After leaving Honolulu late last night, the Borealis commenced its short island hopping tour of Hawaii by visiting Lahaina on the island of Maui. As in Vietnam, there was no local jetty big enough for our vessel. We anchored a mile or so off the coast and the crew invited people to get to the island or the various excursions by tender. At breakfast Dolphin Dave was strutting up and down the buffet restaurant pointing out whales to us which most of us could not even see. Everyone was getting more and more excited. I looked where they were looking but for all I could see, whales could simply be a myth.
The fertile vegetation of Maui gave the island an emerald green look. It looked like a stroybook island with high green hills overlooking the coast with sandy beaches and a row of small hotels and individual houses hugging the coast. There were up to 50 or so small boats, including sail boats, catamarans and dinghies bobbing along the seemlingly smooth water. The tops of the hills were being being embraced bu smoky grey and occasionally quite dark clouds, but nearly every time I looked the cloud formations seemed to have moved to a different hill top leaving the original one clear. It looked like the clouds were practising their own version of hill hopping.
Although Albina and I still both had a disturbed night we were ready to travel. All we needed to take with us was the photocopy of our passport and the ship's key card. We had different cruises booked. For me it was a joutney in a submarine to observe marine underwater life, for Albina it was whale watching from the deck of a catamaran. I had booked my excursion in London, but Albina only chose hers last week and had it confirmed just two days ago.
The tenders carried us ashore in seperate trips as her excursion started half an hour behind mine. As we did not know quite where to meet afterwards to do some shopping together in the afternoon, we agreed to meet again back on the ship. We assumed we would be back around 1pm with time to go back ashore and back to the ship again aby 5 o'clock.
Iny case thetender operated smoothly and took us to the jetty at Lahaina, which appeardd to be little more than a village. On arrival at the jetty we sauntered past the stall of some twenty different boat owners offering various versions of whale watching or snorkelling trips. Amongst them was our excursion company offering an observation trip by submarine. A small boat was ready for us and included other holidaymakers who were not connected to our boat. It was amusing to hear my fellow passengers explaining to their new travelling companions that we were on an 80 day cruise around the world. "You said eighteen, one eight, right," asked one American father accompanied by his wife and children." "No, eighty," explained one of our group. "Eight zero?" answered the astonished Yank. "It can't be. How much did this cost?" Nobody wanted to give that question a direct answer. "A lot", is all my companion careed to reply. "It all depends on the class of your cabin," said another, without trying to explain further.
Some two miles out to sea we stopped and waited for our submarine to emerge. It was all carried out with a sense of drama, as elaborate instructions were shared between the top side crew and the submerged one. It gave us all the impression we were extras on the set of a submarine movie. The sub eventually emerged, a pristine white boat called Atlantis XII. First we swapped places to allow the existing tour in the submarine to get out and on to our shuttle boat, and then one by one we descended the ladder at each end of the sub. Inside I found a long narrow space with two rows of seats facing outwards through shared portholes which were 2 feet across. We dropped to the sea bottom and started to move around to where the fish were. Amelia, who had been our compere on the shuttle boat, now followed through downstairs and gave us a chatty but detailed account of the fish and other marine life we were passing. She knew which fish ate what, which was a quick swimmer, and even how many teeth a given species would possess ("one tooth at the top, and one at the bottom"). She told us about sea urchins and other invertebrates possessing no feeling and no brain, but some of them still able to lose limbs and recreate themselves in another form. This confirmed my earlier experience that sex guarantees death. The marine beings that that don't have sex can live for ever by simply changing form and multiplying. Then there was the fish (I forget which one) whose brain when eaten will give you hallucinations. I wonder if the illegal drugs trade has learned to exploit that option as well. The overwhelming colour of the sea was a clear deep blue, and indeed that colour becomes more dominant the deeper we go, because other colours, and most notably red, no longer retain their colour deep under the surface. A fish that is red such as the parrotfish on the surface will not appear red at the sea bed.
In order to enliven the tour the company some years ago sunk an empty pre-war German tanker on their patch. Over time the wreck grows coral and attracts various fish at every level of the food chain. They played mocked up music from "Titanic" as we approached and it was certainly an eerie sight, even though the vessel, so to speak, sanked voluntarily with no lives lost. Where there had been pairs of fish, now there were shoals drifting and swerving over the sunken hull. The long term intention in the next thirty years or so is thaat the iron will dissolve in the water but the coral forming on it will remain, giving the vessel a sort of ghostly immortality. We saw striped Hawaiian sargents, butterfly fish, trigger fish, eagle rays, wrasse, and even snappers though they are not native to these waters and have been introduced artificially. We saw a young shark basking below the wreck and, more ominously, a pair of trevalley which are at the top of the food chain in these waters. They eat fish, invertebrates, birds that are foolish enough to sit on the surface and have even been known to attack smaller shark. It is like the deep sea version of the pike.
We cam up after about an hour, as my left knee was beginning to ache seriously in that confined space.Th shuttle took us back to the jetty, at the entance to which we had to show the photocopy of our passport and our yellow key card. The return journey by tender, using our lifeboats seemed more of an ordeal as the waves had become a little higher thaan they were in the morning. Finally I got back to our cabin by pm, expecting Albia to be there. After she had started before me and both tours were 2 hours long. I got vey concerned and ask guest services to check the timetable. After checking for me the young man at the counter confirmed that her tour would by now have reached the return jetty in Lahaina. I was hungry by now so I left Albina a note on the bed saying that I was in the View buffet restaurant. Sure enough, fifteen minutes after I went up to eat, Albina joined me.
She told me about her trip. Sire she had seen some whales, but not too close. She tried to take some pictures but they came out wrong and she cancelled them. There it is. Supposed to be a life changing experience to watch whales, but it had not made that much impact on Albina. We agreed that with more turbulence in the water and the late hour there was now little point in returning to Lahaina, especially as the waves were now higher and the tenders were banging against the side of the ship as they were retirning. . I had to forego the biggest banyan tree in the United States, and gave up on the shopping. With hindsight and a belated knowledge of the layout of what is largely a tourist village it would have been better to have stayed ashore and meet in the harbour rather than come back to the ship. But who knew? Heigh ho.
There was no confirmation of a third helicopter for tomorrow at Hawaii Big Island. My tour tomorrow starts at 7.30 and will last upto four hours. We agreed it would be best for me to come back on to the ship by around 12 midday and then we can both go shopping and have a stroll in Hilo. However I am due to meet Tom at 3pm to discuss the technical side of my presentation, so we will only have a couple of hours.
Albina did not each lunch and simply took down a portion of peach cumble and custard. She did not bother to join me at dinner either, but had scavenged enough food to have a bite to eat in the cabin. Is that what we are down to on this expensive luxury cruise? Scavenge? I finished writing up some notes and drawing in a couple of photos into the text before going out to join other our crowd or another quiz team. After that early to bed in time for my early excursion.
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