EDIT: This post has actually been moved, below it is day 5 that was originally missed.
The port of Kona on the big island of Hawaii was interesting. Instead of the cruise ship actually docking at the port it anchored itself a little ways off and they brought down some life rafts to ferry us in and out. When I say life rafts I don't mean dinghys or blow up things, these boats were powered and could seat about 100 people. It seemed like a cool little adventure tendering into shore, but really it was uncomfortably hot inside it with no real view.
We were still excited to be getting to Kona. Today was to be our first scenic helicopter flight, I think my first ever. We hung around for half an hour till the rest of our group showed up, and the tour guide. He then took all our weights and we started travelling towards I can only assume some sort of airport. Tour guide man (who it turned out doubles as the town reverend) gets a call on his cellphone and tells us the flight's cancelled due to bad weather on the other
side of the island. Initially I thought this was a joke they play. Sort of like how an MC asks a crowd "Are you having Fun?!" and get miserable response before saying again and louder "I said! Are you Having Fun!?" to which the audience duly replies with a bit more excitement "yeah... sure...". This wasn't one of those moments. Reverend tour guide was serious, and had turned the van around to take us back to port. Bummer.
This left us with zero plans for the day. So what follows is a description of what we did to relax for a day, and how to enjoy saving USD$600 due to bad weather. We took no photos today.
Our first trip was back to the ship, we took a dip in the pool midship. I just thought how cool it would be to rhyme the rest of this post, but my linguistic skills aren't really any better than most. After our swim we went back into port, where a bus to the shopping centre we caught. Not much of a mall, just one store here, Hilo Hattie it's called and we bought souvenirs. Kona's famous for it's coffee, so we bought some beans, yet still no Hawaiian state flags to be seen. So ends the rhyming passage, since it was taking ages to write. May the story flow better, with the on-board health spa in sight.
We booked ourselves in for an hour long spa treatment each. Very much niceness. I had a pretty much full body massage, Claire had a little less massage and a bit of a body scrub. When we talked about our spa experience afterwards, Claire had me feeling like I'd been ripped off somehow since I didn't get the body scrub as well, but after sorting through some confusion with the spa staff I had actually opted for extra massage instead. Oh well, in the time I was waiting for my therapist to come back from some errand I got to sit around in their relaxation room. Here they have reclined seats made of tiles that are actually really comfortable to sit in, and the seats themselves are heated. Very nice that was.
To be honest, I can't remember how we spent the rest of the afternoon after the spa. At a guess I'd say cocktails were involved, and maybe more swimming in the spa pools. It's even likely we did both at the same time.
Dinner is always a treat for me, so they're generally something I don't forget so easily. Tonight was spent at Papa's Italian Cafe. As the name suggests, they served up Italian things like pizzas and pastas. All pretty simple stuff, but what was special about this place was the atmosphere. Somehow, despite being on a boat with no real window to the outside world, they made it feel like a small family Italian cafe. It seemed really similar to some of the cafes we had been to
in Venice.
After dinner we took ourselves down to the theatre for the magic show. Yay! I like magic! I'm normally a real sceptic, and I still am; always looking for the strings and trying to figure out how it's done. Honestly, I couldn't figure this guy out for some tricks, and it was frustrating me, so I guess he passes the "Good magician" test. There were other tricks where I could see or assume how they were done, but he was also a pretty witty comedian, so all in all it was a
good show.
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