We woke up this morning and got off to an early start for a ship excursion in Kona on the Big Island. Kona does not have a port so we had to anchor out in the harbor and take a tender into a port for our excursion. They use some of the ships lifeboats for the tenders, so now, we can all say weve been in a lifeboat. Our excursion was an tour of the bay and harbor in a boat looking at the corals, fish, and other marine life of the island through crystal clear water. It was hot!
After that excursion, the sisters did what we tend to do and made our own excursion around the island. Claire got a great deal on a rental car so off we went to the most southern point in the US. It was a good thing she got the deal because the taxi driver who took us to pick up the car thought we were crazy and would have charged us several hundred dollars for that trip. It was a long drive through some interesting country. We saw huge lave flows that came from way above and went
all the way to the ocean. In some parts, it looked like Oreo cookie crust while in others in was smoother and in larger pieces. We saw many more cell tower trees, yes, those silly cell towers in CLT are really trees that grow in Hawaii. They are called Captain Cook Pine trees. We got a picture of some baby ones along the way too.
At the southernmost point, the water on one side was sapphire blue and on the other Caribbean aqua. Huge waves crashed up on the black volcanic rock. It was really beautiful. We ate our huge lunch, a banana that we took from the ship, and headed to our next stop.
Our next stop was Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. Susans national park pass got us in free. The area is scared royal grounds and a place of refuge. We walked thru the area and saw the carved word sculptures. The whole area looked like Hawaii, the volcanic rock, the palm trees, the wooden carvings, etc. It was breathtaking.
We then had a short drive to the painted church. The church was built in the 1800s and the interior was painted with
Hawaiian scenes. As we left, the cruise bus was in the parking lot and getting ready to leave. Claire did NOT want to get behind it on the curvy road back to Kona and we rushed to the car and bolted out of there. The drive back was uneventful. We stopped to fill up gas, then turned the car in. We took the shuttle to the airport and a taxi back to the port.
So, our taxi driver started out normal and telling us what certain flowers were, about the goats near the airport, but after that it started going downhill quickly, and kept going to the abyss. She talked about politics, conspiracy theories, some on climate change and that dinosaur farted too. She talked about AI being implanted in humans and kept telling us the best places to eat even though we told her we were on the ship and it was leaving. We were glad to exit the taxi alive.
After dinner we went to show which was the entertainment for the evening. There was one guy up front that had this very funny laugh and he laughed at so much. He became part
