Our Hawaiian itinerary was simple: 4 stops on 4 islands beginning with A) a day at Hilo on the Big Island. Then B) continuing on with 2 days at Honolulu on Oahu, C) one day at Lahaina on Maui, and D) a final day at Nawiliwili on Kauai.

Unlike our previous presenter assignment, we did not act as ship escorts on any of the shore excursions, so we were on our own.

Also, we'd taken a 7-day Hawaiian cruise back in 2009, our longest cruise before our first world cruise in 2012...

A sunrise rain storm at sea as we came into Hilo.

 
A full moon over Mauna Loa volcano, which was lit by the sunlight while the rest of the island was dark.

 
The Hawaiian troupe celebrated the morning as we were approaching Hilo. We had enjoyed their demonstrations, history lessons through music, lei making, and more on the sea days from Vancouver to Hilo.

 
Waiting for a bus. Gold Dust Day Gecko, a native to Madagascar,

 
A green wall--Hawaiian style: sky vine (Thunbergia grandiflora).

 
Breadfruit, a canoe crop, which I talked about in my presentations. And a fern-covered palm trunk.

 
The screwpine's fruit is huge and the separate pieces are called keys and are sometimes used in traditional leis.

  
Down by the water, a Hawaiian swimming crab.

Whole families were enjoying the shoreline parks.


Even small boys had Hawaiian-style man-buns.

We continued along the shoreline.

We heard thrashing in the saltmarsh. We went to see what was causing this commotion. It was a large sea turtle.

It made its way back to the tidal pool, but probably had to wait until higher tide to swim back out to sea.

In my canoe crops presentation, people may have had a hard time believing that a well-managed 1-acre taro pond can produce 3 to 5 tons of food annually, but when you see how large taro can get and the fact that they also raised fish in those ponds that added to the harvests, then the numbers look more reasonable. Taro was and is important on Hawaii, because poi is made from the tuber.

 
As we were leaving the park, we saw families of these small birds, which were Saffron Finches--actually not a finch, but a tanager native to South America. Fun to watch, but hard to photograph.

The park sign as we left.

 
Our ship came into view as we continued walking back to the port. These photos were taken from the same vantage point.

Modern replicas of the ancient Polynesian canoes are fiberglass.

 
Note that this work area is just across the water from our ship.