Day 24/138, 2022/2023 Viking Neptune World Cruise; Day 6 of 6 sea days (thank goodness)
What a way to start the morning!
Sunrise on the North Pacific! What could be better?!
Watching the actually rise over the Pacific I think is even better!
We ordered breakfast to our cabin and ate ‘Al fresco’ on our balcony. It was such a beautiful morning and why not? I asked for a ham and cheese croissant this morning. Natasha who always answers the room service phone said the chef will have to make that special!
A nice change from the regular room service breakfast menu! The staff on Viking are so accommodating and really try to find ways to make unusual requests happen! The daily smoothie is delicious and you just never know what you’re getting, but it’s always good!
We wanted to watch the 9:30am lecture by Dr. Joseph Kess, from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada entitled “1000 Words of Hawaiian You Already Know.” As a former English Major at the University of Toronto, It has been a very long time since I sat through a lecture on dialect and language, but I was game for some ’learnin’ this morning!
The Hawaiian language only has 5 vowels and 8 consonants plus the apostrophe called ‘OKINA, which is a glottal stop. Examples of words in English that use the glottal stop are: ’cotton’, ‘mitten’, ‘button’. The State name ‘Hawaii’ has a glottal stop in it, and is actually pronounced ’huh-WAH-ee’. Some locals refer to Hawaii as ‘hah-vie-ee’ and both pronunciations are actually correct. If you see something written down that does not end in a vowel, in Hawaiian, then someone has made a spelling mistake! Interesting! Because the Hawaiian language has so few consonants when words are translated from English, the consonant closest to the English one is often used. For example, in Hawaiian there is no letter ‘T’ so the word ‘TABOO’ for example is spelled ’KAPU’.
The Hawaiian alphabet.
After learning a bit about the Hawaiian language it was time to get ready to go down to the Nordic Spa for my 11am Hydrotherapy facial.
I cannot remember the last time I had a facial. That’s pretty bad! I do know I had a hydrotherapy facial when I was in Hawaii 5 years ago at the spa at Turtle Bay, Oahu, but that is the last time I think I had one. That’s probably not a good thing if I cannot remember! The therapy was wonderful and lasted 50 Minutes. Using water and suction, the therapist cleans the décolleté as well as the face. The lovely massage of the face, neck and décolleté is wonderful too. All in all, I am really pleased I took the time to have a facial finally, but I had to go ‘wiki wiki’ to Team Trivia after my facial. ”Wiki Wiki“ in the Hawaiian language means ‘fast’, but even though I knew about Wikipedia, and the ability to quickly look something, it never dawned on me until today that ‘Wiki Wiki’ was from the Hawaiian language! Maybe this trivial fact will come in handy one day in Team Trivia!
We did very well in Team Trivia today, only losing by 1 point. We were torn on the soccer player Christiao Renaldo’s birthplace choosing ‘The Azores’ instead of our second choice which was ‘Madeira’. Ah well, an ‘also ran’ Team Trivia, yet again. Our team ended up eating together again in the World Cafe, where southern fried chicken and macaroni and cheese were the comfort foods on the buffet today.
I had to go ‘wiki wiki’ to art class to try and finish yesterday’s project before class started, but I ran out of time and apparently our teacher Deb is going to give us one day on our next set of sea days to finish everything we are not happy with. Today we were transferring tropical birds to our water colour paper, to paint. I chose to draw my own birds that I had photographed in Cartagena.
My inspiration:
The photo I took in Cartagena at the small zoo at the Port.
My painting so far.…a work in progress.
The entire art class heard that there was ‘land ahoy’ and immediately went ‘wiki-wiki’ to the Starboard side of the ship to see the Big Island of Hawaii. It has been so long since we have all seen land it was quite the novelty to finally see terra firma!
The first sighting of land around 2:15pm today. The Big Island, of Hawaii! Photo courtesy of Mike Schofield, who said he would share his photos from his good camera while his wife Sharon and me were in art class.
A hardened lava flow on the side of the Big Island, of Hawaii. It is really interesting to see how the lava has killed everything in its tracks, but yet there is still some greenery surviving. Photo courtesy of Mike Schofield.
After I finished art class I went ‘wiki-wiki’ up to our cabin to grab my Fuji XT-4 and some big lens to be able to try to zoom in on what we were seeing on the Big Island.
I initially had thought this ‘town’ was abandoned given it looks to be completely surrounded by lava, but after zooming in, I see there are quite a few cars, so there must be people living in the buildings or even in the school buses.
There looked to be a cave near the small village which I had just photographed above.
We kept watching at the aft of the ship for any signs of birds or wildlife and there was nothing happening, so we headed up to the front of the ship on Deck 7 and there wasn’t much going on there either. I’m determined to see a whale on this cruise and so far I’ve not been very successful! Oh well, I guess I need to be more patient!
Everyone is ‘buzzing’ about what they are going to be doing in Hawaii over the next few days. We learned that the pilot is boarding the ship at 7am tomorrow bring the Neptune into the port in Honolulu, and we dock at 8am. The first shuttle bus will be leaving for the Ala Moana Center at 9:30am for those who want to do some shopping and who are not on an excursion. Our tee time tomorrow is at 1pm so we will probably try and grab a shuttle to the Ala Moana Center with our golf clubs and I can park Richard with the clubs to people watch, while I look for an Aloha shirt for him; then we will find a Lyft to the golf club for our 1pm tee time.
I know that tonight in the World Cafe we are having a Hawaiian themed buffet and there is dancing under the stars on the Pool Deck until 11pm tonight. I’ve got to get ready ‘wiki-wiki’ to enjoy a wonderful tropical evening as we prepare for our two days in the paradise of Hawaii!
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