutely overwhelming.  You are two miles from shore, and the ocean floor is about a mile beneath you as you descend.  We were tethered to the boat, at about 20-30 feet, flying in the pitch black night ocean.  So many cool little (and big) creatures that you seldom see during the day, there are a lot of larval animals out there.  And, we’re pretty sure, a shark or two that we didn’t see.  Lots of squid were running about as well.

Unfortunately, we both had dive camera malfunctions, which was ok.  There was so much sensory stimulation, that I don’t think we would have taken our best pictures.  It would seem we will need to do that particular dive one more time at least.

We had dinner the night after our dive at Teshima’s (FABULOUS Japanese restaurant) with Matthew and his wife, Kara, who works with NOAA.  She was finishing her Master’s thesis, based on the plankton food life cycle for pelagics, I believe, while the three of us were in Midway.  Lovely woman, poor thing has only ever dived Magic Island here on O’ahu, we shall have to show her better places the next time she is here. 

Both Matthew and Kara are very active in attempting to stop commercial harvesting of local Hawaiian fish.  The day after we left, there was a council meeting, and it appears that there will be a moratorium on harvesting fish off of the Big Island.  I’m happy about that, as the population at Honaunau is smaller than I can ever remember, and we are destroying fish life cycles.  But enough on that, I will have to address that in another blog post.

Then arrived Fred & Pat.  We met up with them in Kailua Kona, and headed out to Basil Boston Italian restaurant for dinner.  We led them back to their hotel, which was a bit beyond the turnoff to head to the Dragonfly, and made plans to meet the next day.

After lunch in Kailua on Tuesday, we headed to the Seahorse breeding facility near the airport.  Much like everything else off the island, seahorses have been over-harvested.  Their average life span following capture from the ocean is one year.  At the hatchery, seahorses are being bred for commercial sale.  They are trained to eat domesticated shrimp and krill, and their average life span in unknown, but there are a number 12 years of age still going strong.  Great learning experience, very pleased to have shared it with Fred & Pat.

And then it was home.  I think the next time my folks are here, we may just have to visit Kona, one spot to which they have not been.

Barbara, thanks for the lovely stay.  Matthew, thanks for the super dive.  And Fred & Pat, thanks for the trip to the Seahorse farm!!!  A great success overall.

Truly our last day

Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad, and Happy Birthday Maiya!

Final confirmation was posted on the board this morning, our plane will arrive at 1:30 am, and it will take roughly 2 hours to get to Honolulu.  This time I’m pretty much ready to go.  I was glad that the powers that be realized and afforded me the extra two days of relaxation here in Midway.

This morning brought our final circle island bicycle tour, trying to go down old trails that were here the last time Wayne visited.  Unfortunately, they were not well kept up, so we backtracked.  That’s ok, though, made for more riding time.  We finished up with a trip back to the finger pier, where there were 3 adult hybrids and a chick - bonus score!  Then it was back into Midway Town, where we went into the gym.  There was an abandoned fledgling canary, with no parents or nest in site.  I brought it to John Klavitter, the Deputy Park Manager, and he advised to put it outside the gym where it could forage since it was flying.  Don’t know that it will make it, but don’t think it would have had any chance inside the gym.  At least outside it can be heard, and perhaps its parents will come.

Life in the jungle.

The afternoon was spent on the boat headed back to Eastern Island, in search for the elusive short tailed albatross.  Alas, none to be found but the decoys, but we did get to see grey backed terns displaying mating behaviors, along with sooty terns.  Quite nice!  And we were led partway to the island by my dolphin buddies.  They abandoned us for our return trip, but all in all I was pleased with our excursion.  When we got back to the pier, there were two white tip reef sharks, but I was not quick enough with the camera to catch them.  Alas.

Then it was off to shower, eat dinner, and grab about 4 hours of sleep before the plane arrived.  We have a good feeling that it will work this time without any glitches.

Postscript:  We got up at 12:45, and waited for the plane to arrive, which it did at 1:30.  We were brought on board at 2:45, and took off at about 3 am.  We touched down in Honolulu at 6 am, and headed to Anna Miller’s for breakfast.  Although sad to leave Midway, we were both relieved to be home with the critters (who were mad at us), and in the position for me to catch my flight out Thursday evening.  What a trip we had!

Now to start planning for 8 years hence.

Watch what you wish for

The last thought in my head before we took off was hoping for no albatross strikes.  Of course, the thoughts previously throughout the day was wishing that we didn’t have to leave.  Guess what?

Both came true.

About an hour into our flight, as both Wayne and I were entering into sleep, there was a loud bang, and a violent shake to the airplane, followed by a rapid descent.  As you might imagine, we were both a little shaken up.  It was startling, to say the least.

The pilots turned around and returned our aircraft to Midway, landing safely.  We were greeted on the runway by the Deputy Fish and Wildlife manager and the PA.  I think they were worried about shock...we were all groggy and alert simultaneously, but quickly returned to Charlie Barracks and our old rooms.  We were grateful for that, as another group of 15 had arrived on the same plane.  Amusingly enough, a number of them didn’t realize it was so.

We got up this morning, saw a note for a pilot’s briefing at 5 pm, and so took off to get our bicycles back and continue to do our whole island exploration.  We circled the runway looking for shorttails (there were none), and then headed out to Bulky Dump for some photography.  The afternoon was spent out at the finger pier, and then headed back in for the pilot’s briefing.

They pretty much had no clue why the fuel spiked, or what caused the spark.  However, they assured us that the flames were simply the manifestation of the JP5 in a closed engine burning off.  That was far more reassuring than some of our fellow passengers accounting of an engine ensconced by flames for 4-5 minutes!  We also spent a lot more time at the finger pier in the afternoon, returning at sunset.  Lovely albatross in flight pictures, plus the hybrid and chick. 

Satisfying, with a distinct possibility of getting home on Thursday morning.