[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]
4/6/24
Aloha Ohana --
We're continuing in our damp/cool weather pattern and it's getting a bit old. Imagine, brilliant sunshine in the morning, temperature barely a chilly 75d, followed by clouds and at least a sprinkle in the afternoon, topping out at only 80-82 degrees! I'm sure your early spring weather is much better, right? Oh, and the pool is a mere 84d these days. Oh, how we suffer!!
This weekend is our annual Merrie Monarch hula festival, which is the World Series/Super Bowl/World
Cup equivalent of hula. "Merrie Monarch" is the nickname of King David Kalakaua who ruled Hawaii in the late 1800's. Hula was banned for many years under the influence of Christian missionaries, until Kalakaua openly supported it and promoted it as a unique expression of Hawaiian culture. The event is held in Hilo and has become a VERY big deal. Tickets are severely restricted and hard to come by, in case you were thinking of zipping over to attend. Every minute of the competition is televised on local tv, and YouTube undoubtedly has videos of past performances in case you're interested. You'll be amazed, I guarantee.
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| Miss Aloha Hula Competition |
After a couple of rained-out attempts, we finally got in some time at Makalei putting, driving, and chipping. Amazingly, we both could still hit the ball most of the time and a few shots were actually pretty good. This was around noon on Monday, and we celebrated afterward with a burger and a beer at one of our favorite seaside restaurants in town. We've contacted our golf partner and we are planning for a return to the course for next Wednesday, with Thursday as a rain backup. We're doubtful we will be able to get in a complete round either because of exhaustion or rain, but it will still be great to be back to the game. Recall that we play by "Kona-Lago" rules, in which aspirational score-keeping is allowed and rewarded.
Continuing this week's physical emphasis, yesterday we went to the gym for a fairly vigorous workout. Note, that's TWO visits in seven days, plus whacking golf balls. As usual, however, we immediately counteracted the benefits of this exercise by going for fried chicken, creamy coleslaw, and French fries after our workout. We might call it our "grunt & gorge" routine.
Now that we've recovered from our Ethiopia challenge, we have plans for several upcoming trips that we're kind of excited about. One is my bucket-list birthday trip and another is Karen's (we both turn xx this year). Mine will be in July, when we'll fly to Vancouver for a few days before taking the overnight train through the Canadian Rockies to Jasper, then traveling by car to Banff and Calgary. I reserved the train months ago in order to book the first-class version with our own cabin and dining-car meals. From Calgary we will fly to Utah and spend about a week around Moab visiting some the National Parks there that we haven't explored before, including the highly touted Arches with its fantastic stone formations, Should be quite a complement to the lush Canadian Rockies.
Karen's bucket list trip will be delayed until November to optimize the destination weather conditions. She chose to return to one of our favorite parts of the world, Southeast Asia. The plan is to start on one of the southern islands of Thailand for about a week, most likely the island of Phi Phi. Though Thailand may sound exotic, we will hardly be roughing it. We know this because we've been to this area several times in the past and it has beautiful resort hotels, terrific snorkeling, delicious food, inexpensive massages (!) and wonderful local people. The other half of the trip will be in Cambodia, a country we have visited but only for a short time as part of a group tour to neighboring Vietnam. This time we'll return on our own and travel at our own pace by pre-arranging a "tour for the two of us," which will allow us to fine-tune the itinerary to our personal interests. As you recall, this is our preferred way of traveling, and it will avoid many of the problems we encountered in Ethiopia. We also have a couple of shorter domestic trips in the works, but I'll fill you in on those later.
Ok, off to market and breakfast picnic. Enjoy your early spring. As I recall it can be quite nice for a few minutes.......
2 comments:
I so want to return to Cambodia. On a tour one is never in one place long enough. Oh to spend a week or more around Angkor Wat rather than a rushed day or two. There were so many other temples and parks to visit that most people on tours never get to. There is so much more to Cambodia than its glorious ancient past and the sadness of the Khmer Rouge. Lots of great national parks await you. I heard of a wonderful Elephant sanctuary that I would love to visit as well. I also wouldn’t mind another few days on the Mekong. I look forward to living vicariously through your travels.
We're planning on at least a couple of weeks in Cambodia this time. If we return to Angkor Wat our emphasis will be on some of the smaller temples and visiting Angkor itself when the hordes of other tourists are at a minimum. Plz send your recommendations for places.
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