Hilo, Hawaii (Written update. Pictures are one post earlier and Honolulu is coming soon)


A surprising number of people are reading this blog. Thank you for keeping track of me. Hello family! I love you! Email me at mnsheetz@semesteratsea.net. I’d love to hear from you! (PS. I posted a ton of pictures of facebook).

Hawaii is gorgeous. The temperature here yesterday (1/27/2010) was around 80, 100 degrees warmer than the –20 it was in Wisconsin (and probably Chicago)! I hope everyone back home is enjoying the snow! I’m slightly sunburned; it’s a seemingly permanent state of being.  ;-)


Hilo on The Big Island- Monday, January 25-Tuesday, January 26

Hilo was amazing! They woke us up at 5:45am to clear customs, so I rushed up on deck to see Hawaii for the fist time. I was greeted by darkness and the smell of gasoline; we were in Hilo Harbor and the sun had yet to rise. Slightly disappointing first view of Hawaii; it’s a good thing I like the smell of gasoline haha. Another funny phenomenon was cell phone reception. The decks were clogged with people calling parents, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.

They finally let us off the ship around 8:30am and I didn’t have any definite plans. All I knew was that I wanted to try Kona coffee and Spam, which Hawaiian people are supposed to love. Little did I know that I was about to have one of the best days of my life.

Hilo isn’t really that big of a town, so it was pretty obvious that SAS had just released nearly 600 college kids onto dry land for the first time in eight days. It can easily be described as an invasion. We got a small group together and headed down the road towards the bus stop. Our group had five people: me, Helen, Heather, Tucker and Connie, which ended up being a great size.

We were waiting at the free bus stop, but we quickly learned that while the bus is free, it also tends to be late. We were on the verge of walking the three miles into town when Teresa drove up in her van. I’m going to go on record right now and say that Teresa is both utterly insane and a complete badass. She’s an overweight, fifty-year-old California native who has lived in Hilo for years. Her interests include zodiac signs, skinny dipping and showing people pictures of her from the 70s. “[She] used to be pretty damn hot. Wouldn’t you tap that?” Teresa is an adventure.

She picked us up and drove us into town for $2 each. She was so much fun that we ended up calling her every time we needed a ride for the rest of our time in Hilo. Teresa dropped us off and we began to wander. Tucker and I are English/Creative Writing majors and coffee fiends, so we insisted on finding Kona coffee immediately. We found a sweet looking coffee shop, but it wasn’t supposed to open until 10, so we started to walk away. Just then Dave, the owner, came outside with his dog Rufio and told us that he was willing to open early for us if we were willing to wait while he made coffee.

Dave was super friendly and as he was grinding and hand pressing the coffee he told us about the history of Kava in Hawaii. Kava is made from the roots of the kava plant and it’s an earthy tasting watery drink the color of coffee when it’s been paled with the addition of cream. It’s supposed to produce a mildly euphoric feeling; it made my tongue go numb. Since it was our first day in Hawaii, Dave told us he would let us try it for free. He poured a big bowl and scooped us shells full of kava as he explained the traditional kava ceremony.

Once everyone has a shell, you all clap once. Then you did sprinkle a few drops on the ground to thank the earth and a few drops over your shoulder to thank the ancestors before you drink. When you’re finished you clap twice and wait for everyone else to finish. The end. It was fun, though the kava itself is slightly bitter.

Then I bought a cup of delicious Kona coffee and we left. Next we stopped for spam burgers, which ended up being an egg/cubed spam omelet on a hamburger bun. It was surprisingly good. Spam tastes like salty ham with the consistency of hot dog meat.

We then hiked aka walked up the road two miles to Rainbow Falls. The walk was through a pretty suburban area, but suburban in Hilo is still beautiful and green green green. Rainbow Falls itself isn’t much of a hike, which I was okay with after the long walk. You see the falls themselves right away, but the fun part comes when you walk up a long flight of stairs into the forest. The trees are so huge that the canopy has practically fused and sun doesn’t shine through too strongly. Suddenly the stairs and path seem to disappear and you wander around looking for a way through the trees, which took us a minute to find. The path led us past the top of the falls and back to the edge of a river where we used stepping-stones to cross the water. Then we scrambled over huge rocks in the opposite direction of the falls for about ten minutes until we heard splashing and stumbled upon a lake where people were cliff jumping.

The crowd was mostly SAS kids, but there were only about 20 people in all. We all jumped in from a 12-foot cliff, but there were some guys jumping from around 35! The water was so deep that no one could touch the bottom. It felt like we’d stumbled upon a local secret because it was so far out of the way.

We stayed for almost two hours, then called Teresa and got a ride to the beach. En route, she insisted that we stop at the liquor store and we didn’t object. We bought a few Coronas and set up camp at Richardson Beach, a black sand beach. Hilo isn’t known for its beaches; it’s on the wrong side of the island for that.

If you looked out at the horizon from Richardson Beach you could see humpback whales breaching because they hang out in the warm water around Hawaii during birthing season. On the rocks to the left of the beach we found three endangered Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles basking in the sun. It’s illegal to touch them, but we got a bunch of pictures; they didn’t seem to mind. (That’s when I cuddled the 18-week-old pitbull puppy).

We hung out on the beach for a couple hours and did a little swimming, but not too much because the waves wore you out quickly. The beach was overrun with SAS kids and we ran into a bunch of friends. It was a wonderful way to end the afternoon.
Teresa drove us back to the ship where we showered, ate and then walked down the street to a bar called Margarita Village, which we promptly took over. They weren’t even pretending to card. Apparently it’s usually a gay bar, but that night it was a SAS bar. It got crazy packed eventually, but I only stayed until 11 or so because after such a long day I was exhausted. We slept on the ship.

The next morning we woke up, ate breakfast and Teresa drove us to Nautilus Dive Center in town where we had scheduled scuba diving. Our dive spot was back at Richardson Beach and we saw a bunch of sea turtles, urchins and fish on the coral reef. There was even a turtle whose fin had been bitten off by a shark! Our dive was 52 minutes and our max depth was 57 feet, which was perfect because I’m certified for up to 60 feet.

Then we went to Walmart to pick up some stuff we needed and by the time we got back to the ship to drop off our purchases it was almost on ship time, so we grabbed our laptops and sat outside Margarita Village (the bar) to steal their Internet.

On ship time was 6pm and we pulled out of Hilo Harbor at 8pm.

That was Hilo. Honolulu was fun, but not nearly as busy, so keep an eye out for that update sometime tomorrow.

LoveLoveLove

Molly