Hilo, Honolulu, and the Ship

        It’s been such a long time since I’ve updated this.  I’ve seen Hilo and Honolulu since my last update.  It’s so hard to be productive at all on this ship.  I don’t know why ship-life does this to me.  Normally I just find a nice seat and sit there for hours accomplishing nothing, except for defeating people in card games like Egyptian rat screw.  The ship left Hawaii three, or four days ago.  I actually have no idea, for all I know a week could have gone by.  Right now I’m sitting outside and the glare of the sunlight is making it impossible for me to see what I’m typing.  I know the weather is going to get really cold in a few days so I’m spending as much time as possible outside, while we’re still relatively near the tropics.  The days go by and I spend them flipping through card games and travel guides. 
        Hilo was a very laid-back port.  It’s a small town and the people there all seem to be friendly and social.  The first day in Hilo I went to tour Mauna Kea.  This trip took all day and it was exhausting.  We got on the tour van at eleven in the morning, and we didn’t get back to the ship until past eleven at night.  The tour brought us to a local waterfall before going to the mountain.  The waterfall was beautiful.  There was a man sitting near the entrance to the park making bowls and little animals out of these huge, long leaves.  He had found a really cool lizard.  The lizard was almost as big as my hand, bright green, and had three long horns on its head.  He found it in the forest, and had tied a little string around it as a leash.  He was going to let it go when he left for the day.  I was excited I got to hold it.  We asked him how much he was selling his little grass animals for and he says, “bird two dollars, fish four dollars, lizard fifty dollars”….. he was just kidding.
        After the waterfall we started our long trip up Mauna Kea.  It took about two hours.  When we got to the top it was about thirty degrees up there.  The view was really nice.  We got to walk up to the huge telescopes, but that was about it.  We were stuck up there for over three hours in the freezing cold.  We waited up there for so long so that we could see the sunset.  It was very nice, but I wish we didn’t waste our whole day up there.  The ground was covered in these little red lava rocks.  I curled up on them and took a two-hour nap.  The tour guide that took us down the mountain was….a character.  Instead of dropping the van off at the ship afterwards he took us to an all night local restaurant and we all had a meal and hung out for a while.  He was really cool, the most interesting part of the day.  It definitely was worth seeing Mauna Kea, but the day dragged on unnecessarily long.  The next day in Hilo was much more relaxed.  I woke up late because I was exhausted.  By the time I was ready to start my day, around noon, everyone was already out and about.   So I had to walk the 40 minutes into town by myself to meet up with people for lunch.  It was a nice walk, right along the water.  We had lunch, and walked around the farmers market, before heading back to the ship. 
         Then we were in Honolulu, so we went to the beach of course.  This city is completely different from Hilo.  We spent the night out at Waikiki beach.  It was a lot of fun.  I got back to the ship at three in the morning.  The next day I had another not so good tour.  We got in a van and were driven around Diamond Head.  I’ve decided I’m not going to sign up for any more Trips through Semester at Sea.  So far they have been really overpriced, and not worth it at all.  We’re going to plan our own independent trips for the most part from now on.  I almost have my plans for Japan worked out, but not quite yet.  It’s very difficult to make these plans without Internet access. 
        We are passing the prime meridian rite now.   I have more than a week left before I see land.  My sanity is definitely suffering.