Overnight in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawai'i

The trip from Hilo to Honolulu was just an overnight adventure. We left Hilo at 2000 or 8pm. We waved goodbye to land and retold our adventures.

After a relaxing night of eating excessive amounts of food, Nic, Sam, Becca, Tania, and I worked out in the gym then finished our workout on the 7th deck port side under the stars. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Everyone went to bed nice and early to rest up for Honolulu, or lulu as I affectionately call it.

I woke up early Wednesday morning at 0630 to the view of a cement wall outside my window. Apparently we made it to Honolulu. Tania and I grabbed an early breakfast and were soon on our separate ways.

I went to the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology located on the man-made island of Coconut Island. We had to take a little boat over from the main island. The island is gorgeous and a marine science haven. Kaitlin, it reminded me of Honduras. Minus Kovacs and the scuba squad of course. We took a tour of the island and were shown the 3 blacktip reef sharks that they're studying. Along with a massive jack who thinks he's also a shark and 2 huge puffers. The puffers were adorable and kept coming up to the cement wall to look at us and beg for food. After our tour we had a lecture on common sharks and rays of the Hawaiian islands: the sandbar shark, blacktips, and several others. Then we went to the other side of the island and dissected 4 baby hammerheads that had been found dead in the bay. We went through the anatomy and cut them open. Out of the 14 of us there, I don't think one of the 5 guys touched a shark. 2 of them wouldn't even go near them. Haha it was really funny, the girls didn't seem to have any issues with it. Hmm the world appears to be changing. When we cleaned up we grabbed our snorkel gear and swam around the island. It was really cold. The water was probably 70, I could definitely have used a wetsuit. It was overcast and rainy, so not the best weather for being in the winter water.

The water was somewhat cloudy. The coral heads were beautiful, but there weren't too many fish. There were a ton of sea cucumbers and sargent majors. I did see an eel and some filefish. Nothing too exciting. This went on for about an hour. I was pretty happy to get out of the water and dry off. And we were done there.

Back on the ship I showered and met up with everyone. We wandered around the shops and ended up going to Gordon B-something, some brewery, for dinner. We stuffed ourselves with garlic fries and chicken parm. The last American dinner for a few months! Birthday celebration number 1 for Nic and I.

We wandered the shops some more and ran into Pat. Nic, Sam, and I took the bus with him down to Waikiki to go to The Shack for some drinks. It took us about an hour to find it. Well worth the time. We met up with a bunch of SASers and hung out. We left after a while and headed down the main road to the beach. When I came to Honolulu with my family 4 years ago we stayed at the Surfrider Westin in Waikiki. We ended up going through this exact same hotel and hanging out on the beach there for awhile with even more SASers. Around 0130 Sam and I took a cab back to the ship to go to bed.

I got 3 hours of sleep. At 0515 my alarm went off in the dark and I had to get up to go to the Honolulu Fishing Village for the United Fish Agency's fish auction. This was one of the coolest things I did in Hawai'i. (You can laugh at this, most people have been. It's the inner nerd in me.). There were yellowfin tuna, albacore, moonfish, and others being auctioned off. Some of the tuna were huge, 174 lbs! They were going for $7.20/lb. Wow. You could not even begin to believe how cool this was. The fishermen and workers work there every night starting at 1am til 10am or so. There was some 50,000 lbs of fish there today. Some days it's up to 100,000! It was like one giant freezer. I posted a picture from my phone on facebook. Check it out. It's sick. The fishermen stay out at sea for 2-4 weeks then come in and unload it. We got the full tour. We grabbed breakfast at Nico's then had a lecture on Hawai'i's sustainable seafood. It was long. Wasn't too great. The guy was somewhat of a hater to anyone in this field of sustainable fisheries who doesn't eat seafood. So automatically I was displeased with this man. For those of you who aren't aware, I don't like seafood. After an hour and a half we were finally able to leave and head back to the ship.

Exhausted, I got changed into warmer weather clothes. Nic, Becca, Mason, and Nolan were just waking up at 1000 when I got back. So we walked around and got random food. I had my last Burrito (it is capitalized on purpose), unfortunately it wasn't from Chipotle. Oh well. I also accidentally got bubble tea. I was conned into it. I thought it was a smoothie. I did not enjoy it. Nolan left us and we took a cab back down to Waikiki. Becca and I scoped out bathing suits and Nic and Mason went down to the beach. We all did our own thing for a few hours then met back up downtown. We're currently in the cab right now making our way back to the ship to make it back for onship time. It's getting close...

We leave tonight at 2000 for Japan! It will be the longest time at sea. I'll try and post a few times if I can. I dunno if I'll be able to from the middle of the Pacific. Email me! sjchaston@semesteratsea.net

We get to Japan February 9th!

Miss and love.