....I mean, I know what wind is. I've just never seen it as a weather forecast. Like, it's not "cloudy with some sunny periods and windy". It's just "wind". Today, tomorrow and Wednesday. Just wind.
5:09 AM - Ugh. Too early. And not a fabulous sleep either, for some reason I am stuffy and snotty and sneezy and the sneezing actually woke me up several times during the night. But no use in fighting it, I'm awake now and might as well get up and hit the balcony.
Sitting on the balcony, half dressed, and clearly the wind hasn't arrived yet, because it is spectacular out here.
I'd love to say I am sitting here watching the sun come up, but the sun is behind me, so I guess I am sitting here watching it get less dark.
10:30 AM - After breakfast we head down to meet our tour guide for the day, who is taking us across the island to Wailea Beach, recently voted "Best Beach in the World". It is pretty spectacular.
This island hosts a few celebs, Oprah has a home here (and a private road up to it), Julia Roberts, Clint Eastwood, and the late Whitney Houston hung out here before her death. That's decent company.
Eastwood. Winfrey. Roberts. Engemoen.
Sounds about right.
This island is undergoing significant changes. The last sugar cane plant in Hawai'i was on this island until about 2 years ago when it closed, unable to compete with overseas labor costs. That cost about 3000 people their jobs, but most of them were able to transition over to other high-skilled jobs, as the Government dumped a bunch of money into upgrading infrastructure: several new highways were built, a brand new Police Station, and they just recently broke ground on a brand new public High School. The island is thriving, despite the loss of what used to be their core business. You've all seen those commercials for C&H sugar? Did you know that C&H stands for California and Hawai'i? I didn't. But now, it should probably stand for China and Honduras. Seriously, I have no idea what overseas labor is making that sugar now, but it might as well be little Honduran children.
But, what about pineapples, you ask? Well, as I have mentioned, Hawaiian pineapples are so good I am not sure I can adequately describe it to you; so pineapple exports are big business, of course. The problem is that they are so freaking easy to grow, that anyone can do it, and anyone does. Everyone here has a pineapple tree in their backyard, and they supply the local population with fresh pineapple with little to no work. That cuts into their business significantly.
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| The side of that volcano in the distance is one of the windiest places on Earth; hence the turbines |
That volcano in the distance averages 400 inches of rain on one side, and 20 inches of rain on the other side.
The beach is nestled in between two high-end Hotel properties: The Four Seasons Wailea and The Grand Wailea. The latter was purchased by the Waldorf-Astoria corporation after 9-11 when tourism went down so much that the owner had to sell.
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| By the end of the afternoon, the wind is blowing these palm trees sideways |
It occurs to me that we live so close to the ocean, THE SAME OCEAN, we could hop into it any time we like. It never feels quite like this :)
The water is a balmy 78 degrees, year round (it occasionally goes up to 80ish), with flawless sandy beach in and out of the water. It is in the kind of neighborhood I could live in: houses here average about $10M. Shit, I forgot to bring my chequebook. I estimate we spent about half of our time here in the water, just enjoying the salty brine crashing down over our heads, like a couple of 8 year olds. Neither of us can remember the last time we swam in the Pacific Ocean. For me, it was probably when I was a pre-teen at Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver.
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| Somewhere, under that Driving Miss Daisy hat, a rare sighting of Contented Bear |
I am forced to smile when it really hits me that I am in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean, A WEEK BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY! My birthday ain't in the summer, folks. Pretty cool.
The wind starts out significant but manageable and we have a wonderful day for most of the time here. For the last hour, hour and a half, it seems like a hurricane is near. Our guide says that windy conditions here are perfectly normal, but this kind of wind is exceedingly rare. It is still warm and sunny, but having beach sand pelted into your face at the speed of sound isn't all that fun, so we get up and leave the beach an hour or so before our scheduled pickup time, and go over to the Four Seasons' beach-side snack shack for some gelato, and to kill a bit of time. Our shuttle is a bit early, so we get back to the ship a bit earlier than we anticipated. The Monday Night Football game is already in the 2nd quarter, the Rams leading the Chiefs 16-10, so we are excited to go back to our suite and clean up while watching the game. At this point, it looks like it's going to be a decent game.
It gets much more than decent.
The Rams win the game 54-51, the highest scoring game in the history of Monday Night Football, and the 3rd highest scoring game in NFL history. The Chiefs earn the dubious honors of being the first time in league history to score 50 or more points...and lose.
What a game.
7:45 PM - After a quick bite at the buffet, we are back in the room to relax a bit and enjoy one of the bottles of wine that we brought with us. It takes only a few minutes for them to retrieve it from their cellar. It is fridge cold, which is a bit too cold for a Pinot Noir so we open it up and let it sit in the glasses for a few minutes.
8:15 PM - The wine is getting a bit better. We are drinking this out of horribly inappropriate glasses; there is no correlation between the acidity in this Pinot Noir and the kind of wine that would thrive in these random red wine glasses (Cabernet, probably). I swirl the wine around in my mouth, trying to get it to the proper areas of my tongue that would properly appreciate this wine. It's hard, but not impossible.
We have a case of wine being delivered to our resort next week; we know that the resort won't have any decent wine glasses, so we are going to have to go buy our own. Thankfully, we are pretty confident that we can get the glasses home in one piece in our 'Fly With Wine' luggage so that makes it easier.
We are sitting on our balcony, under the stars, feeling incredibly blessed. The aft-facing cabins are the way to go; watching the water behind us has a calming effect that is difficult to fully explain.
Tomorrow we are in Hilo, on the 'big island' (which is just called Hawai'i). We have no plans but to stay on the ship and relax. This is where that volcano erupted earlier this year, for months, and because of the uncertainty we didn't book anything. On Wednesday we are docking in Kona, which is where we are going to be staying for a week at the culmination of this cruise, so we didn't book anything for that either. Tracey has booked her free spa day for Wednesday. Looks like we may have a couple days of doing very little, which sounds pretty damn good to me.
Until tomorrow......
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