The World Cruise Begins - Long Beach, California to Hilo, Hawaii

Jan 28 – The day starts early as neither Diana nor I have finished packing. Holland America Line (HAL) has provided for us to ship 100 pounds of luggage to the ship free of charge. The two suitcases we sent weighed about 98.5 pounds. They were picked up on Jan 24th and will be delivered to us on the ship. We are taking one large suitcase, two carry-on suitcases, my computer case, a small camera bag and my backpack with us to the ship.

We finished packing and were almost ready to go when Allan and Roseamary Rauch arrived to take us to the Westin Hotel in Long Beach. Our travel agent, Cruise Specialists, Inc of Seattle (CSI), is throwing a bon voyage party for us there and is putting us up for the night at the hotel. The party was fun and the food was good. Several HAL employees were in attendance as well as our consultant, Grace Easley and the firm’s owner Janet Lanterman. There were about 16 people there who were on the AsiaPacific Explorer cruise with us in 2002.

Jan 29 – This morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then waited for our 11:35 transfer to the ship. We thought we would be taken to the ship by motor coach, but to our surprise CSI is sending us to the ship in limos, 4 people to a car. Yikes!! We were in a super-stretch limo that has seats for 11. When we arrived at the ship we were greeted by airport-like security measures. I don’t mind these steps; in fact they probably don’t go far enough to be really effective. We were onboard by 12:15PM and, as our luggage was not in the room yet, we went up to the lido for lunch. When we returned to our room all the luggage was there and we began the ‘moving in’ process. This room will be ‘home’ for the next 96 days.

Our first dinner evening was casual dress and our table for eight has two couples we traveled with on the AsiaPacific cruise and two ladies traveling together. Eric and Evelyn are from Canada, Max and Shirley are from Florida and the ladies are from Arizona.

After dinner and the obligatory introduction show for the evening we returned to room 387 to continue our unpacking.

Jan 30 – The first night at sea was a good one to separate the landlubbers from the sailors. The sea was pretty rough. Not as rough as we’ve had it on the North Atlantic or the Bering Sea in Fall but moving around pretty well. This morning it seems to be smoothing out quickly. It looks like the Captain is sailing a little bit to the South to pick up some warmer, calmer waters. There are several lecturers on board. Every day at sea there will be at least two lectures. I’ll write about them after I hear them speak. After eating and resting my way through the day we went to the evening show. It was a group named Graffiti. It’s four young people, two each men and women. The two women and one man play violins and the other man plays bass. Their music is partly classical, partly traditional Irish and English songs. The unique part of the show is the choreography they perform while they play. At one point they were all playing their instruments guitar style. Quite a trick for the bass player. For one song they started off all sitting on the floor with their legs straight out in front of them and they did a very slow sit-up while playing. Also quite a trick for the bass player. They were very unique and excellent performers. After that it was back to the room. Diana is still unpacking.

Jan 31 – We both got up early this AM. I usually do but Diana had to because she had a Reflexology appointment. The foot she injured in Thailand is still bothering her and she wanted to see if it would help.

I’m attending Tai Chi classes in the AM just like I did on the AsiaPacific cruise. That class was taught by an 80 year old Chinese man from Brooklyn NY. This class is being taught by a 60-something Australian. He’s a good teacher but Stephen Lin was much better at Tai Chi. The ocean is pretty smooth today but it is rolling just enough to remind you that you’re on a ship.

The morning lecturer is a historian and he talked about the geology and migrations of the Hawaiian Islands. Pretty interesting but mostly things I knew already. Tonight is the first formal night and I’m going to have to spend some extra time getting my rig ready.

On the way to meet the captain we had to run the gauntlet of photographers wanting to take pictures of us in our formal attire. Maybe one will be respectable enough to buy. The captain, Halle Thon Gunderson, has been with the Prinzendam since it’s construction. In fact, he was the shipyard officer that oversaw the entire building process. The ship was completed in 1988 and he has been with her ever since. His wife and 6-year-old daughter are traveling with him. They are both gorgeous!! I think his wife might be 25 years or so younger than him.

Tonight we get to turn the clocks back an hour. That’s one of the main advantages of a westbound world trip. You never have to turn the clock forward. You just gain an hour every time you pass through a time zone. The penalty we will pay for all these one-hour gains is that we will not have a Feb 12th this year. That’s the day we loose as we cross the International Date Line. We will get it one hour at a time as we circumnavigate the world.

Feb 1 – It was great sleeping in to 8AM. That extra hour will really spoil me. It’s hard to believe that we’ll get 21 more of them to Ft. Lauderdale. Today we attended the second lecture in the Hawaiian history series. Lot more information new to me in this one. It was about the political consolidation of the islands under King and the period around Capt. George Vancouver’s visits. Odd how no one mentions Oalkalipoko’s visit to the US and his fervor in taking Christianity back to his home or the strong Congregationalist stance of the Prime Minister in the islands. She was the Prime Minister to the first three kings Kamehameha. It seems the Hawaiian’s themselves had great fervor for the gospel. It was not, as we are told so often today, forced on them by mean spirited missionaries. Rather the Hawaiians themselves promoted it, Michener’s book Hawaii notwithstanding. It is, after all, a work of fiction. The entertainment tonight was a magician. There are not a lot of ways to do the rope, handkerchief, newspaper or bottle tricks but if they have a humorous patter to go with them it can be very entertaining and Johnathan Neil Brown was pretty good. Another day at sea tomorrow and then Hilo!

Feb 2 – Last day as sea before Hilo. Seas are moderate, about 5-7 feet and you hardly feel it. Every at sea morning it’s my intention to attend Tai Chi class. So far I’ve made it. The big deal today was the Black and White Ball. The captain and his wife led off the dancing and then the dance floor became quite crowded. Diana and I danced several dances. A ship’s engineer, the Second Officer and some passengers asked Diana to dance. I danced with the Assistant Cruise Director, the crew’s pay officer and the hairdresser from the salon. Lots of fun on the dance floor. The crew pay officer, Erin, and I won a bottle of Champaign.

Culinary Note: The food on this cruise is excellent. Tonight I had pheasant with apples, currant jelly and medallions of corn on the cob. It was outstanding. Pheasant is one fancy meat the Pennsylvania Dutch will have because you can hunt it yourself. I’ve been eating it for over 50 years and this is the best I’ve ever tasted.

Feb 3 – Up early today to help a fellow passenger reinstall AOL. Somehow the program got corrupted and he’s losing all his incoming email. As we sailed into Hilo we passed through several heavy rainsqualls. When we arrived at the pier it was raining steadily and did not show any signs of clearing up. Diana was scheduled to see the volcanoes by helicopter and I was scheduled to go to the Mauna Kea observatories. The rain adversely affected both trips. Diana’s tour did not make it to the volcanoes and the road to the summit of Mauna Kea was closed by snow and ice. Diana’s tour was refunded but our van driver took us on an alternate itinerary that was very enjoyable despite the bad weather.

First we stopped at Rainbow Falls in the city of Hilo. We’d been there before but it is very pretty. Next we drove up to about 9,000 feet on Mauna Kea to the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy. It’s dedicated to amateur astronomers and named after the Hawaiian astronaut that died in the Challenger explosion. At this point the summit road was closed due to ice and snow at the 11,000-foot mark. We stopped there for a presentation on the observatories up at the 14,000-foot level. Our guide is an operator for one of the telescopes on the peak. There were some Silver Sword plants near the center.

Then we drove across the saddle between the two volcanoes to Mauna Loa and up to the NOAA weather observatory at just about 12,000 feet. The drive across was on a one-lane road laid out over continuous lava fields of all colors and types. The most unusual was made up of the smooth type of lave that was a golden tan in color. From a distance it looked like a huge cow pie. I have never seen lava that color before. We saw lava tubes and all sorts of formations. At the weather observatory we got out to look around just in time to get pelted by a shower of freezing rain. One nice thing about freezing rain, you don’t get wet. But with the gusty winds (and, of course, I was in shorts) the rain pellets hit my legs with some force and the stinging sensation they produced was painful but stimulating.

Diana was back to the ship in time to have dinner in Hilo with a friend of ours who retired here after working in SoCal. He was born here and his parents are still here.

After returning from the tours we had a luau on the ship with Hawaiian performers who danced and sang. Very enjoyable. Tomorrow we are in Honolulu and we’re hoping for better weather.

Feb 4 – This morning we had some time on our own as our tour did not leave until noon. My electric razor has gone out and I didn’t bring a regular razor so we hopped off the ship and walked to Long’s Drugs and purchased some supplies. I got a Panasonic Wet/Dry electric razor. Hope I like it. Not to be outdone Diana bought a curling iron, her hair as proven to be too short for her curlers. Then it was back to the ship.

Today’s tour is a Dolphin Encounter. They have a small Sea World type park here called Sea Life Park. We arrived there in cloudy weather but no rain yet. We watched the sea mammal show and viewed the penguin and sea turtle exhibits and then it was time to get to know the dolphins. They had two Pacific Bottle Nose dolphins for us to work with, one male and one female. We got in the water with them and became acquainted with ours, the female. We learned some hand signals to use in communicating with the dolphins and then each of us was allowed to instruct the dolphin to perform a trick. We each slapped the water with our hands to call the dolphin and then put our hands under them to raise them up to our cheek for a dolphin kiss. Of course, the park had a digital photographer there to capture the moment and then sell us the picture. Both of ours turned out pretty well so we did buy them.

Just before we started to walk out to the dolphin pool it started to rain. When we got in the water some of the people thought it was cold. When it started to pour, the pool was so much warmer than the rain that everyone wanted to get deeper in the pool. Funny how things can change. Fortunately the weather was warm so no one was in danger of freezing. We all got thoroughly soaked.

Then it was back to the ship and off for Christmas Island after two days at sea.

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(c) 2005 Rod Longenberger