This is going to be very quick tonight. Although we did take a water shuttle over to the island this morning, I don’t have a lot to report.
I was up early and was in Sabatini’s when it opened for breakfast at 7am. We had made a commitment to new friends Bill and Lois to help them with their Australian ETA (visa) application. They had registered with the US State Department instead of Australia and the ship told them they had to have the visas by Honolulu or they had to disembark. They didn’t have WiFi on the ship and had tried unsuccessfully to find it in Hilo yesterday. We had encountered them coming back to the ship as we were leaving yesterday, and when they told us what was going on, we knew we could help.
So they came to breakfast prepared with passports and a credit card and I had my phone with the Australian ETA app and I completed their applications. Then later today I received notification that they had been granted, but the printer in the Internet cafe wasn’t working. Unsure what else to do, I went to Guest Services, and, well, it’s all a done deal tonight and they know they don’t have to worry about it any longer.
G and I waited until after tender tickets were no longer required to go over to Kona today, unsure what we were going to do. We had booked a snorkel trip through Viator, to the Captain Cook monument in Kealakekua Bay by boat, and thought we were all set. Then, two days ago the tour operator texted me that our tour had been cancelled. At that point, the ship had no space in any similar excursions, and that kind of burst my bubble.
We had snorkeled in Kealakekua Bay during a land stay in Kona 31 years ago and I remember it as having fantastic snorkeling. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with having done it once; I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to this side of the Big Island. However, there is still a conveniently located small beach right next to the tender pier, so we enjoyed that. We also could have kayaked or SUPed (correction, SOME people could).
We returned to the ship and ate a late lunch at the International Cafe. I should have gone to a pool right then but was really tired for some reason. Actually, I do know why. The cabins on either side of us, particularly on one side, have really sick guests in them. For the past two nights we’ve been awakened in the middle of the night and then kept awake by very deep coughs that continue for hours. Two nights of that have caught up with me.
Still, I don’t nap. We went to dinner at 5pm dressed In our matching Hawaiian shirts in preparation for tonight’s island party. Dinner was pretty uninspiring tonight. In fact, I ordered the vegetarian club and when it arrived, truly had no idea what I was eating. None at all. I don’t think that’s happened to me since I was 4 years old. I was expecting a sandwich, but got sliced roasted potatoes instead of bread.
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| Pumpkin pie in the Horizon Court for Canada’s Thanksgiving Day. |
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| Pecan pie |
G went to tonight’s Princess Theater show but I needed to get Bill and Lois’s Australian visa issue put to bed. Once that was done, I had a sudden burst of energy, changed into a swimsuit and worked out for an hour in the empty Calypso Pool. Then I was really tired and should sleep well tonight. We’re skipping the island deck party tonight after all. We have plans to do a lot of driving on Kauai tomorrow.
