Around The World In 80 Waves

It is Christmas Day and despite feeling more than a tad woolly after last night’s Cocktail marathon I am up early to give a surfing lesson to the rather amply chested Ricarda from Austria. I am a little wary after my last instruction efforts many years ago resulted in a hurried trip to casualty to have the young lady’s thumb manipulated back into its socket after it was dislocated by a knock from a loose board in the water.

In the end no medical assistance is needed throughout the session, but better swimwear might have been helpful for my new friend. In between instruction I catch a few rides on the very mediocre waves in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel using the 11 foot board that we have hired. It is really quite naff and completely overcrowded, but one bikini spilling filled session later I am thinking all my Christmases have come at once. Hang on it is actually Christmas Day of a year long surf session, and indeed they have! Wave 10. Wooo-Hooo!

😀

I dare you not to smile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEvGKUXW0iI

Happy Christmas everybody.

Lots of love

Rob. x

I see an awful lot of signs like this which suggest that living in the 21st century can be yours provided you are a patron of the fine establishment. However they dont tell you that you are sharing the net access with all the cheapskates in the neighbourhood who are too tight to pay for their own, and that is before you add the hostel or hotel full of travellers who are trying to download the latest pirated box sets.

My inability to sleep as much as most helps here until the slackers drag themselves out of bed chasing a free instant coffee, because I usually have it to myself for at least an hour. However ‘it’ is still pants, and at times equates to the dial up I remember from the 90s. I have regularly struggled to download a simple text based email, so think this sign would be more appropriate:

As a consequence it looks like my posts may well be feast and famine from now on, as I struggle to find a decent connection from time to time. My apologies for the periodic hits to your inbox when that happens, and sadly I can’t see that improving as I head south from the US.

Duke Kahanamoku is a true surfing legend. He represented the USA in three olympics as a swimmer, winning gold medals in 1912 and 1920, and collected a  silver behind Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan of the old black and white movies) in the games in between. He also went to subsequent games as a water polo player, and landed many parts in movies over a career of 40 years.

Later on he went on tours around the world like my own and is the single person responsible for introducing surfing to most of the planet, particularly Australia and as a consequence is widely regarded as the father of modern surfing. He was a fantastically skilled waterman, who before development trashed the breaks here in Honolulu he rode a single 35 foot wave a mile and a quarter in 1917, which would be hard enough to do now, let alone on the wooden boards he would have been riding.

Duke by the way is his name rather than a title, and he later went on to become the Sheriff of Honolulu. A position he held for about 30 years, and I also noticed yesterday that he was instrumental in establishing the war memorial at Pearl Harbour.

There is a statue of him on the beach at Waikiki and I give it the lei I was given at the Lu’au to say Mahalo (Thankyou in Hawaiian) for his gift to the world and in particular to me.

Respect is due. Enough said.

I’m not having Christmas dinner with my family as usual so I treat myself to a lu’ua at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel know as The Pink Palace because of the colour it is painted. Once there I am greeted with a beautiful Lei, which is the flower garland you all associate with the islands, before being sat with a family from Mississippi who I can’t understand (the Dad’s name is Ted, but he has o tell me it about 8 times before I get it-at one stage I thought it was Thor!), a Japanese couple who speak no English and another lovely couple from America who have actually enjoyed a bottle of wine at the summit of the Great Orme in Llandudno back at home. The host is a very cheesy Hawaiian version of Val Doonican or Andy Williams who is chummily tapping people on the shoulder as he wanders the room under the spotlight. “And where do you beautiful people come from?”, etc.

The luau is held on the beach with people still surfing behind it, and has loads of different acts based on the history of Hawaii both mythological and more recent. It is completely overdone but I have to say I loved it all. More cheese han  Quattro Staggioni.

There is plenty of hip swinging hula girls and fire dancing , as well as a young girl who is getting all Jimi Hendrix on her electric Uke. The drinks are free so I aim for the Mai Tai consumption record and must have got fairly near to it by the end of the night.

Great fun and I am back in a very festive mood as I head back to the hostel.

 I make some new friends over breakfast and agree to give a bloke a lift over to see Pearl Harbour with me today. An eventful journey inluding another trip on the interstate, but we get there unscathed. This is USS Bowfin. Far too small for me inside. Very claustraphobic 

We go over to the wreck of the Battleship Arizona which was destroyed instanteously in the attacks on pearl harbour when a bomb hit its magazine. The decision was taken to leave the ship resting on the bottom of the harbour with nearly 1000 service men still inside as an eternal memorial to the men lost on that day. You can just see the outline of the ship’s bow under the water the left of the oil slick which is still coming out of the great ship 71 years after she was sunk.

All of this is a very sobering experience and I am swiftly losing my Christmas cheer, but we end the day visiting The ‘Mighty Mo’, the Battleship Missouri on which the Second World war was brought to an end with the signing of Japan’s surrender in 1945. It is the last battleship ever produced and is an awsome vessel which saw action in WWII, Korea, and as recently as the first Gulf War where it started the tommahawk cruise missile campaign.

Mighty Mo’s main battery consisted of nine 16 inch guns, which could fire 2,700 lb armor-piercing shells 20 miles resulting in a crater the size of a tennis court. Awesome firepower!

My lovely Triumph it is not but I hire this 200cc moped to ride over to the other side of Oahu. It is just as financially crippling as a hire car but much more fun. The only protection you are obliged to wear in Hawaii are sunglasses or eye protection, so I spurn the offer of a helmet because it is too hot and go for the flies in the teeth option instead.

The roads are epic, as everything is in Hawaii. Not much is more impressive than the beautiful scenery of North Wales but Hawaii does if only because it is so much warmer. 

I ride half way round the island in search of a golf club where an octogenarian Ukulele virtuoso is supposed to be leading a gig of Hawaiian music. A big gutted that he is too ill to perform but have a great time enjoying the tunes without understanding any of the words. I’m pretty sure I heard Silent Night at one point because it is a Christmas Gig although I cant really be sure. Very mellow and as you can see the view from the club house is also beautiful. So much so that I do not realise the time, or noitice it has got dark.

At this point I wil refer you back to the protective sunglasses I am obliged to wear, which might just as well be a blindfold! I have what we will call a challenging journey back to Honolulu in my vest and shorts, but get back in one piece and go for a walk on the sea front at Waikiki.

There is extra secuity at the airport because Air Force One is stationed on the runway.

President Obama is in town. It is either to visit his family for Christmas or because he wants to discuss the Iranian wave pool idea I had in Washington with me. I will let you decide.

An uneventful plane ride back to Oahu apart from flying over Maui where the sky is clear. I get to see an epic view the Haleakala crater that was misty when I saw in on foot, which is a pleasant surprise.

Kilauea is the most active volcano on the planet and currently has two eruptions which are on going. Clearly I am keen to take this in, but it isn’t easy to get to the lava flows. This picture shows the little that is left of the highway after a recent eruption.

I hear that the best time to see the volcano is at night so park up as close to the crater as I can, and grab a few hours kip before going for a stroll in the dead of night to see how much nearer I can get. If the heavens were eerie the night before this is as close to Hades as I am hoping to get. I have the place to myself and it is deathly quiet apart from ocassional mumurs from the crater. I get the fright of my life when a park ranger appears from nowhere. He is good enough to take this shot of me but escorts me back to the viewing area, where I take these as the sun comes up.

I had the opportunity to add wave 10 to my collection at both Honoli’i and Pohoika Beach Parks, but after such an epic start to the day I am no hurry to get in the water today and end up passing on both opportunities. Maybe seeing the attached was an omen that put me off. It certainly made me chuckle and I can’t imagine too many funeral directors can claim to be witty because it is such a sombre business. (Aparantly it is just the family name and no pun is intended.)

The former break was passed up due to a whole tree doing laps of the break around the peak, on which I see two blokes nearly impale themselves. The guy in the picture has just clattered in to it.

I meet an old friend for lunch. I first met Petra on a beach called La Torche in Brittany in 1996, and I’m delighted by the home cooked soup I am treated to when we catch up. She shows me round the beautiful guest house business she has developed since then. Another stunning place for people to stay which I can wholeheartedly recommend. (www.bnb-aloha.com)

Petra recommends Pohoika Beach Park to me but I swerve that too because the break was so busy due to it being the weekend and the start of Christmas holidays.

I decide to go in search of volcano activity instead.