MY CRUISE TO HAWAII

We wanted to escape the Canadian winter for some time in February, escape the ordeal of cooking and enjoy a change of scenery. We had gone on Viking cruises usually along rivers such as the Volga from St. Petersburg to Moscow which we remember with pleasure. Crossing the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles to Honolulu and revisiting the magical Hawaii that we experienced years  ago—in 1974 for me and 1991 for Michelle—on a Viking ocean-going ship seemed to answer our wants.

We stayed in the Four Points Hotel near the Pearson airport which offered free parking for most of the time we were away. Our Air Canada flight left at 8 a.m. and reached Los Angeles in five and one-half hours. Fortunately two porters pushing chairs appeared before us as we left the plane in Los Angeles and pushed us over long corridors, onto elevators, and to our Viking handlers near the checked luggage pick-up. Apart from an uncomfortable wait for the Viking bus to take us to the ship docked in the harbour we were passed through passport controls and ushered to a stateroom on the 6th deck efficiently. We had a small porch with a table and two chairs overlooking the waters. The large bed, chairs, writing table, the closets, drawers, sizeable bathroom gave promise of a comfortable cruise of five days going and five returning.

On Deck 7 up to which we would walk was a buffet style cafe with a great variety of food for three meals a day. A restaurant on Deck 2 offered a menu which changed daily and waiters of pleasant and quick despatch. Two restaurants on Deck 1, one Italian and the Chef’s Table of specialty foods required reservations, which could be overlooked at the last moment We ate on Deck 7 often and as we became familiar with the ship’s many bars, observation rooms and communal meeting places, we ate in the lower deck restaurants sometimes for lunch and more often for dinner. Wine was offered at every meal, even breakfast, I believe. A Daily News sheet told us of talks on various subjects and evening entertainments in the  Star Theatre.

At sea, reality set in. I shall leave to the reader’s imagination a description of the passengers. Most were seniors carrying the impediments that seniors suffer. Most were Americans and most were conservative likely belonging to the MAGA class of voter. One gentleman with whom we dined said he was Ultra-Conservative, perhaps as a warning to Canadians not to discuss politics. There were so many passengers that if we happened to speak to one we did not see him or her again throughout the voyage. For three days the sea was rough. All passengers walked like drunken sailors.

In Honolulu, our first tour day, our bus took us in a residential area and left us to walk in a Japanese-oriented park by the sea coast, then along the coast to a zoo, whose elusive animals tried to hide from visitors, except for a snow leopard and a bored tiger. In the evening we visited the penthouse apartment in Waikiki of a friend I had not see for over 30 years. He and his wife took us to a wine-tasting dinner with two friends living in the area. When I last saw Waikiki 50 years ago it had a long beach, a few houses and a great zoo with huge turtles. Now it was a smaller sized Manhattan with all the department stores, high-rises, and traffic. Instead of being greeted with swaying Hawaiian beauties singing and throwing leis about my neck and listening to the drums while a cloud loomed over the mountain behind me, commercialism had extinguished the magic.

We stayed on the ship on the second day and occasionally looked at the grimy towers of the city from which small houses wound up the cliffside. In Hilo, our tour bus took us over an island on which two tsunamis had wiped out kilometres of houses in recent years. The poverty of the inhabitants and the high cost of living left a sharp impression made sharper by an overcast sky and the forced cheerfulness of our woman guide who sang ribald songs on the return journey to the ship.

Maui was sunny, green and with a more prosperous look. We drove over much of the island on new highways. A whale was mating off-shore as we approached Lihanna. The scorched trees and bushes, burnt houses and hillsides ravaged by last year’s fires remained as witnesses. Our stop at a new shopping centre by the sea gave us an opportunity to walk on the sand and watch the waves that Michelle had known from her visit there in 1991.

On the voyage back to North America, Michelle heard tourists joke disdainfully about the tour on the elevator. There was general dissatisfaction and impatience to reach shore. A stop in Ensenado, Mexico, an impoverished city, did not improve one’s spirits. The bus took us along the coast to see La Bufadora, “to marvel at the sight of the water spray shooting to the heights of 100 feet, accompanied by the sound of thunder.” We reached the “phenomenon” after a long walk past a hundred wooden stores stacked with cheap produce and aggressive vendors to see small shoots of water and spray resulting from water trapped in a cave. 

The flight back to Toronto was efficient and fast. We agreed that Hawaii had lost its magic and that the Hawaiians knew it.

I bought a leather belt from a vendor near the Bufadora. My experience is that the best leather comes from Mexico.