Barbara J. Hamby

Hawaii Cruise

On Thursday, February 18th, 2009, Floyd’s daughter Marcia kindly drove us to the Portland Airport, where, for a very small fee, we checked our luggage and received our boarding passes curbside, no waiting. Our flight to San Diego left and arrived on time. My sister Margaret and brother-in-law Marvin picked us up at the airport and we all had lunch together at a very nice restaurant in Old Town San Diego. After a good visit, they drove us to our motel where we settled in for the night.

I had a swim in an outdoor, slightly heated pool and we rested before our light supper. I had brought a couple of muffins back with us from lunch and, with some almonds I’d packed in my purse at home, we had all the dinner we needed after our large late lunch.

Friday morning we had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and went to the lobby to check out around 10:30 a.m. We met another couple there who were headed for the same ship, the Holland America Zaandam, and decided to share a taxi to the terminal. The cheerful young female cab driver managed to cram all our luggage into the Continental cab, and the four of us climbed in. After a short ride, we arrived at the terminal and got in line with hundreds of others, mostly seniors, and all in a festive mood.

The mood changed slightly when we were handed a letter from the cruise line advising that there had been illness on the previous cruise and the crew was busily sanitizing the ship. We were told that we would not be able to board until approximately 1:00 p.m. We were seated on cold, hard chairs in the terminal to wait.

After an hour or more, we were photographed and allowed to begin boarding shortly before 1:00. We learned that the staterooms weren’t ready and were encouraged to proceed to the Lido deck for a buffet lunch. As usual on cruise ships, the food was excellent and more than plentiful. I had a small slice of beef from a huge roast and some fruit and vegetables. Floyd had a somewhat larger lunch and we both had ice cream for dessert.

Around 3:00 p.m. the permission to go to the staterooms was broadcast over the intercom. We went to our cabin and rested, since our bags had not yet been delivered.
At 4:15, we attended the compulsory lifeboat drill, which was handled quickly and well.

Our bags were eventually delivered and we unpacked before dinner. We had a late, light dinner. We passed up the several options for entertainment such as the Bon Voyage Party and the introductions to various shops and seminar instructors due to fatigue. We also ignored the showtime extravaganza in the evening and retired fairly
early.

Sleep, however, was difficult to achieve. We discovered our temperamental toilet was clogged about 10:30 and were told the “plumber is no longer available.” I fumed: This is a ship. Where could he go? Perhaps to bed? However, a maintenance person arrived shortly after our call and put the plumbing back in business. Also, the motion of the ocean caused something in our cabin to make crashing noises periodically during the night. I tried unsuccessfully to identify the source. Evidently we moved whatever it was on Saturday and had a fairly good night’s rest, with just the roar of the ocean and the hum of the ship’s engines.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, I attended a Spa seminar, “Secrets to a Flatter Stomach.” The young man, whose accent I was unable to place, was difficult to understand and there was standing room only, so I didn’t stay for the part about nutrition. I have acquired a lot of knowledge on that subject over the past few years already. He showed one simple exercise that he recommends above all the machines in the gym—just a squat, with a simultaneous one-hand punch, alternating arms. He claims if you do that for 20 to 60 minutes, three to five times a week, you’ll build up your legs and flatten your belly. According to him, you should work up to 80% of your maximum heart rate at each exercise session. To compute that figure take 220 for men, 226 for women, subtract 80 and take 80% of the resulting number. Of course, he pointed out that you must start slowly if you haven’t been exercising.

At lunch on Saturday we shared a table with a member of the band and a singer who told us she’d be performing a few nights hence. She introduced herself, “Annie Frances,” and said she works nine months of the year on contract to Holland America Lines. The band member told us she is really good, so we wanted to be sure to see her show.

Floyd rented a DVD movie Friday night, which he fell asleep watching on Saturday afternoon. It was not the Dustin Hoffman movie he thought it was. Midnight Cowboy didn’t appeal to me either, so I had a nap.

At 4:00 Saturday, I attended a class titled “Insert Your Photo Here.” An instructor with no foreign accent spent an hour walking us through the steps to transfer photos from digital cameras to computers, sort them into folders and make tags to help locate them in the future. She demonstrated on free software that we might download at home. We were all able to successfully transfer photos and create a slideshow on the laptops provided. Because there were so many steps, I planned to repeat the class, possibly on Sunday afternoon, to make sure the information would stick to my brain cells. She also gave us a handout to refer to.

After dinner, we went to the 8:00 show featuring Tony Pace. There was no seating where we could see the stage, so Floyd watched part of the show, standing, and I sat outside a nearby lounge listening to live music and reading.

We retired fairly early; my feet complained about all the necessary walking. While the Lido buffet where we had our meals is up six decks and right around the corner, most everywhere else is a long walk. The library, internet café, shops and offices are about midships, and the two story auditorium is all the way forward. Our cabin is nearly all the way aft.

The swimming pool had waves almost as high as the ocean’s, so swimming was not a viable option the first few days. When we awoke on Sunday morning, we experienced heavy seas, a little rain, and high winds.

After breakfast on Sunday, Floyd went to a “Meet Your Fellow Veterans” meeting, but was disappointed that there were just two other WWII vets there. Most of the guys were veterans of later conflicts.

I attended a lecture by a native Hawaiian on the geology and geography of the islands. Kainoa Dela Cruz is, like most Hawaiians and most of us for that matter, a blend of many nationalities, but was born and raised in Honolulu. An eloquent extemporaneous speaker, he has worked for many cruise lines, but is now contracted exclusively by Holland America Line. He is particularly happy on this run because he gets home every fifteen days. Cruising definitely agrees with him because he wears many good meals on his person.

The most interesting, and frightening, part of his talk concerned volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. He said when, not if, another hunk of islands drops off, the tsunami will seriously affect the entire Pacific basin. The same would be true if some of our Pacific Coast drops away.

After an excellent lunch, we spent the afternoon reading and napping, or wandering around the ship, getting our bearings. At 5:00, I attended another session by the ship’s “techspert” on handling photos in the computer. I picked up a few tips I missed previously.

We had dinner and attended the Captain’s welcome toast, followed by a Broadway style show with elaborate Bob Mackey costumes, great dancers and fair singers.

Even at the Captain’s toast, there was no handshaking. We read often, on signs around the ship, that handshaking is to be avoided, and hands are to be washed or cleaned with Purell, often. Purell dispensers are all over the ship.

I stayed up to check out the Indonesian midnight snack, which, if you chose, could be a full meal. I’d had a light dinner so I chose a half tomato and one-quarter avocado, both stuffed with chicken salad. Just right to shut down the stomach growls.

Sunday night we set the time back an hour, as instructed by the captain.

After breakfast on Monday, we attended another lecture by Kainoa, on the “Migration of the Hawaiians.” There was some similarity between his information and what I had read years ago in Michener’s novel, Hawaii. In his opening remarks, he shared that the average person can gain nine pounds on a seven-day cruise. This one is fifteen days. He told us to look at him, if we didn’t believe him, because he has been cruising since early 2008. The obvious result drew a laugh from his audience.

I went to the internet café and found all the computers in use, so I walked back to our room, where Floyd was reading. I took a shot at hooking up to the wireless on my computer, but I don’t have the know-how to interpret the how-to sheet I had picked up earlier. I decided to update this journal, instead.

After lunch I returned to the library/internet café and read my email and sent a short message to relatives. I took a long nap and did some reading in the cabin. On my way to our room, before Floyd and I went separate ways, we watched a few golf shots in the hole in one water contest. Golfers tried to hit a ball into a ring in the pool. There were a lot of balls outside the ring. 

I did a load of laundry in the self-service equipment on our floor, which worked very well. Floyd found a partly completed jigsaw puzzle in the library and joined a group of ladies who were working on it. Later he came back to the stateroom and we went to dinner.

At dinner, I walked past a table where a young lady was sitting and heard her call out “Barbara.” Since I had met very few people on the ship, and couldn’t remember most of their names, I couldn’t imagine who knew mine. When I looked over, I saw Annie Frances, the singer we had met one day earlier in the week. I had noted that she would be the featured entertainer Wednesday evening, and asked if she would be doing another performance. She told me there would be a group of entertainers doing a show later in the cruise and she would be part of that.

From the Lido café, we went to the Mondrian Lounge to see a Showtime performance by violinist/comedian Dave Levesque. His act reminded me of Jack Benny, who also clowned around, but played very well.

My digestive system wasn’t handling the strange foods very well, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep on Monday night. Floyd, who had been cold at night, found extra blankets and slept much better.

Tuesday morning we awoke to blue skies and sunshine. When I noticed the date—February 24, 2009—I remembered that my mother would have been 100 years old. She passed away fifteen years ago. She and my father went to Hawaii years ago and I still have some pictures from their trip.

Every evening, we received a bulletin with the activities for the next day that usually had the correct date on it. Once in a while, someone forgot to change the heading before they printed it so it would be wrong. Also, every elevator had a rug with the day of the week on it, so you couldn’t forget the day or date.

Floyd went to breakfast ahead of me so he could get to a lecture on traditional Pacific Island navigation by the same Dave Levesque who entertained us Monday night. Apparently he is also a historian, as well as a performer. He stayed for another talk about the history of the Matson Lines in Hawaii, as well. In the early 1900’s, Matson Lines took passengers to the Hawaiian Islands. Today they are the largest carriers of container cargo to the islands.

I had a later breakfast and went to another class taught by the Zaandam techspert on tips and tricks for taking the perfect photo. I learned several things about my camera, as well as how to take better pictures—hide double chins on portraits by pointing the camera up from below the face, and how to frame flowers and objects of art, etc.

Floyd and I met for lunch, after which I took a nap and he went to another lecture by Hawaiian Kainoa, who spoke about the transformation of Hawaii from kingdom to statehood.

I caught up on this journal while Floyd rested. Later I packed a tote bag for our shore excursion on Wednesday in Hilo with my camera, our hats, passports, tickets, etc.

After dinner, we took in the Annie Frances show. She put her heart into belting out a variety of songs, as well as yodeling. She explained that her heritage is Phillipino and Irish and she enjoys many types of music. After the concert, she autographed CD’s. We bought one and she signed it for us.

We brought iced tea back to the cabin where we watched a movie based on the true story of the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper and successfully sued Ford and Chrysler, who stole his patents. Surprisingly, it was a good story, quite well acted.

Wednesday morning we docked in Hilo and rushed to breakfast, so we could board a bus for Volcanoes National Park. The tour was about four and a half hours through rain forest in the rain and to the 4,000-foot level of Kilauea, home of Pele, the legendary goddess of fire. Our guide, a young blonde, self-described “Cheesehead” transplanted from Wisconsin about nineteen years ago, kept up a line of patter all the way up and down the mountain. We made several stops, at a visitor’s center, a museum, and a lava tube. Most of the bus passengers hiked through the lava tube. Floyd and I elected not to. We began to notice our age on this trip.

I took a few pictures of craters and steam and jungle growth. Back in Hilo, we stopped at a black sand beach in a city park, which had formerly been inundated twice by tsunamis that wiped out all the homes and businesses there. Our driver told us one of those giant waves hit during school hours and many children were among the dead. He pointed out the towers that are now standing to warn of such future disasters. 

After dinner, we saw another vaudeville type extravaganza featuring the ship’s singers and dancers. Most of the show was not our kind of music, but it was entertaining.

Back at the ship, we had a late lunch and I had a swim. With the ship docked, the pool was tranquil and I got a good workout. That evening we cruised past a coastline where molten lava flowed down the cliff side. It was very dramatic to watch in the dark from an upper deck on the ship—one of the few times we were out on deck, despite the wind.