A Feast For Your Senses: Fuel for your sense of wonder and sense of humor: Day 4 of the cruise

Today brings us to the island affectionately known as "The Big Island" or the one that is the namesake of the state called Hawaii. Today we visited one side of the island in a port called Hilo. We learned from our tour guide today that apparently a lot of people mistakenly pronounce it as High-Low when it's supposed to be pronounced as He-Low. Somehow it never occurred to me to call it High-Low.

Today Adam and Amy spent the day on their latest NCL only excursion of Ultimate Helicopter and Volcano Adventure. On our account, it lists the excursion as Ultimate Helicopter and Waterfall Adventure so there might have been some tweaks to the itinerary leftover from the volcano eruption. Anyone else get the sense that there should be some action movie music playing in the background every time I mention what grand adventure tour they've chosen? Adam did have to pay the extra surcharge for being over 250 lbs. While we mostly concentrated on low key activities for ourselves, we also crossed off any consideration to excursions with weight limits as it never seemed an option to us personally to bother paying extra. Now if this wasn't a destination we'd already visited and there was something we desperately wanted to experience, the thought of paying extra might have held more weight (pun intended) on our choices. On our account, the extra charge is billed as "Ultimate Helicopter (Comfort Seat)" of $280. That's almost half the cost of the excursion for one person in the first place! Ahh well, at least they enjoyed the experience.

For our tour today, we had originally considered the Akaka Falls, Macadamia Nut Farm, & Tropical Gardens tour from Roberts Hawaii but I convinced Dad to go ahead and book the Hawaii Volcanoes Tour from Roberts Hawaii instead. When we booked it months in advance, they were still having to severely modify the itinerary of this tour due to the eruption but assured us that either way by the time we visited, it would be a fulfilling and complete tour. I loved visiting Volcanoes National Park as a child so I was much more interested in going back to that instead of another visit to look at flowers.

We got up early enough to visit Cagney's for breakfast this morning. I was pleased to see what was labeled as chocolate chip muffins on the self service buffet table. Pulled it apart to start eating it and discovered that buried in the middle of the muffin was some sort of cherry or cherry juice since the dough was all red. Why NCL? Why Cagney's? Why must you mess with my chocolate chip muffin and stick fruit in there too?

For my main dish I ordered scrambled eggs and sausage. I guess the chef decided my plate looked too empty so he/she threw some "house potatoes" on there with it.

One of the things that always makes me laugh is how cruise ship restaurants answer your request for ketchup. I've had everything from a little cup, to a small dish, to a waiter bringing over ketchup in a gravy boat and spooning it onto my plate for me. Today, it was a small metallic cup set on a saucer.

Personally, I like to put a bit of grated pepper on my eggs in addition to the ketchup but at first glance, the wooden salt and pepper shakers placed on the table look exactly the same! Usually you can tell when one has holes to be shaken out and one has the grinder to turn but they both have grinders. After guessing wrong the first time, I realized that on the bottom of the shakers, the pepper one looks like a doorknob/lock on the bottom whereas the salt shaker is straight across underneath. It was hilarious at dinner later watching Adam go to use the salt and stare at them both so confused.

Pepper is the shaker on the right in this picture

After grabbing our stuff at the cabin, we headed off the ship to meet up with our tour on the pier. In comparison, NCL's tour offering that is similar is called Volcanoes National Park, is 4 1/2 hours long, and costs $109 per person. NCL only lists visiting Volcanoes National Park and the Akatsuka Orchid Garden. Our tour from Roberts Hawaii ran 4.25 hours long, visited those two places plus others, and cost $89 per person.

This time we were once again welcomed into Ohana (family) and encouraged to refer to our driver as Cousin Harry. Both our guides were very personable and funny which added to the tour experience. I've had tour guides tell us to go off and explore a site and then yell at us for not following them. One even repeatedly scolded several tour members for talking to each other while she was giving her lecture.

Our first stop today was at the Kilauea Visitor Center in Volcanoes National Park.

After some free time to explore the small center inside and use the restroom, a crowd of both our tour members and random visitors gathered as Cousin Harry used the 3D model outside to give a brief history of the discovery and location of the volcanoes. He happily answered anyone's questions. Pretty much every center employee we encountered would recite "There is currently no active lava flow" as part of their greeting. They even had signs all over the area repeating it.

As our group worked their way back to the mini bus, Cousin Harry broke out his guitar and would serenade those of us who'd arrived first.

At one point he joked that the last person back on the bus would have to do the hula in front of everyone. One of the husbands taking the tour with his wife ran past her to get back onto the bus first so he wouldn't be last. She did a makeshift hula dance as she rushed to their seats to call him out. The two also spent part of the ride pulling out cloth napkins taken from the ship to spread over their laps while they proceeded to eat half the buffet's inventory of sliced fruit they'd brought on the tour in little baggies. Who needs little boxes of cereal when you can have a picnic in your laps?

Our next stop was to visit the steam vents where you could walk by and peer in as well as feel the hot air. There were chest high railings around the vent so it was safe to walk right up and look in. It was interesting to see how many times people had dumped coins and a couple high value pieces of paper money into the vent like it was a wishing well.

Also at this stop Cousin Harry led us on a straight walk along a paved path about 100-200 yards to get a close up view of a crater. He left us with time to take pictures and walk around.

That tall bush in the distance in this photo is where you walked to in order to view the crater. This picture was taken at the parking lot.

After getting pictures at the crater, Dad and I walked back past the steam vent that was right next to the parking lot and enjoyed a longer look while most of the group had moved on. It was an interesting feeling when I stuck my hand out next to the steam vent and while you could feel something was there, it wasn't hot. Just as you're standing there thinking, "Hmm, why is this not as hot as I expected?" you start feeling as if your hand was shoved under hot water and you instinctively yank your hand back.

Next we drove up to Volcano House where VIP guests including past presidents would come to stay when in town. Otherwise, it's a business establishment with a bar/restaurant and gift shops. And oh yeah, a crater in the backyard. Cousin Harry encouraged everyone to check out the nice view of the crater from the back porch but avoid getting stuck at the bar. We had some latecomers this time back at the bus and he ribbed them about being at the bar.

We next stopped alongside an area of road that had to be dug out from the most recent lava flow and repaved. There was another crater called Lua Mamu to view on the side where the bus pulled over (and a couple other cars and buses soon joined us) and the other side of the street was cooled lava that we could walk and climb over. Some of the piles were so tall you couldn't see our bus behind them. It was like walking on tons of crunchy loose gravel so while you had the stability of it being a packed down surface, it could still be slippery under your feet. The most unique thing I found was that while walking over the mounds, it sounded like you were crunching on broken glass. It was a little disappointing as we drove out of the park grounds to learn that we would not be visiting the famous Thurston Lava Tube because it had been deemed too unstable for anyone to go inside.