Aloha

After months of anticipation about our upcoming, long overdue vacation, Miranda and I finally made it to Hawaii. Oh sure, many never even make it across the Pacific to the beautifully lush islands in a lifetime. But you see, it was the very dreaming of one day traveling to Hawaii which brought our relationship to a new level of commitment what began eight short years ago. Now that the two of us have been to the islands together, we can finally move on with our lives. In planning for our visit, we opted to find a cheap, all-inclusive cruise which would visit several of the islands. After some online research, we chose to embark on The Pride of Aloha with Norwegian Cruise Lines.

We flew in to the island of Maui and enjoyed a couple of days there before floating over to Honolulu on Oahu. During our stay in Honolulu we met a wonderful family from Nebraska who hiked up Diamond Head Crater with us. We also joined them for dinner a couple of times on the boat. From Honolulu we drifted up to the garden island, Kauai where we had the privilege of looking out over the Grand Canyon of the Pacific known as Waimea. We also did some snorkeling in Kauai. I have to tell you, snorkeling in the Pacific was just about one of the most magical things Miranda and I have ever done together. During our honeymoon in Florida six years ago, we visited this makeshift aquatic zoo in what had to be someone's back yard. It was, to say the least, highly entertaining. The simultaneously cool and sad thing about this questionable operation though was that they had a giant sea turtle in this little pool. He was a beautiful creature slowly swimming back and forth. Occasionally, he would poke his head out of the water and look you right in the eye as if to say, "Not a whole lot to do around here is there." But Miranda marveled over him like a little child. Until then, I had no idea how much she enjoyed sea turtles... Fast forward to Kauai, 2006. Aside from the colorful fish of many sizes and shapes, we got to float right over two big sea turtles as they waved their mighty flippers and went on with their everyday turtle lives. As amazing as swimming with those turtles was,and believe me it was pretty amazing, the thing that gave me more joy was watching my wife's face light up behind her snorkel and mask. The plastic plumbing clinging tightly to her face couldn't hide the shrieks of delight as she watched those turtles float slowly beneath her. If I'd ever forgotten, all of the memories of why I first fell in love with this girl came rushing back to me.

After two days on Kauai, our boat took us to the big island where we stopped at Hilo for a day to ride bicycles down a volcano and then Kona where we went 100 feet below sea level in a tiny submarine. Our journey ended where it began back on the island of Maui where they booted us off the boat at 8:45am and shuttled us to the airport where our flight was to leave at 5:50pm. Miranda and I decided to rent a car and drive for a while. We took off along the coast down the Hana highway to see what we could see. We found a beautiful off-road oasis call the Twin Falls where we hiked back to swim in some crispy cool waterfalls. We then stopped to walk along the beach on our way back to the airport at afternoon's end.

Sure, we had to endure the tiresome bitching of some of the cruise snobs aboard the ship. We went cheap and had no cruise experience with what to compare. I say, you get whatyou pay for. And who cares anyway? We were in paradise. No amount of airborne flu, bad buffet food or obnoxious cruise directors could take away from that. The icing on the cake, as our plane departed over the Pacific, was looking out over the expanse of endless blue sea that slowly veiled itself beneath the thick of clouds that cradled the sky like an arctic landscape. I swear we could have set that big old jet right down and all walked out to dance around for a bit. I just said, yeah God, that's pretty good.