I had a vacation, and I thought I would use more of it to write things down. As is pretty typical of me, I completely mis-gauged how I would use my time, but at least I did manage to do a lot of reading and I tried to post photos most days to Mastodon.
The vacation was to Hawaii, where I have only visited once before, almost two decades ago. Back then was a trip to Hanalei on Kauai, a big family reunion on my mom’s side. It was one of the last big trips my granny managed before her knees wouldn’t allow her to sit on a plane for long periods. There was a YMCA campground near where the highway ended on the North Shore, in Wainiha, and a lot of us stayed there or nearby — my mom & her three siblings, all the cousins & children of cousins. The recollections are fuzzy now except for some minor family drama which isn’t worth revisiting, and loving visiting my uncle’s & his partner’s tiny one-room shack near a creek surrounded by fruit trees. The taste of really fresh, really ripe, non-Cavendish bananas was unbelievable. I also had a really cute moment with my cousin’s young son who climbed into a hammock with me while I read him slightly redacted excerpts from Teen Titans which I had been collecting / reading at the time.
But I digress. The trip we kicked off a few of weeks ago, during the Easter school holidays, was also built around another family reunion. This time the occasion was a belated celebration of my dad’s 80th birthday last November. While I wasn’t able to visit as many cousins on my dad’s side, it did include my half sister who I hadn’t seen for over a decade, and the full troop of my step-nieces-and-nephews, whom I had never met.
This time we assembled on the Big Island. Our first couple of nights were parked in a situation of convenience not far from Kona airport. After a scene reminiscent of some tropical backwater hybrid of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil at the car rental facilities, we were settled into a servicible holiday condo where we slept off the jet lag and terrible night’s sleep on the plane.
The next day we had locked in what ended up being one of the most memorable experiences of the whole trip. It was a little bit of a factory tourism scene but ultimately I was still glad we were able to do it. Just before sunset we boarded a small speedboat with a group of other folks. The water was unfortunately quite choppy but we lucked out in that no one seemed to get seasick. As we pulled out of the marina, the sun just dipped below the horizon (we looked for the green flash — but no luck!). Not long after in the still-bright twilight our keen-eyed skipper spotted a pod of Pacific spinner dolphins heading out to hunt for the evening. It was then that he introduced me to a new concept: the dolphin donut (the spinny-vehicle kind, not the fried dough type). Taking the boat up to a considerable speed he steered us into a sweeping 180 and then paused so we could see the dolphins playing & jumping in the wake of the boat and they did not disappoint. Spinner dolphins really do live up to their names, their smaller more agile bodies allowing them to do double & triple flips that were more epic than the leaps of the bottlenoses I’m used to observing.
The dolphins carried on to get their dinner and we continued on our way eastward down the coast. The the wind blew in my face and the boat jetted over the swells and I was definitely in my happy place (although I do prefer the sedate pace of a sailboat, even a stink boat is fine when you haven’t been out on the water in a while). It was getting quite dark now, but before long we pulled up to a spot near one of the beachside resorts where a huge flood light was shining down on the water. A number of other small boats much like ours were assembled, arrayed with other passengers who were kitted out much like us: half-wetsuits, mask, snorkle, and foam floats secured around our ankles.
Our guide got into the water with a long foam board with a full spectrum light on the underside and handles all around the edges. We all got into the water one-by-one and grabbed onto the handles and floated facedown and waited.
At first all I could see was a bunch of plankton twitching around in the water, highlighted by the lights, and a few larger fish down near the sea floor. It wasn’t too long though before we finally got to see what we came for — gliding smoothly and ethereally in a huge loop-de-loop the manta rays swooped just below us — inches from our submerged faces — funnelling the plankton into their massive mouths upside-down.
We saw 3 or 4; mostly females, which are larger, but also a male, which was rare. The water was cold & choppy, and even I was starting to get a little queasy, but it didn’t detract much from watching these alien underwater giant butterflies swoop past us. Just when I was about to hit my limit of cold tolerance, it was time to get back into the boat and head home, as a gorgeous full moon broke out from behind the clouds over the mountains.
For me it was indisputably worthwhile, especially because the kiddos also loved the whole thing despite the cold and the choppy water. And I had my reservations about the industrial scale of the operations. At least for our outfit, the rules were strict & clear: no touchy the mantas or you’re back on the boat. Still, I couldn’t figure out if the extra traffic and human presence was ultimately a fair trade for the free food for the rays.
After Kona we drove up to Kilauea Military Camp, which my dad was able to book as a veteran, and he also got some help coordinating through one of his old National Park Service contacts. Being on top of Kilauea for two nights was a really unique experience and totally different to staying at the beach. At that elevation, the days were mild and the nights were chilly. When the cloud cover cleared away the stars were startlingly clear and sharp.
The volcano was only smoking a little bit while we were there, but we were very close to a view of the crater, and seeing the smoke and steam belching out was very cool. The steam vents inexplicably smelled of fenugreek to me, and the ground was covered in “Pele’s Hair” — tiny thin strands of volcanic glass that really did look like hair. Little tiny bright finches hopped around and we found a chameleon walking along a footpath.
The camp itself felt straight out of the 50’s or 60’s and seemed to have a lot of original features and infrastructure. But we were comfortable enough in one of the big houses that had been made over into more of a motel room setup with a big shared kitchen. We had a bowling night at the tiny bowling alley attached to the rec center, and had a party with amazing food catered by a company from Hilo. Everyone gathered, ate, chatted, and shared some meaningful story about my dad while all the littles ran around like hooligans. I don’t get to see my dad in his natural habitat much anymore, so it was nice to have that window into his life and connections now. All the stories were really lovely in their own way, and devoid of shallow “nice” things. I didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with my dad but I still felt much closer to him, to see him “in context” and see him interact more with my step-siblings and their spouses and kids. My dad is the kind of person who tries to make deep connections with the people in his life and it was good to see that in action.
We spent a couple more nights in Volcano and visited some unique places in Hilo. My step-mom’s ex-husband’s brother is a Hilo resident and despite the extreme tenuousness of the connection, he was an excellent, warm, and welcoming host, happy to play tour guide for us — both in and around Hawaii Volcanos National Park, and at his former workplace. He is a retired astrophysicist who worked at the Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea. He took us for a quick show & tell after making sure we wouldn’t be a distraction for the technicians on duty. The control room itself is nestled in Hilo with remote monitoring and control of the facilities up on the mountain.
Tom himself used to work up on top of the mountain on-site at the telescope. He missed being up on Mauna Kea despite the extreme conditions, but he was genial and showed us some of the telemetry coming in from the Gemini instruments, and the burgeoning ops-nerd in me was fascinated about all the factors that went into determining which projects got what time for observations under different conditions. Our windows out into the universe seem so small in that context.
After a wander through ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center which the kiddos appreciated much more, we went out to lunch in Hilo, when Tom told us about the work he had done using radio spectroscopy to look for 3H / tritium in space. I probably only fully gokked half of it but it was fascinating stuff, and I could have happily geeked out much more, because I’ve always been fascinated by astronomy & physics.
The second half of the holiday was a much more conventional stay in Ko Olina on Oahu. My son is fascinated with WWII history and really wanted a chance to visit some of the sites at Pearl Harbor, so spent a day with my dad and my $Spouse touring The Missouri and the Aviation Museum there. We visited the Sea Life Park and hiked to Manoa Falls, but mostly spent a considerable chunk of time hanging out at the Lagoons and the pool in the resort complex where our Airbnb was.
The big highlight for me was near the airport in Honolulu - the humble delights of one Kamehameha Bakery, Inc, which seriously made the most blissful donuts I’ve eaten in a good long while. I’m not sure what their secret was, but they should seriously consider licensing out their recipes to make some serious bank, because I would pay good money and sacrifice a considerable amount of physical fitness to get that flavour again. The apple fritters were a near second to my platonic ideal of the no-longer-extant Bill Bakers of Ojai (they only fell short due to not enough cinnamon / apple chunks). However it was the haupia (coconut) filled malasda which for me was a true revelation of fried dough and sugar.
I could probably go on forever about donuts (the bakery kind, not the spinny vehicle kind), but suffice it to say there were many memorable moments throughout the whole trip, many of which I probably will never fully commit to text.
I’m not sure when I can next make it out to the Island State, especially with the current geopolitical milieu (this last trip was planned well in advance of any electoral outcomes and political developments, or we might have deferred things to a time when cooler, saner heads were governing). However, I’d easily commit to another trip to Hilo or try and make it back to Kauai where my uncle still lives in some far-flung future where I have the money, time, and don’t have to wonder whether my phone or laptop are going to get searched.