Hilo, Hawaii

At 5:00 in the morning we were awakened by the PA system asking us to go to the top deck to basically clear customs; aka just get our passport and for 5 seconds let a guy match our face to our photo. Why we had been yaned out of bed at that hour I didn't know and even though was excruciatingly early, luckily it didn't matter. We had docked in Hilo, Hawaii! Hilo means "twisted" in Hawaiian, and is a small town of 30,000.

In the morning I was lucky and saw about 5 humpback whales off the back of the ship. They were so beautiful jumping through the air and flipping their tails in the green water. Afterward I went to a hula dancing workshop where I learned the history of hula and if I do say so myself, I now have quite a set of hips I can shake about... well sorta. hehe

Hilo wasn't exactly what I was expecting. There are no real beaches, just rocks. And there are few palm trees, but more trees that have roots growing from its branches to the ground. It was pretty fun to walk around downtown though. There was a candy store called sugar coastal candy (made on the big island!) and men were giving flowers to girls for their hair on the side of the street. It was lively despite its small size.

A luau was the event for the evening where I tried traditional hawaiian cuisine and got to show off my hula skills again! The food looked sort of normal, but frankly had a very weird taste. On my plate were the following:
Macaroni-potato salad
White Rice
Pulled Pig- very salty with an unidentified marinade that gave an odd after taste
Squid Spinach- very sweet... but um, ew!
Long rice noodles with little bits of chicken- slimy in the sense it felt like I was slurping down little earth worms
Poi- A traditional hawaiian paste made from tera (a root vegetable) It was purple in color and had the consistency of glue. Sort of tasted like that too.
So... needless to say I wasn't that hungry after a few bites of my meal, however I was lucky and earlier in the day was able to snag some snacks from a nearby Wal-mart.

Tomorrow I'm not sure what I am doing. I hope to get up to Rainbow Falls or maybe the volcanos. But I will try to leave you with a picture (my first one!) until my next post which should be coming soon!