Hilton Hawaiian Village is a wonderful old resort. It has so much that it takes real effort to leave. Well in advance we had planned two excursions. The first was to Doris Duke’s home, Shangi La. If you don’t know, Doris Duke came into her fortune at age 12. Her parents died and she was the soul heir to Duke Energy for one. She fell in love with Islamic art and Hawaii at about the same time. The house, which she continued to update as late as 1992, is a wonderful collection of designs and items. It is worth the trip if you will be in Honolulu. The other stop was Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial :
I know this is not the “expected” view, but you can get that on line. Even almost 75 years later it is moving to watch the film shot during and after the attack. To stand above the remains of the men of the Arizona.
We met Tolly and Todd our first night there, these men were students of Carol’s when she was teaching photography. Through the magic of email and facebook they have stayed in touch. Todd is a concierge at Hilton Hawaiian Village and one day was actually working on the Rainbow Tower where we were staying, there are 7 towers! (Correct me if I’m wrong Todd). On Sunday when neither was working and we had no plans they took us for a drive around North Shore. Along the way we had fresh grilled chicken in a roadside barbecue, a chilled coconut from which we drank the milk and then had the shell cracked so we could eat the meat. I seem to remember we stopped for lunch, too and then we had to try a special shaved ice. I was delighted to gain 2 pounds all at once 🙂
On to Big Island, formally known as Hawaii Island. We are staying in Volcano House, constructed in 1931 to replace the 3rd in a line of hotels here. This hotel has the distinction of being the only hotel built inside the caldera of an active volcano. From most anyplace in the hotel it’s possible to watch the eruption that has continued since 2008.
I’m not actually sure where this was taken, either from the hotel grounds or from Jaggar Museum which is even closer to the crater. There we met Frank Truesdale, PhD to whom we were introduced by Niece Daisy who studied with him. Frank gave us a wonderful tour of the externals that any tourist can see and then we were introduced to the monitors watching every move of the Earth in the area to better understand what is happening and to hope to save lives by predicting major events. Ultimately be took us up to the volcano Observatory above the roof of the museum with viwes to the floor of the crater. The inner crater happened to be quite active and we could see the lava lake over the rim and watch it spatter above the rim.
After a beer at the nearby military recreational facility we parted. We now have plans to have dinner with Frank and his wife on Friday (that’s tomorrow as I write). Today we drove South and West toward South Point, the southernmost point of land in the US! Along the way we stopped at Punalu’u Black Sand beach where we didn’t see turtles 🙁 We did get to Green Sand Beach, one of only two in the world.
We did make it to the southermost point of land
More importantly we made it to
We bought take away lunch there and stopped back for ice cream on our way back to the hotel. We will drive by there again on Saturday.
There is more to tell, but I am tired and I suspect you, my readers, must be too.