Friday, May 27, 2005
Day 7 - Kona
Jason called. Apparently several people have booked the December cruise. How exciting! I hope we get a lot of people, it's so fun to cruise with people you know. Unless you have an upper respiratory infection. I really haven't seen our travel companions much, and when I do I"m feeling nervous about being possibly contagious.
Today's the day I was supposed to SCUBA. Damn it. I have my C card and a bunch of gear (not my wetsuit, it doesn't fit - too fat). I hope I get well enough before I leave Oahu at least. I have to do something this trip. The Kawai snorkeling was good if nothing else and it used the majority of the gear I took.
Took an early tender to Kona. I heard a comparison from a shuttle bus driver (in Kawai) that Hilo and Kona were opposites in many ways. Hilo is cheap, Kona is expensive. Hilo is green and Kona is all moon-like and rocky. This is not entirely true. As I look out the window of the longboard bar (a very reliable place to get 1xRTT service on the Pride of Aloha) I see a lush hillside. The Kona hills seem to go on forever.
We rented mopeds in town ($25 apiece for 5 hours, very reasonable) and drove around the island such as we could. At the beginning, Tracey was having problems which for some reason caused her to need another pair of sunglasses. Also, she didn't like approaching the top speed of the mopeds. After climbing a few hills and looking out over the bay, she got used to it. The bikes became the limiting factor - trying to share the road with cars on a 35 MPH stretch when the bikes went 20 MPH uphill was tough. We pulled over a lot.
We went in to two housing areas. One was up a hill and was the highest area we drove to. The other was one Tracey randomly drove into because she saw a sales office sign. It was a new development where all the houses can see the ocean because of the grade of the hill. Prices started at 750K and went to 1.3 million for a two story house. We were told that Kona was the expensive side.
Watched the tenders get loaded on to the ship, watched Kona fade off into the mist, and caught up on blog postings. I'm still feeling sick today. I didn't eat too much at dinner. Now it's 1 AM, and the pain from my ears and throat has woken me up. Going to try to surf the net a little bit.
Today's the day I was supposed to SCUBA. Damn it. I have my C card and a bunch of gear (not my wetsuit, it doesn't fit - too fat). I hope I get well enough before I leave Oahu at least. I have to do something this trip. The Kawai snorkeling was good if nothing else and it used the majority of the gear I took.
Took an early tender to Kona. I heard a comparison from a shuttle bus driver (in Kawai) that Hilo and Kona were opposites in many ways. Hilo is cheap, Kona is expensive. Hilo is green and Kona is all moon-like and rocky. This is not entirely true. As I look out the window of the longboard bar (a very reliable place to get 1xRTT service on the Pride of Aloha) I see a lush hillside. The Kona hills seem to go on forever.
We rented mopeds in town ($25 apiece for 5 hours, very reasonable) and drove around the island such as we could. At the beginning, Tracey was having problems which for some reason caused her to need another pair of sunglasses. Also, she didn't like approaching the top speed of the mopeds. After climbing a few hills and looking out over the bay, she got used to it. The bikes became the limiting factor - trying to share the road with cars on a 35 MPH stretch when the bikes went 20 MPH uphill was tough. We pulled over a lot.
We went in to two housing areas. One was up a hill and was the highest area we drove to. The other was one Tracey randomly drove into because she saw a sales office sign. It was a new development where all the houses can see the ocean because of the grade of the hill. Prices started at 750K and went to 1.3 million for a two story house. We were told that Kona was the expensive side.
Watched the tenders get loaded on to the ship, watched Kona fade off into the mist, and caught up on blog postings. I'm still feeling sick today. I didn't eat too much at dinner. Now it's 1 AM, and the pain from my ears and throat has woken me up. Going to try to surf the net a little bit.
# posted by James Tatum @ 8:26 AM 
