May 4, 2012 - Day 6 Disney Wonder IN Hawaii

Photos

To start here is today's Personal Navigator along with Hilo Shopping Map. This Shopping Map is the only port specific literature we received for each port at which we stopped. I don't know if one had gone to the tour desk, or destinations deck, or whatever they called it if one could have gotten better maps or more tourist information because we just never did. I stopped by there on the way to Ensenada but it was closed and all they had out was a sheet with excursions for sale on it.

The light seeping through the curtains woke us up around 6am. Wonder was only traveling 9-10 knots about 30 nautical miles off Hilo. It was not visible on the bridgecam. We have covered 2112 nautical miles. Seas are very calm, wind is very slight and the sun is shining through partly cloudy skies. But Hilo is the rainiest town in the USA, so we expect to see a shower or 2!

We are thinking of going to Volcanoes National Park, but left Clay's Senior Pass at home, so that sucks. Hilo is pronounced Hee-low.

No breakfast is served onboard Wonder before 6:45am for light stuff at Goofy's on the pool deck. 7:15am for hot food at BBB. 8am for part buffet and part table service in PC. 8am for table service from a menu at Triton's.

PremEar: The Avengers is showing in WDT again today at 5 and 8pm. The schedule doesn't say if they are only showing in 3D. If so, I guess I won't be seeing it. I'll have to ask at Guest Services. I have to go anyway about my tote bag. We got it back last night with only 5 signatures on it! We had asked for everyones on Mickey's List, Princesses List, and 5 extra others available for this cruise. The dozen packs of Lance Nabs are gone but only the extra 5 signatures. I am very disappointed and plan to return the bag to Guest Services to get the other signatures. They have time and somebody already had the treats! I will assume it was just a miscommunication, but the form has everything clearly marked and spelled out. Oh well, we'll see.

More shipside rainbows this morning in the sunshine and passing rains. It must have seemed a lot like home to the first people who migrated here from Polynesian and the Marquesas.

We had breakfast again at BBB since it is the only place serving hot food before 8am. I had 2 eggs over medium for the first time. Also saw hash browns and biscuits for the first time. Biscuits were the first good biscuits we've ever had on a cruise ship! Clay had a partially frozen Krispy Kreme doughnut!

It is really rainy here! It deserves its rainiest US city rap! We are docking at 9:40am. They have no idea how long it will take to place gangways and clear the ship.

Wonder staff placed beautiful purple orchid leis on every woman leaving the ship and a brown nut lei on all the men. That was a nice touch! The locals in Hilo rolled out the sea version of a red carpet for our arrival. There was a tug boat spraying water and a helicopter circling us. Between all that and our own Wonder "When You Wish Upon A Star" ship's horn, you couldn't help but notice from inside even that we had arrived. We heard later that the helicopter circling us was dropping over 5000 orchids in the water. That is impressive! But, I didn't see any orchids! This link is the video I got of it.

Things to learn. Bring bandannas to wipe rainy humidity and sweat! We forgot ours! Bring Senior Annual National Parks pass! Clay forgot his! I think this may be part of the new communications disconnect we have. I mean we had gotten pretty expert at packing and now we work at odds. We once had everything streamlined and at the ready and now at the last minute we each do our own thing with no cooperation and argue about it. I guess we're both just getting too old for travel, so it is a good thing we have already done all the big stuff on our lists.

All ashore was originally 9:30am and Thrifty car rental pickup at 10am. We didn't get off the ship until after 10:30am. We waited about an hour for a Thrifty shuttle. Thrifty was running 2 vehicles that carried about 14 people each and they had rented over 100 cars that day! They should have rented a bus (or 2) for the day! So, it was about noon when we got our car. We rented a Chevy Aveo (or similar) for $39.26 and we got a big black Crown Victoria! It was fine if overkill for the 2 of us. We agreed to return the gas tank full within 10 miles of the return and to provide a receipt as proof. We filled up at a Chevron for 5.286 gallons at $4.659/gallon or $24.63. Hopefully, the rest of the islands we'll get the small economy cars we reserved and not spend so much on Hawaii's crazy expensive gas! A postscript note here: You can pick up a magazine called a Drive Guide at each island's Thrify/Dollar car rental place. It is invaluable! If you can read a map, take 10 minutes or so and go through it quickly as soon as you can. Honestly, everything you need for a day in a car sightseeing on each island is there. There is an entire island map up front in a foldout, with smaller area maps in the back. There are articles that divide each island into quadrants with what to see, do, shop and eat in each sector, it is concisely, logically and attractively laid out and written with lots of photos. Make sure you get one of these Driving Guides at each island and use it!


We have rarely been that wet for that long while fully clothed as we were today. It rains in Hawaii! We drove directly to Volcanoes National Park hereafter VNP. We bought Clay a second $10 Senior lifetime pass for entry. It is about a 45 minute drive each way from Hilo. The world's largest active volcano, I think they said. It was impressive. We didn't see any fresh lava though. Clay got a t-shirt and we watched a film. We saw steam vents, walked through a lava tube, saw an arch carved out of lava at the seashore and miles and miles of all kinds of solidified lava. We saw misty rain, hard rain, sideways rain of all varieties, we were in and out of the car as we drove around the park and were soaked through to the underwear as the wind whipped us. It was crazy, and the sun never stopped shining! There were lots of roads closed around the park due to high levels of harmful sulfur dioxide gas from the steam vents. Lots of warning signs up saying that if you felt bad to get in your car and keep the windows up and get away as it could be lethal gas venting in the area. Scary. We drove all the way to the end of Chain of Craters Road and back. (We started to walk down the closed road as there were lots of people as far out as we could see and we understood the road was closed because at some point there was hot lava flowing. After we got out there we realized that it was a more than 2 mile walk and you would still need binoculars to see the hot lava. Had we read carefully first, we still would've driven down to the sea and gotten out of the car to see the lava arch in the surf and where the lava wall met the sea. But, then we would've saved 20 minutes or so and not walked out the closed part of the road for nothing! That's my tip for more time at Mauna Loa Nut and Hilo Hatties.) We drove all of Crater Rim Drive that was open (only about half). Due to the short time here, our late arrival and the crazy sideways cold rain, we did not spend as much time out of the car as we'd have liked. We could easily have spent more than a full day here taking the various hikes.

We stopped at the Mauna Loa Nut Factory on the way back to turn in the car. We drove through a 2500 acre nut grove with 250,000 nut trees and we got some nuts! We saw a costumed nut! Clay got a t-shirt. We should have left VNP 15 minutes earlier and we would have had time to walk the self-guided factory tour, which is free and entails walking a marked sidewalk and stairs to view through windows from the outside of the building as far as we could tell. The last buses from the ship were just arriving as we did and so we looked at them and passed on that.

We drove past the Hilo Hattie's store on our way out, so we were looking for it on the way back. I had said I wanted to get a muumuu since we first booked this trip. This was my chance. I got a rayon, made in Hawaii, muumuu on clearance sale for $12. I love it! It looks like the one Lilo (pronounced Lee-low) wears in the movie Lilo and Stitch, though I didn't know that when I bought it! It is kind of rust colored with big white leaves printed on it. I also got a beautiful Chinese-made, sage green, silk sleeveless one, with a short sleeved shirt to go over it. They were about $90 per piece! I had to have it! I'll probably never come back here! (I love it less now, first I did not realize it wasn't also made in Hawaii. Second, it is washable silk, but man it wrinkled like crazy and was very hard to iron. Clay has a few washable silk shirts and honestly I have never ironed one of them. I take them out of the dryer still damp and shake and smooth them out and let them hang to finish drying. No such luck with mine Hilo Hattie's washable silk! It wrinkles like linen! I still like it, but knowing what I know now, I would not have paid that much for it. I would have shopped the Hilo Hattie's on the other islands clearance racks!) Which brings me to something we learned as we were leaving our last island, every island's Hilo Hatties had a little bit different store inventory according to people who went to all of them! Even though we drove by and saw each one, we never stopped and went into another, assuming they were all the same! Not! I got a $10 Koa wooden Hawaiian bookmark. Clay picked up another box of macadamia nut candies, then the checkout guy gave us 2 free boxes for spending over a certain amount! I don't know what the deal was, but he scanned a coupon he had by the register. Again, evidently each island's Hilo Hattie had a different giveaway for spending a certain amount. Here I guess it was $100, since he gave us 2 boxes of candy. Other people told us they got mugs or other things at other islands. Also, Hilo Hatties stores will ship your purchases home in flat rate USPS boxes. That is a nice touch! It also means if you have anything to mail and you already have postage on it, you can drop it here for pickup.

We were docked on the port side. As I recall, the only times we docked on the starboard side were at San Pedro. Clay says he thinks we were docked once on starboard side in the islands but can't recall when. I will say that we were never docked anywhere that allowed us to take good dockside photos of Wonder. We never got to photograph the ducks hanging off the stern. We never got even a glimpse of them until we got to Ensenada. Clay didn't believe me that they were back there! We didn't get a good look at Donald and his nephews until we were disembarking and entering immigration clearance at San Pedro and we didn't have a camera out then, or a chance to get one! Clay asked me, have those really been back there all along? I know, right! What's the point if we can't ever see them! We did try to walk to the far side of the dock here to see them and security sent us back.

Below are photos of the E Komo Mai dinner menus. Sorry as usual, they are mostly too blurry to read!

We made it back onboard about 15 minutes late for dinner, but they took us in Animator's Palate for the E Komo Mai menu. That's Hawaiian for Welcome. I had pinto bean soup. (Funny story. I didn't eat it. I spooned through it and there was not a single pinto bean in there. Hans came over to see if we liked our food and asked me what was wrong. I told him there were no pinto beans in there. He whisked the bowl away and in minutes was back with a new bowl, laughing. Hans said, I told the chef what you said and he said, quite right. Ladled deep into the pot and all the pinto beans were down there. I got a bowlful!) I also had a big steak with a potato cake. Clay had green bean and potato salad and a veal shank. For dessert, Clay had a sundae and I had chocolate mousse.

After dinner, we took a walk around the ship. Then we watched the movie Chimpanzee in the BVT and then to bed.

Photos