Doing the Bono-Dori! 12/12/14 Waikiki

My best excursion of the day was time spent at the beach just before sunset. I almost forgot to take a camera, and was so glad I remembered! The sun was low when I got there, so I spent the first few minutes taking photos of the Duke statue silhouetted against the sun.

As I was looking for some other shots, I heard music and what sounded like chanting. It wasn't really chanting, more a call and respond type of thing, but in Japanese. I hurried toward the sound and saw a group of mostly women in bright, short kimonos, all matching with black capris and athletic shoes. They were dancing in two columns, toes tapping and stepping in a staccato rhythm, arms waving, and hands flicking gracefully from side to side. They were led by a man and a woman who were doing the call part of the 'song'.

In the middle of the group another man and woman, dressed in black kimonos, were playing a little gong and a bamboo flute in a rhythm that never varied and a lively, memorable little tune that was repeated over and over throughout their dance. At the end of the group were a few 'just folks' who had joined the procession and were duplicating the dance as best they could.

Here is a brief video clip

Their dance started by the Life Stones at the head of the beach walk which is the dividing line between Waikiki beach and Kuhio beach. They passed the Duke statue and the big Banyan tree , then formed lines facing each other, and made a circle with the musicians and a couple of callers in the middle. They started a new round of call and response, and after a bit the dancers started dancing in a circle.

This family did the whole thing and the mom was just grinning. 

I just missed getting the expression on the big Polynesian guy's face. He was totally having fun with it. 

Look how happy the guy on the left is, joining in to the dance

Some beach goers plowed their way through the edge of the circle and a few others joined it. One, a big Samoan or Tongan was really getting a kick out of it. another, a bushy bearded red haired young man also was transported with delight. I continued making videos and snapping photos, and had fun when one of the women saw me filming and smiled an extra big smile for me.

After they were done, I battled between my desire not to intrude and my desire to know what it was about. Finally I approached one of them and started asking questions. We had a language barrier but they were able to tell me they were from 'Tokyo-shima' and were here for the marathon and that they were known for their dancing. They got someone who spoke english to explain further. The dance was normally done for the day to honor the ancestors and is called the Bono-Dori. What a treat!

Friday December 12th, Waikiki, Cheesburger in Paradise, Kings Village Farmer's Market

I was awake some during the night because I woke up when Harry got up, thought he was up for the day and turned on lights and tried to get up, only it was 2:30 and he was just up to the bathroom, lol, so then I had a hard time getting back to sleep. So I woke up again when he did get up, but went back to sleep until after 7am. Then I got dressed and walked downtown to a 7/11 store to get my bus pass. 

I was sweat soaked when I got back, so I showered and spent some cool hours in the room working on computer, especially blog diary entries.

Lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise
Around 1 pm I was really hungry so I went down to the Cheeseburger place on the beach. It was mentioned in the AAA guidebook and looked good. I wasn't prepared for $15 burgers, but once I was seated I just called it a splurge. 

View of the beach walk from my table at the Cheeseburger in Paradise

While I waited for my food and while I ate I watched the beach, the people and the coverage of the triple crown surfing competition on the sports bar TVs

Three screens are tuned to the surfing competiton

I got a Kalua Pork sandwich with slaw and onion rings. The menu described the onion ring coating as something unusual, but it was just like many I've had before. The sandwich was very good, aside from several bites that had cilantro in them, probably from the slaw. The menu there is very touristy, does not cater to locals, no plate lunches or loco moco, etc. Every table around me photographed their food when it came, lol.

I stopped at an ABC market for snacks and more water on my way back to the room. I spent the rest of the afternoon staying off my sore heel and watching TV and reading, plus a little computer time.

King's Village Farmer's Market
At four pm. I headed down to the other end of our block to the every-other-day evening farmer's market in the King's market. I never saw this market when I was here last time. It is built to be a little taste of colonial days with narrow cobbled "streets" that wind up several levels and include lots of little shops. There is a Burger King on the outside of it, appropriately to the name.

The Farmer's Market goes from 5-9 pm and is mostly produce, but also includes baked goods, sweets, and catering trays of hot foods to take and eat. I haven't seen anything else like it here, it is really fun.

In the courtyard, the Circle of fame is the hand prints of local celebrities

I bought cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, custard filled Portuguese Malasada doughnuts, and a Hawaiian sweet, that looks like it is a baked custard of coconut milk and eggs. 

When I was done shopping I took my purchases back to the room and got my camera. I headed down to the beach to enjoy the water, the people and the sunset. Harry was coming in late, so I had the time to see the sunset.  

December 11th day 2-Newbie Snorkeling-Waikiki Beach

Having checked out likely snorkeling spots the day before, I planned to do some snorkeling this day.  I spent the morning in the room working on the computer and had my Spam snack and some grapes for lunch, along with another of the pastries. 

When I got out to the beach in the afternoon I found that the tide was low. I went to the best beach from the day before and noticed it was almost all covered in rocks. I didn't bring my water shoes and I planned not to wear my fins for most of the time, so I retreated back to the mostly sandy beach by the jetty with the overlook at the end. I had my Fuji waterproof camera. 

My goal was to get familiar with my new snorkel set and more comfortable in the water. I hoped the water would be as warm as it had been in St Maartin island in the Caribbean last spring, but it was as I expected, a little chilly, more like the water at Coco Cay. After I immersed I found that my eyes were really burning and stinging from the salty water. I wondered if this ocean is more salty than the Atlantic around the Caribbean. 

View from where I was snorkeling

The water was murky from the low tide and from the influx of water from the baffled sea wall where I was swimming. Most of it was shallow enough to stand up and sandy, which was ideal for what I was doing. I find I am still quite nervous and panic easily even in this setting, which seems silly, but then I didn't know until I SNUBA dived last spring what an almost phobic feeling I would have about being in deeper water and breathing through a tube. I knew I would calm down as I continued in the water, and the depth was similar to Coco Cay, where I could stand up most anywhere, so I just kept working with it. 

I had problems getting the mask to seal around my nose, maybe more so than when I was using the one last spring that I borrowed from Wayne's son. I can't put the tube in my mouth without losing the seal as my mouth stretches around it. Tilting my head up also tended to break the seal.  I know there is a technique to it, so I kept trying different things. What worked best was pressing the mask against my face to expel air and create a vacuum. The snorkel tube worked great and didn't accumulate any water at all, so I never needed to use the valve to clear it. 

Very bad photo of  Needle fish

I really wanted to see and photograph the needle fish from underwater. They were so visible the day before and pretty, with their colorful stripes. What I found out though, was that they are always so close to the surface that I had to tip my head back to see them and I'd lose the seal and have to stand up to empty water and re-seal the mask. Also, they are very fast and would swim away when I tried to get close to take their photo. I got the shot above by holding the camera under water and pointing it towards them as they shot by. If I tried to half submerge upright to see them underwater that way, my legs and rear would immediately float up and put me on my face in the water-back to square one. Oh well, I guess they are just better viewed from above.

'My' school of fish!

I didn't take a lot of photos because of the visibility and scarcity of fish. I mostly just cruised around and practiced maneuvering through the water and keeping a seal on the mask. At one point I was pretty far from the wall in the sandy center of the water and suddenly found myself face to face with this dense school of fish. I grabbed out my camera and took a couple of shots before they moved away from me.

Eventually I felt a little chilled and went back to shore to warm up a little and get my new fins so I could work on getting more comfortable with them. I had used the fins last spring a little bit but eventually took them off because I felt like they floated my feet at the top so much that I couldn't get them underwater to kick properly. Then they were a little hard to bring down and forward as fast as I wanted when I wanted to stand up again. I was only moving very slowly and could do most of the moving around I needed to do with my arms and hands. But I felt that if I had more time to work with them I might be able to get comfortable and use them effectively.

I put on the fins when I was standing in about 6 to 8 inches of water. They were more awkward to put on than I expected. They floated, so I had to bend and lift one leg and put one on, then standing on that one do the other, only standing on the first one destabilized me so I almost fell over.

Then I tried to walk in deeper. Oh, what a comedy and a disaster!  The fins are curved, so each step I took the front dug down into the sand. Then I had to lift the fin, plus the sand it was inserted into to take the next step. I tried over and over, and almost fell over, and ended up crossing my feet and almost falling over. I couldn't make any real progress forward. I imagined how this was going to work when I was deeper in and falling sideways into deeper water, and gave up. I guess the ones I borrowed last spring were flat, because I certainly didn't have anything like that kind of problem with those. I wish I could find a short, flat flipper that would be easier to walk in and stand up in and still give a little extra kicking power. I wonder if these were made for getting off a boat straight into the water.

Meanwhile, I was aware I'd been presenting a laughable spectacle to anyone watching on the beach. Visualize fat older lady floundering around in flippers... So I just walked out of the water carrying my fins and laughing at myself a little. Can't do anything about looking ridiculous, so I might as well enjoy the humor also!

I swam with the mask and snorkel some more until I had salt water burning in my nose and throat from the difficulty I was having with the seal on the mask. Even with all that I enjoyed myself.

I spent a leisurely time then walking back down the beach and sitting and watching the water and the people before going back to the room and showering and having a rest before Harry came back from work.

He came in rushed and anxious to get me to Walmart where I planned to finish my shopping. He is not good in city traffic and was over tired and way stressed, so I was glad I could bring up a map on my phone that showed our progress and let me zoom in to be sure about each turn and street name. He was anxious about parking downtown, and I said there was probably a parking garage. He disagreed and when it came time to turn down the street the store was on he went straight instead and parked on the street. We walked around to the store entrance, and sure enough, there was a big parking garage. He grumbled that anyway, it would be full because everyone would be using it. He headed for an escalator marked with a small sign, 'To Sam's Club'. and said, 'Come on, here's an escalator', I answered, 'Ok, we could do that, or we could just go in the store,' as I pointed to the entrance to Walmart opposite to where he was headed.

To my relief he parked himself in a fast food called L & L, with a soda and I did my shopping. After I was done he suggested we eat there and we both had Saimin ramin noodles, me with teriyaki BBQ chicken, and him with Spam...? He doesn't like spam but wasn't sure if that was what it was. He did like it ok that way though. I wanted to eat light because of the heartburn the night before from the heavy meal.

Then it was home and a little TV and to bed by 9:30.

December 10th First full day in Waikiki

Orientation day

Harry got up and off to work without disturbing me, which was not my plan, I planned to be on his schedule, but I guess it will take some time to get my inner clock dialed to 5 am! I woke at 7:30 and planned my day. I thought it would be best to get oriented to the room and the beach first. How nice to have enough days here that I don't have to worry about 'wasting' a day.

I got familiar with the room first, then dressed and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I did some tidying of the kitchen and washed up the barbeque grill that Harry had used recently to cook chicken in a sugary sauce. Then I went to the front desk and met Chardonay face to face finally-I've talked to her on the phone several times and read some great reviews about her on TripAdvisor.com.  She gave me the dates we will have to change rooms. I needed to know whether or not to completely unpack. If we were changing rooms in a few days I wouldn't want to get out anything but the essentials. Turns out we will be here until the 27th, so I felt like I could settle in and unpack most everything.

From there I headed to the beach. My plan was to walk down and get familiar again with the different beaches and see if there are any spots that might have fish for snorkeling fun. I wasn't sure how far I would walk, my heel is still not better and walking on it a lot could really set back the healing.

The beach nearest our hotel a the end of Waikiki Beach and beginning of Kuhio Beach

It was still morning, so there was shade enough that I could stop every little bit and sit on a shady bench and just look at the view. I was also looking to see if anyone was snorkeling. I expected that it might be kind of dorky to snorkel this area and wondered if there were maybe only a few other touristy newbies like me trying it.

View towards Honolulu

Surf breaking over the breakwater wall

My heel did fine and I walked on much farther than I originally planned. There were a lot of big white canopies at Kapiolani park and I read on the notices about parking space closures that the big marathon is this weekend. 30,000 people run it, so it is a BIG deal. We almost had to move to another hotel that night, since it was the one night they were all booked. Cancellations saved us from that though.

As long as I was that far I went on down to the place I wanted to stay, the Diamond Head Beach Resort condo building. It is nice and quiet down there but would have been a longish walk for me to get to stores and places to eat lunch and the sandy beaches.

View of beach from first jetty

I had walked down on the park side and walked back along the beach walk. When I got by the Aquarium I could see several kinds of fish on the plentiful rocks, especially on a sandy area between rocky areas. There were what I was calling Pipe fish, but turned out to be Needle fish, and the Hawaiian state fish, which looks like a modern painting. There were big silver ones and little yellow striped ones-I really need to get a fish guide!

View from first jetty I snorkeled here the 2nd day

I took some photos and a video of a spreading Banyan tree. I think that may be where I got a couple of mosquito bites on my arms. The tree was full of birds and I took the video partly to record their twittering.

I had walked out on one jetty that has a roofed viewing area at the end of it and saw some fish along the jetty wall, then as I walked back there was another narrow jetty with no viewing area at the end. There were some people on it, so I went out to see if it was any better. At first I was mostly taken with the little crabs that skittered around my feet and clung to the side of the jetty. They were so much the same color as the wet rocks that I might have missed them if I hadn't seen the little ones.

I saw quite a variety of fish also, and a man there with his teen children pointed out a large mass of some sort off a ways from where we were standing. He said it was moving around and we wondered if it could be a Lion fish. I didn't realize they would be around so close to the beach, I thought they were more coral reef fish, but it did really look like it could be, even as indistinct as it was through the water. Later I asked a young woman who had been out there if she'd seen any, and she said she'd seen several. On the fish finder card I looked at there was a similar looking fish that was called a Hawaiian Turkey fish, but I've also seen a photo of a Hawaiian Lion fish also, so I'm not sure what the whole story is about that.

Feeding fish and birds on the jetty

Walking back along the jetty, I encountered a man who was feeding the fish the remnants of a sandwich. They were massed below him, and boiling around the bits he threw in. There were also quantities of larger birds standing around that area and some teeny brown ones that would come and land on his hand, and let him feed them. Sometimes they piled on 6 at a time, jumping up on each other's backs trying to get at the food in his hand.

Homeless in Paradise
While orienting myself to the beach I couldn't help but be aware of the ever present homeless population mixed in among the tourists and locals. I noted that picnic shelter number three along the beach seemed to be a homeless gathering spot, with many on the benches and sleeping, and some seated nearby. One Banyan tree with a sheltered center area had had a sleeping quilt spread over its roots that was there the next day too. It looked like a good place to sleep.  When I got down to the end of Kapiolani Park I started to use a bathroom there, but noticed half a dozen men in the area, including one having a sponge bath at a sink on the outside of the building. I decided this wasn't a good place for me to use... Then when I was leaving the condo area I noticed at the base of a fence there was a pile of small bags and cases. I think that was where someone dumped the bags he/she had stolen from the beach and emptied of valuable contents. That let me know I need to be especially careful of what I take to the beach. There are a few of these people begging, but most are not, they are just wandering, sitting, or curled up sleeping somewhere.

Heading back and unpacking
I stopped at a big ABC store on my way back and got an oriental chicken salad, some cut up pineapple, and two 1.5 quarts of bottled water. The water from the tap is warm, flat and tastes not too great. Back at the room I showered, ate lunch, including a chocolate filled puff pastry from the box of pastries Harry left and rested a little before tackling my unpacking. There was plenty of places to put everything. I had brought a hanging sweater organizer and an over the door shoe organizer. With the big closet there was plenty of room to hang the sweater organizer and stash specialized items in it like beach wear. The shoe organizer went over the bathroom door which opens up against the sink. there is little real storage for small items there, no shelves, drawers or medicine cabinet, so all the small items go into the pockets and are right at hand as needed.

Organizing the closet

I set up a charging spot in the closet where there is a plug half way up the wall. I put my big suitcase under it as a shelf to put things on and plugged in a power strip,  Then I went down and got the Wi-fi password and checked mail, etc while watching TV. I was also writing a list of things I needed to get from Walmart or Target. I talked with Harry on the phone about getting to the store and looked up directions to the nearest store, which was a Walmart.

It turned out we went to Safeway instead because he was too tired to find a store he'd never been to. I tried to keep the purchases there to a minimum. They were so expensive, even the little I got was over $35. Even a 70 page spiral notebook was over $4. I later got a similar one at Walmart for $1.00.

We went to Zippys for dinner. I had deep fried Mahi-mahi with rice and macaroni salad and got a little spam snack for later. I'd read about it in the guide book. It is a piece of fried spam on a cake of sticky rice wrapped in sushi seaweed wrap. We also had a slice of Chantilly cake from the bakery there where Harry gets his pastries.

The late dinner and heavy food did a number on me and I had acid reflux later and ended up staying up late sitting up, then sleeping sitting upright until midnight. Note to self: no more heavy dinners!

We slept again without the AC and windows open, but with the white noise machine on.

Aloha from Waikiki

I always like to keep a trip journal, and decided for this extended stay in Oahu that I would keep it here.
Getting There
The only hitch for the flight was the headwinds that delayed us so that we got in 45 minutes late. The Delta jet had two aisles. I was on a window and only had one other person to disturb if I needed to get up. He was a 19 year old from Bremerton, heading over to live with a friend for awhile. He was very pleasant. We both enjoyed watching movies on our personal seat back screens. That is my favorite configuration for flying. Everyone gets to pick their own content from a large list of current movies and TV shows. I can usually find something to watch. This time I watched two movies, Magic in the Moonlight, which was very good, and a movie with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson, a zany European adventure/romance.

I was prepared this time for the gust of warm, moist night air while walking through the outdoor part of the walk to through the terminal to baggage claim. Last time it was such a surprise to find myself on a covered walkway while still in the secure part of the airport. Harry was waiting at the baggage carousel with a lovely lei for me, very fragrant with little white ginger flowers. He had been waiting all that extra time and was very tired and anticipating how tired he would be for work in the morning. We got to the room around 10:30 and to sleep at 11:00. He gets up at five so it was a short night for him.

Just behind the Hyatt Regency, 2 blocks from the beach. 24 rooms

Our Room at the Waikiki Prince Hotel
With no unrealistic expectations for our budget hotel, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the room is. It has a double and a twin, so it is more spacious than a room with only one bed. The closet is large and as wide as the bathroom, which is helpful for storing the luggage and other extras that will accumulate. All is clean and well kept up, no cracks, mold or peeling paint. The beds are comfortable, the fridge a little bigger than I expected, though it is still pretty small. The bathroom is spacious, and we have a good sized dining table that is a catch spot for all kinds of things. I'm well satisfied at the price point.

Mele Kalikimaka-our tree presents, nativity

If I lean out the lanai I can see the tops of the palms at the end of the street where the beach is, but otherwise the view is all apartment and hotel buildings. The city noise when the windows are open and the AC off  is intrusive for someone like me who lives in a rural spot where a truck idling on the street outside is cause to go to the window to see what is going on. Here there are trucks idling and backing up all day long. At night there are sirens and regular clanks and bangs as if someone is loading metal pieces into the back of a dump truck.. However, with the windows and lanai door closed and the air conditioner going, I can hear very little of the outside world.  We don't hear much through the walls either.

We have a kitchenette also. We will be in this room until December 27th. We will move then for a few days and again on the 30th to a room two floors above this room, which has only one bed, so it is a little smaller. But we can stay in that one the rest of the time.

Our bedroom, looking toward the lanai....

Our 'kitchen' lol...

Dining table in the wide hallway across from the bathroom door