Thursday 5/2/2015 Day
31 – Honolulu, O’ahu. Warm, windy, sunny, beautiful (and shocking)
We were both awake and sitting up in bed drinking coffee at
6 a.m. The clocks had gone back another hour (10 hours behind UK now) and we
were both ready to go. At first we were just watching the reflections of the
moon on the sea, then the dawn breaking, and then we just got up and walked our
first 6 laps of the day before breakfast!
Soon it was time to get off the ship, unfortunately our first impression was shocking. We started to walk and coming in the opposite direction was a young-ish woman wearing only a bikini, looking very pregnant. As she got closer we could see that her abdomen was covered in huge abcesses and there was pus flowing out of one of them. She was really angry, and obviously very ill. She raged at us about class and poverty and then walked away. We were seriously stunned and had never in our dreams imagined Hawaii to be a place of such inequality, poverty, drug dependence, sickness. We talked to each other for a while about the NHS, and our other privileges, but there's a lot of unresolved stuff, powerlessness to come to terms with.
After a little while we headed for our whale watching lunch, which didn’t disappoint (yes we have pictures!), even though I got a jolly good soaking and had to sit like lady muck drying off in the sun on the boat, wrapped in a fleece blanket. Afterwards we walked towards the town. Everyone greets us with Aloha!
Soon it was time to get off the ship, unfortunately our first impression was shocking. We started to walk and coming in the opposite direction was a young-ish woman wearing only a bikini, looking very pregnant. As she got closer we could see that her abdomen was covered in huge abcesses and there was pus flowing out of one of them. She was really angry, and obviously very ill. She raged at us about class and poverty and then walked away. We were seriously stunned and had never in our dreams imagined Hawaii to be a place of such inequality, poverty, drug dependence, sickness. We talked to each other for a while about the NHS, and our other privileges, but there's a lot of unresolved stuff, powerlessness to come to terms with.
After a little while we headed for our whale watching lunch, which didn’t disappoint (yes we have pictures!), even though I got a jolly good soaking and had to sit like lady muck drying off in the sun on the boat, wrapped in a fleece blanket. Afterwards we walked towards the town. Everyone greets us with Aloha!
I have been in the hot tub for a while since we got back,
great for my joints. It’s at the back of the open deck, music plays, people sit
around the pools and tubs chatting and drinking. There’s a friendly atmosphere
there too. We have just had another 5
courser, but decided to give cabaret and dancing a miss as we are not
surprisingly very very tired. We are instead
about to watch the sail away from our balcony. It’s after 10 p.m.
Overnight we are sailing to another Hawaiian island, Maui.
We haven’t planned an excursion, so tomorrow will be a mystery, maybe just a
wander around the vicinity of the port, that’s once we transfer ashore by
tender – I do like tendering. Here’s one for my Ashtanga yoga friends, Maui is
the home of David Williams and Nancy Gilgoff and I feel it’s special to be
here. It’s a short trip so no time to find them to share an early morning
Mysore style class. But I will be thinking about David, especially his and David Swenson’s
anecdotes.
Hopefully there will be some free wi-fi tomorrow so we can
chat, as there are 5 sea days after tomorrow, and that’s a long time to imagine
being without good wi-fi and personal
contact. Whatever happens the creativity will begin again, and we will be
perfecting our ballroom dances.
Bye for now, back after the mystery tour x
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