the longest trip home

the answer:  2554 miles
the question: the distance we traveled in 4 days to get to San Diego, from Honolulu Hawaii

these 4 days were the 2nd longest 4 days of my life, 2nd only to the 4 days I spent in pain with my back out, in Jamaica alone after Hurricane Dean.

The voyage around the world was amazing.  The experiences were once in a life time, the friends I made of colleagues are forever.  But at this point we all just wanted to be home.  There are only so many ocean views one can take.

Diamond Head in the background as we depart Honolulu, HI

stuck in paradise

From Honolulu, we traveled to Hilo, an island I had visited before.  While in Hilo I once again visited Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, it has been erupting since 1983.  This would be my second tour of the volcano.  I went along to see some lava tubes and hear the tour and the story of Pele, the volcano goddess once again.

We returned to the ship excited for our departure in another day, only to find out that due to tropical storms in the Pacific Ocean, our ship would return to Honolulu and sit there for about 36 hours in order to let the storms pass.

For the 2nd time in my life, I was stuck in paradise.  I know your thinking, why are you complaining, I can think of worst places to be stuck in than 86 degree Honolulu, Hawaii.  I assure you I realize that, however after 100 days on this journey and being so close to being home, it was just "I wanted to get home"!  There I said it.

My extra day in Hawaii was really uneventful.  I spent it lazily laying on the beach taking in the sun and the air and the sounds of surf boarders and I appreciated another Hawaiian sunset.  Some of the more adventurist students went to the other side of the island to witness a once in a life time competition, A legendary big wave surfing contest, the Quicksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau, was held for the first time since 2004, waves had to reach a minimum of 40 feet in order to host this competition.  They came back to the ship enthralled with what they saw.  It was all just great.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234047/Surfs-biggest-waves-years-come-Hawaii-North-Pacific-storm.html

Next stop San Diego.

There are 2 sides to every story

Like every other morning we arrived at a new port we woke up early and went up to the 7th deck to watch the sunrise over our new destination.  Though, this was slightly different.  We were home, well almost home.  We had arrived to our first US port in 4 months of travel and though thousands of miles from our destination we were back in the US.  This morning more than the usual  community members joined us to watch our re entry.  As the sun rose we were also surrounded by an unfamiliar sound.  The sound of people chatting on their cell phones, students, staff, faculty talking to family members letting them know we were almost home.

USS Arizona/Pearl Harbor

One of the sights that I visited while in Honolulu was Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona, its the other half of the story of World War I.  The attack of Pearl Harbor and bombing of the USS Arizona is what led to the US dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The USS Arizona still lies at the bottom of the Harbor and leaks oil, some 60 plus years after its 1177 passengers were entombed there.  The site is a solemn place, reminding me of my visits to Arlington cemetery and the tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. 

We arrive to the monument and had to take a small boat out to the monument, a white marble structure that was built over where the Arizona lies.  

  As you enter the monument you see the flags of the states who's name sake battle ships were also affected. On the opposite side the flags representing Hawaii, the United States of America and the branches of the military.

 

 As you walk through there is space, in the middle a hollow for one to look down and see tropical fish among the wreckage, among coral that now covers the barely visible USS Arizona,

 and then the silent yet visible reminders in form of oil droplets or black tears, that something horrible happened and that there in fact are remnants below.

On the far wall, the list of names of those 1177 people who's lives were lost on that day in December 68 years almost to the day that I visited the Arizona

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Hiroshima

I am writing this entry almost 2 years after I visited Hiroshima.

On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 A.M. the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on this capital city.  Devastating it and the surrounding area.


I visited this city and saw first hand some of the monuments that still stand, a tribute to a day and time that should never be relived.


I also visited the Museum, dedicated to eradicating the use of atomic/nuclear weapons.  It was quite a site to see.  The images and stories of the people captured within are forever embedded in my mind.    Which is the primary reason it has taken me this long to write this post.  When as a human being you are exposed to the atrocities that have been inflicted on other human beings, in the name of your own rights it is hard to come to terms with it.  As a resident of the United States of America, it is an inheritance that I have fully been able to benefit from yet when faced with the responsibility to understand, It has been a hard pill to swallow.  War is not easy, and seeing first hand the decimation that took place in a country half way around the world was a bit much and still all too real.


I ramble so I will stop.  Here is more information on Hiroshima. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima

Mt. Fuji

This day we would travel for about 4 hours to  Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park to visit the tallest mountain in Japan; Mt. Fuji (3776 m or 12,388 feet).  If you have never been to a snow capped mountain up close then you can not understand how majestic it is to see.  As we were driving along the route it seemed as if all of a sudden the mountain just popped up out of no where.

By tour bus we would travel up the Yoshida route to the 4^th station 2305 meters (7562.3 feet or 1.4 miles) above sea level as close to the summit as we could get for the time of year we were visiting.  Our view of the summit was gorgeous, covered in snow, with the sun over top.  A slight wind would blow the snow causing a cloud effect.  

At this location there was a restaurant and a few shops to purchase souvenirs and a Shinto temple, from this location near the summit we could also view the mountain rage across the way, referred to as the Japanese Alps by our guide, this mountain range added to the vista.

As we left Mt. Fuji we would now go to Hakone and ride a cable car into the fog to catch another view of Mt. Fuji, however due to the fog we barely could see each other never mind any views.

Of course the fog cleared as we boarded the ferry taking us to the other side of one of the five lakes that surround Mt. Fuji.  This ride on the ferry also gave us some great views of Mt. Fuji within the mountain range, during sunset.  It was breathtaking and not even the chilly 40 degree weather deterred us from enjoying being outside.

Welcome to Japan, now be quiet

We arrived to Yokohama, Japan as with most other ports I met with ED on the outer deck to watch our entry into the port.  And watch one of the most amazing sunrises of the voyage.  

Is it any wonder the Japanese refer to their homeland as the Empire of the sun.  As the sun came up, we could see the majestic Mt. Fuji with a rose colored glow as the sun reflected its rays off the snow capped mountain.  As the ship pulled in to its birth we were met with Japanese drummers, mostly women, playing on large drums.   

We enjoyed this only for a few minutes as we were aware that the clearing of the ship in Japan was going to be a unique experience.  As a member of the Living Learning Team, it was our responsibility in most ports to assist with passport distribution and distribution of other important documents necessary for our shipboard community to travel within the country we were visiting.  In India we had to ensure each of our community members had a shore pass, as was the case in Vietnam.  If these documents (shore passes) were lost, than the person who they belonged to would not be able to leave for the ship for the duration of our stay.  This actually happened to a couple of students.

 In Japan the whole process of passport distribution and preparation to disembark was different.  Prior to our arrival in Yokohama as a team we were trained by the medical team to take the temperature of each of our community members, which was a requirement of the Japanese government.  The Japanese would quarantine any member that had an above average temperature, their prevention of spreading the H1N1 virus into their country. Once we arrived to Yokohama, the Living Learning Team was dispatched into the port terminal and given assignments.  Some were to direct students through immigration, others were to hand out their passports and custom forms in the terminal (this was usually done on the ship), and I was assigned the task of informing the members of our shipboard community the following:

“behind me you will collect your passport from another team member, as usual by you ship id number, you will then form a single line facing forward only and will be directed by another LLC to get through immigration, once you clear immigration, you will walk about 20 feet and clear customs, at that point you can wait in the terminal to re board the ship or leave the terminal, this must be done in complete silence.  Any questions you might have please direct only to a terminal agent.  Please remove your hats and sunglasses and again I remind you COMPLETE SILENCE”

I must have given those instructions 100 times at least.  Of course there were some people that objected to being quiet, I would remind them that we are here as guests and if they have questions about the guidelines they should address them with the Japanese officials.  The process took a few hours and finally our ship was cleared.  

Once we were clear I along with 4 of my colleagues headed into Yokohama on foot to get our train tickets for the Shinkansen which we would take two evenings later from Tokyo to Kobe.  On our way to the train station we passed Chinatown ( I thought to myself, damn a Chinatown in Japan, now I seen it all).  After we purchased our tickets, PL and I decided to walk to the ferris wheel and possibly go for a ride to get an arial view of Yokohama.

As we got closer to the ferris wheel the sun started to go down and it got a little colder and we realized we had no cash on us so opted out.  We walked through a mall and around the amusement park and then decided to head back to the ship, having had a full day of walking.  We very much enjoyed our personal tour of the Yokohama water front.  Tomorrow we were off on a tour of Mt. Fuji

Shang Hai so nice to meet you

Though we flew out of Hong Kong to Beijing, our return was to Shanghai, within the country of China.  While it was about 78 degrees the day we left Hong Kong, and a cold blustery average of 35 while we were in Beijing, it was a wet and overcast 50 or so degrees in Shanghai, we would have only one short day in Shanghai so we decided to make the best of it.

Once again some colleagues and I decided to venture out into Shanghai to see what it had to offer.  We walked for hours in the rain our first mission was to find a post office and perhaps visit a museum.  Well we found the museum and also found it closed so on to our next mission the post office.  Just then we received a FB message courtesy of my blackberry informing us that we had more time in Shanghai; due to an ocean storm our captain had delayed our departure until the next day.  Now we had a few more hours to burn in Shanghai.  So without being deterred we decided to seek out a post office, but first a side trip to McDonald’s.  We entered Mickey D’s and sat and waited a while as we were still a little early for lunch.  As we sat there waiting we noticed that this McDonald's had delivery.  YES DELIVERY!  The delivery men would pack up their McDonald’s delivery boxes and get on their mo-ped scooters and head out to deliver lunches to those that had ordered them, we thought it was a riot, so of course we took pictures.

Once that was out of the way on we were with our mission – to the Post office.  While walking we came across a Dunkin Donuts.  I was truly excited.  This was a little bit of home so far away from home.  On the other side of the world to be exact.

Im supposed to be pointing at "Providence", my home town right above where I am pointing "Sacramento"

Though we had just had a cup of coffee at Starbucks less than 2 hours before, PL and I were about to go in when the Becker’s joined us; the four of us strolled into D&D and ordered our coffee and donuts.  Now I am not a huge fan of donuts and typically will not eat them, though here I had to have a French Cruller (sp), it was very disappointing.  While trying to decide on which donuts we would ultimately have LB came across a sea weed and bacon option to which we all took a pass.  We sat there and enjoyed our coffee and donuts for what it was and then continued back on our search for the post office.   As we continued our walk we were detoured around (Shanghai is the host of the 2010 World Expo and doing a major over haul of parts of their city) and finally stumbled upon the post office, however I did not get stamps because they had run out.  We decided to continue searching and then walk towards the Pearl, one of the major skyline buildings that Shanghai was known for.   After a brief stop in what can only be described as an indoor flea market, we made a pit stop in the Renaissance Hotel to use their facilities and to ask directions.  While there the valet/concierge asked me if I wanted to mail the postcards (I had taken them out for a visual in the event the person we encountered for directions did not speak English), I informed him that they were not ready to be mailed out as they did not have stamps.  He then offered to put stamps on them and that he would make sure they were mailed out (note to those reading this, if you did not receive your postcard from my trip to China the valet/concierge at the Renaissance Hotel in China is the one to blame).  I gladly handed him the postcard and money to pay for the stamps and quickly we were once again on our way.  We arrived to the pearl and made the decision not to pay the money to go up for the non-existent view since it was overcast and rainy.

We took a few pictures at the base when 2 of our international students (the Columbian guys) happened upon us and informed us of how to get a great free view of the city and the Bottle Opener (another of the world famous sky line buildings in Shanghai, this one is one of the tallest buildings in the world).  PL and I were all over it, we decided we were going to go for it, leaving the Becker’s behind we were now on our way.  As we were detoured through a park and around a crossing we came within feet of the base of the building without finding a way to get to it and finally we succumb to the cold and rainy day.

this is as close as we got to one of the tallest buildings in the world, due to detours and traffic and mostly weather

We gave up and decided to call it a loss.  We then took a subway back to the pier area and thought we would be close enough to walk to our ship.  We arrived to our subway stop and started what we thought would be a short walk.  We walked for about 45 minutes and stopped at a convenience store to spend the last of our money on chips and beer.  We finally arrived to our ship and were pleased with the events of our day, I mean after all we had chips and beer.

this was the view Shang Hai harbor from my cabin window