Honolulu again. Today we disembark, awww... =( Up until today we didn't really get a feeling for how many passengers were actually on our ship, other than maybe having to book in advance for some of the restaurants. The mass of people became quite clear come 9am on disembarkation day, as everyone left to the last minute to get off the ship, us included. There were all these protocols in place where certain decks of the ship disembarked at certain times, but there was this great big loophole called "Freestyle Disembarkation". Basically this meant that you 'could' get off when your deck is called, OR you could just leave by yourself any time between 7 and 9.30. No brainer really, unless you actually are a sheep.
This would be our final day in Hawaii, and we didn't really have a lot planned for it. We'd considered the idea of getting a rental car and touring by ourself, but in the end we opted for an organised bus tour since it would conveniently drop us off at the airport 3 hours before our flight. Unfortunately, this tour highlighted all of our greatest fears of a large organised bus tour: boring tour guide and boring old passengers. Claire and I didn't even take any photos on this tour, but we still have some interesting memories.
Like the guy sitting in front of us. Now Claire and I didn't take photos because we figured a photo by itself is useless if it doesn't tell a story for us. This guy must have taken upwards of 500 photos of the most random and irrelevant things, mostly through the bus window. He sees a beach with a palm tree on it and takes 5 photos. How is that the most interesting thing you've seen? What have you been doing all week? He was a pretty heavy set guy, so perhaps he didn't get off the ship all week.
The tour was called the Grand Circle Island Tour, which effectively does a loop around the island of Oahu. Problem is, there's a lot to see on the island of Oahu and most of it we didn't get to see more of than the 20 seconds to drive past. The places we did stop were perhaps the most elderly person friendly: a ranch for a buffet lunch and the Dole pineapple plantation. Lunch wasn't bad, but at this stage low quality all you can eat food wasn't so appealing to me. And the Dole plantation was basically a souvenir shop with a cafe attached.
At one point we'd stopped at a small group of shops for refreshments and the bus driver tells us to be back in 20 minutes. 20 minutes rolls by and we're all locked out of the bus waiting for the driver to return. I was genuinely worried about the guy's health so briefly checked if he was keeled over in the toilets. No such luck, turned out he'd been watching TV in the shop's staff room.
Oooh, we got to see turtles though! Real big ones up on North beach which is where all the big Hawaiian surfing competitions are held. The traffic was pretty hectic which was good since it meant we drove really slowly passed the turtles, or we'd likely have missed them. Turns out it was a public holiday, Martin Luther King day.
The airport was pretty uneventful. We checked in 3 hours before our flight was due to leave, and found that there weren't even any window seats left. We pulled out the old "we're on honeymoon, is there anything you can do?" but the guy wasn't interested. We were so close to getting a whole set of three middle seats to ourselves until the guy turned up at the last minute. He was a pretty friendly guy, but it was hard not to resent him being there.
We were happy to be back in New Zealand, although didn't like it that our honeymoon was coming to an end. We didn't get our full allowance of duty free alcohol, FOOLS. Did you know that Baileys is considered a wine? We could have picked up something absurd like 6 bottles each, on top of our spirit allowance. Mmm Baileys in coffee is great.
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