{"id":1792,"date":"2012-11-30T11:31:14","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1792"},"modified":"2012-11-30T11:31:14","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T00:31:14","slug":"mele-keliemaka-lahaina-hawaii-11282012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1792","title":{"rendered":"Mele Keliemaka \u2013 Lahaina, Hawaii \u2013 [11\/28\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Hawai\u2019i is one of the few places that looks precisely like what you expect it to. At least, the ports that I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to visit do. Even the big cities here look like the idealistic postcard versions, with palm-trees lining the streets and throngs of multi-coloured tropical fish in the harbours.<\/p>\n

Lahainia is a tender port, one of the few that we\u2019ve had this contract, but tendering in ports like this isn\u2019t really a hardship. I just grab a seat next to the opening of the tender door and let the wake splash up on my face as we speed over to the island. This is one of those places where the water is so blue that it seems nearly impossible, as though you\u2019ve stepped into a child\u2019s imagination where the colours are just too perfect to be real.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tourist town of course, nearly anywhere we stop is, but it\u2019s a lovely one. And we couldn\u2019t have asked for better weather.<\/p>\n

Of course, it\u2019s the end of November, which means that I was once again faced with the mind-twister of \u2018reversed\u2019 seasons. No matter how long I work for the company, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever get used to wandering the streets in baking 90 degree temperatures and hearing Christmas music pour out of all the store windows! It\u2019s a very surreal experience. Now, fresh-made macadamia nut ice cream is a whole other kind of surreal experience (a very yummy kind!) \u2026it would appear my life is just full of surreal experiences.<\/p>\n

While I was enjoying said ice cream, I wandered across the street into what at first looked like a small forest in the middle of the town square \u2013 but I soon found out that it wasn\u2019t a forest at all, it was one single HUGE banyan tree. Apparently it\u2019s the largest in Hawaii, planted in the 1800s! This is one amazing tree, seriously.\u00a0 Normally Banyan trees grow from the middle out, the roots drop down mostly in the center and the truck gets wider and wider as the years go on until the truck is essentially a thousand little tiny trunks. This one however, had been carefully cultivated so that there were dozens of separate huge trunks, connected by huge low-lying arching branches that stretched across an area that was as wide as a small building. It was like walking through a jungle made up of all one tree. I was absolutely dying to climb it, as it looked as if it was simply made<\/i> for climbing \u2013 but alas, there were signs neatly posted all over it \u2018no climbing or swinging\u2019 , which of course only made me want to climb it more<\/i> but I was a good girl and kept my feet on the ground.<\/p>\n

Besides, I probably would have dropped my ice cream.<\/p>\n

This was our second to last port, tomorrow we\u2019ll call at Hilo, before setting off on our homeward crossing, where the ocean will stretch uninterrupted all around us for five long days before depositing us in San Diego.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hawai\u2019i is one of the few places that looks precisely like what you expect it to. At least, the ports that I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to visit do. Even the big cities here look like the idealistic postcard versions, with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-asiaaustralia-2012","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-sU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}