The Waikiki Commute

OK. Commutes are now interesting…or at least, the new commutes I am discovering since I no longer drive to work are interesting!

My Crested Butte commutes were absolutely gorgeous. I had the whole vista of the west Elk Mountains before me as I bicycled to work every day…and the thrill of sailing down the bike path and into town before I headed home. In the winter I had the fortune to be skiing down from the top of the Silver Queen lift to get to the Ice Bar half way down the mountain. The commute got shorter as the season got older and my skiing improved! Now I walk. But it’s still a commute: I am still trying to get to work.

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Here is the corner of the street - next to the Starbucks and across from the park and the beach and also looking across Kapiolani Park

Waikiki Beach and Walk in the early morning

My new commute takes around 40 minutes a day each way. The good thing about it is that it is on foot. I could take the bus if I wanted, but usually in the morning it is nice and cool (at least at first) and there are very few people around…and I don’t sweat until I get at least 15 minutes into the walk! And who wants to sit on an air-conditioned bus on city streets for 30 minutes when they can walk along the boardwalk instead!

Coming back in the evenings is also a treat: usually the sun is starting to set over the ocean and it’s generally pretty incredible. I wouldn’t want to miss that for the world… In the morning I share my commute with joggers and early rising tourists who are still trying to get used to the time difference out here (we are 3 hours behind Colorado and 2 hours behind the West coast). I walk past the park towards the beach and then along the beach walk for a while.

Here is a Banyan Tree. This one is halfway down Waikiki. They are pretty cool: when their branches get too long they put out extra "roots" from their branches to support themselves - they are also densely shaded underneath and a favourite haunt of the local birds...

Usually the sun is out and the water sparkles in all different shades of blue as it rolls into shore. Then there are the shops: Cartier, Coach; Dior, Ferrari and a bunch of others that I can’t remember off hand -it’s really not my thing, but that’s obviously not the case for the tons of Japanese tourists out here. Safe to say, there are a lot of designer stores here!

After the stores I walk past several parks that are filled with incredible trees that sprout beautiful and fragrant flowers in astonishing hues, and plants of every colour. I love the birds of paradise and the smell of the hibiscus flowers as it floats in the air as I am walking by. Dama de la noche is also every where. I remember the smell from Spain, but I’m not sure if it’s a kind of Jasmine in English or not.

Past the parks is the canal with its army of canoeists and kayakers where I

love watching the outrigger canoes as they paddle their way quickly to or from the ocean, and the view of the masts rolling slightly in the breeze in the Ala Wai harbour. After that, it’s pretty much a city walk, but even the busy avenue I walk down towards the school, Kapiolani, is usually a little cooler since it is shaded with huge trees which spread their branches over the pavement.

Unfortunately these photos really don’t do justice to the colours that I really see every day…but at least it hopefully gives you a taste of my daily walk...

Byodo In Temple and the mundane job of grocery shoppng....NOT!

Last weekend (Nov 8th & 9th) we had the exciting task of going to the grocery store. Now this is no longer an easy “pop to the shops” kind of thing. Noooo. It takes planning and is good for at least a half days worth of entertainment. We wrote our list and decided where the best place was to get the items: the Japanese market for sushi, noodles, meat and veggies (much cheaper here) and Safeway for the more mundane stuff like lunch meat, Italian sausage and milk.

First we walked the 2 miles or so to the Japanese, or Asian, supermarket. This is not as boring as it sounds since we can walk straight along the beach for at least a third of the way, and then have the people watching factor for another third or so as we walk past all the big hotels and designer stores such as Coach, Cartier and Dior. Once we got to the supermarket and found our way through all the electronics (including massage chairs, rice cookers galore, handy electric frying pans etc) clothes, perfumes, “seasonal” items etc, we kicked back and spent a while trying to figure out what some of the stuff was that we were looking at. My perennial favourites are the veggie, fish, sushi and “freshly pickled stuff” aisles. The veggie aisle always has at least 10 types of Asian “greens for cooking” and about 20 different types of cabbage. We are currently trying to work our way through most of them and have found all the “greens for cooking” have been perfect for stir fry!

The “freshly pickled stuff” aisle is in a class of its own though. It is always fascinating and has all kinds of stuff, including about 1,700 different types of Kim Chee…minimum! And I always thought kim chee was just pickled cabbage…! I love trying to figure out what on earth that “squishy green thing” is or what that big container with lots of different coloured “squishy and not squishy things” has in it. Or what on earth is in that kim chee? One day we will pluck up the courage to try some maybe!

We always like to try some of the different kinds of poke. Poke is a Hawaiian dish. It is usually raw fish like tuni or salmon, but can also be tofu or veggie. The fish is then marinated with different spices and flavours and marinated. It is delicious and completely addictive…if you like raw fish I guess…Out current favourite is the wasabi ahi tuna poke. Yum!!!! The tuna is marinated in (I think) a base of soy, green onion and wasabi, a Japanese spicy mustard of some type that is green and which totally blows your head off if you have to much. It’s great! Very spicy. And like I said totally addictive - maybe I could even tempt you if you don’t like raw fish…Good thing is that it’s pretty inexpensive here, we buy a lot of it!

Once we had loaded up we walk to the bus stop which is fortunately very near by and catch the bus back down to Waikiki to unload and start in on that poke! Obviously Safeway isn’t any where near as exciting. - it’s now Wednesday night and we still haven’t managed to make it there…though they do have a very impressive Italian gelato bar which I can attest is very tasty! Especially the double dark chocolate gelato!

Sunday we decided to try and get to the Byodo In Temple. It is a copy of an original and very famous Buddhist temple in Japan dating from over 900 years ago and is part of the Garden of Remembrance here in Oahu. The gardens were beautiful and very peaceful. I thought it was a lovely idea: each different culture and religion had it’s own area. So there were Buddhist gardens, Chinese gardens, Catholic gardens and churches, protestant gardens etc. All in one place nestled up against the side of the pali. (Quiz time – what does pali mean again?!). Very civilized.

The beach at Puuni with another storm moving in and Nick in the beach

It took us pretty much the whole day to get there. We had a vague idea that it was on the other side of Kane’ohe so we took the Island circle bus up there. When we arrived in Kane’ohe though, it was torrential rain, so we decided to stay on the bus and head a little further north. The original plan had been to see the temple and then hit a beach, so we just did it the other way around. Except it really wasn’t very nice when we got off the bus either and we hadn’t chosen a great beach. The waves were too high and there wasn’t really any chance of swimming, though we did see a couple of “diver down” signs – way too close to the shore for me to get in and go out there! We walked down the beach a little ways and then as the weather cleared up a little decided to try our luck again.

Back on the bus we asked the very friendly bus driver how we could. She told us where to get off and what bus to catch next. Unfortunately it was Sunday, and the next bus wasn’t for an hour…we walked down a stop and then waited as we really didn’t know where we where going. We took bets on the fact that it was probably right around the next corner…When the bus finally showed up it went all over so we though maybe we had done the right thing…and then we realized that we had just been criss-crossing the main road that we had been on and it would have taken us maybe 10 minutes to walk there…max!!! Oh well. At least we made it before it closed (just!). The temple was lovely though and nice and peaceful since we were lucky to be leaving just as the tour buses arrived!

I couldn’t get over how big the koi were – they are evidently well fed!

The Buddha at the temple - covered in gold lacquer and gold leaf...

On the way back I managed to get a photo of a bird of paradise. I have been passing this plant for days and never had my camera with me...

Hale'iwa and Hanauma Bay

Last weekend we finally had chance to play and spend the weekend just hanging out. I love these three day weekends! On Saturday we took the round the island bus. It’s a four hour trip and costs $2 if you stay on. We took the bus clockwise and headed for the North Shore (where all the big surfing competitions happen in the winter). I took around 2 hours and we passed over the plateau on the middle of the island and by the Dole Plantation – the largest pineapple plantation in the world.

We got off the bus in Hale’iwa. Most of the North Shore is unswimable in the winter because of high waves, underwater currents and sharks (really), but we had heard you could swim at the Hale’iwa Beach Park all the time. When we got their there were strong current signs out. Nick went out a little ways but I stayed close (very!!) to shore! It was very rocky or coral-y, but a lovely place. There were huge green lawns fronting the beach park with lots of shade trees. There were a bunch of parties happening and a band playing. It seems to be pretty normal here for whole families to come down to the beach for the day at the weekend. They bring awnings, chairs, tents for the kids to sleep in, food, grills, coolers: everything you can think of for a day at the beach, and then they just hang out on the grass lawns that pretty much front every beach park here. It’s a great way to spend the day. In Honolulu the beach parks even have grills so you can bring coals and don’t have to tote a BBQ grill out. What a great idea!!!!
















Hale’iwa was pretty special for another reason though - we were amazed to see Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles as we were just walking along the shore! Eagle eye Nick spotted then first and I don’t think either of us could believe it! It was worth spending the afternoon there for that alone! I got some great photos of one turtle in the water and another basking on the sand. Nick took his snorkel gear and was able to swim up within a foot of them in the water. Pretty amazing, we will def go back and see if we can see them again.

After Hale’iwa we took the bus clockwise again ad came down the east coast. Unfortunately our timing wasn’t too good and it was dark before we were half way down the coast – it seems to get dark so early after the beautiful summer days – it gets light around 6 am and dark around 6pm. Dark falls fast, but I guess that’s a consequence of being nearer the equator – it doesn’t change all year round.

And by the way, if your ever in Hale’iwa, the burgers are great at Bob’s!!

Sunday we hung out around Waikiki and hit the beach here. We live a half a block away – it literally takes two minutes to go from the apartment to sitting on the beach, so I take advantage whenever I can!!! Monday we decided to go to Hamauma Bay. We had heard it was very touristy and that the snorkeling wasn’t great, but decided to try it anyway. The guide book says that the water stays fairly shallow so I thought I would be able to get out a little ways and see something. And we had a blast! The bay itself is lovely – almost a perfect circle – produced form an old volcano cone. Before we hit the bay we headed up to Koko Point to get some photos and see the view from the top. Glad we went first – it was quite the climb! Here is the view for the top back towards Diamond Head and Waikiki.

The bay is very shallow – so much so that at some points the coral is barely 10 inches down. But there are also sandy spots were the coral disappears. I was even brave enough to swim a little out of my depth there! The snorkeling was great. We saw a ton of fish and sea cucumbers and urchins. We actually couldn’t believe the variety of fish that we saw – the coral wasn’t in great shape and there were a ton of people around but they were just hanging out and going about their business. Definitely worth the $5 entrance fee…and if we have Hawaiian ID next time we go it will be free! I would highly recommend it - Mom you would have loved it!

Kailua

The first weekend after we moved into our new place was ruined by rain and vog: volcanic fog that had drifted over from the Big Island when the winds shifted away from their normal direction. It was pretty bad but everyone told us that it doesn’t happen very often – good thing! After a day or too in our miniscule (and very expensive) apartment I was going crazy! Nick couldn’t even find any football on the TV!!! And yes, this is the extent of the apartment - told you it was miniscule!!!!

The Monday however dawned with gorgeous blue skies, light trade winds and a need for us to get out! We chose to head for Kailua, a small town over the ‘pali’ (apparently translated as “sheer sided cliff). It was our first time out of Honolulu. The mountains were beautiful – covered in green, green foliage that was so thick, you couldn’t even see a few feet through it at the side of the road. And so steep! They just go up and down – no way we will be hiking over any of those mountains! We were also surprised at how high they are – they just rise up form the ocean. Very impressive…

We arrived in Kailua and happened to jump of the bus outside a Mexican restaurant! What luck! We had been told there weren’t any out here (wrong Marci!!!) so we had to go in and have lunch! After that we wondered down to the beach. A few of my students had told me it was one of the best beaches on the island and our local guidebook said the same thing. Judge for yourself – here are some of the photos!

We had a nice lazy afternoon swimming and laying out and just enjoying the warmth. The water was a little too cloudy for snorkeling, but Tamara, the head teacher at the school who lives in Kailua, said next time we should head out to the island or Lanikai Beach and the water is much clearer for snorkeling out that way. Lanikai is supposed to be lovely as well, so we will def do that one of these days.

Back to work...sigh...

I have an interview on the Thursday morning at EF English Language School based in the Waikiki Trade Center. The school opened in June and everything is bright, light, and brand new. And there are amazing views of the ocean. The interview lasts two hours and includes a tour of the building. Everything seems to be going well, but at the end the Director of Studies says he will call me the next day to let me know either way, will only have around 6 hours of teaching for me at the moment and then tells me that there is no syllabus for the classes I could be potentially teaching so I will have to create one. Hmm. Not really what I wanted to hear! The school has had some visa delay issues and so there are only 35 students at the moment and thy already have a couple of full time teachers. It makes me worry that I may have to piecemeal different classes from different schools together which is not what I wanted to do, but we’ll see.

The second interview in the afternoon is at Global Village. It’s a Canadian company that has schools throughout Canada, a couple in Australia and New Zealand and now one in Hawaii. Tamara offers me a job before I leave (after 10 minutes she is already talking about the schedule so I can start thinking about what classes I would prefer). The pay isn’t quite as high as I wanted, but they seem organized, the students are all young adults from all over and there is high energy in the common areas. It seems like a fun place to be. She can probably only offer me 10 hours a week though for the next month and their contract prohibits me from taking classes at any rival private language school.

When I check email, the school that had already offered me teaching hours has reneged: they had a drop in student enrollments and can’t offer me any classes. Damn! I decide to call GV and take their offer.
Now two weeks later I have been teaching 18 hours a week, and they think there could be 25 hours a week starting with the next term on November 20. I love my job! I am so excited to be back teaching again almost full time. The students are generally responsive and are a lot of fun, the classes I am teaching at this point are additional credit with no set schedule so they are flexible and I am free to teach whatever I think is needed. They talk a lot and we laugh a lot and I am very happy to be here and doing this - it’s still hot and sweaty though!

First days in Honolulu...

We arrived in Honolulu on a hot Wednesday afternoon. Our Rough Guide advised us to take the Airport Waikiki Express to our hotel for $9 which we did. Fortunately we were the first hotel so were off the bus quickly. We had booked a room privately through the internet at the Ala Moana Hotel which is close to the Honolulu Convention Center and the Ala Moana Mall; apparently one of the largest outdoor malls in the world…I chose this because it was between Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, close to one of the main bus transit centers. It turned out to be legit, a great place with a lovely airy room, a nice pool, just a block from the beach, within walking distance of Waikiki and all it’s entertainment and restaurants, a couple of minutes to the bus transit center, close to a great Japanese supermarket and five minutes walk from where I ended up getting a job! Perfect!

That first day we unpacked (a luxury after two weeks on the road) and headed out to explore. First stop was a Japanese noodle shop/hole in the wall where we had fried noodles with pork and vegetables, a seafood noodle soup and gyoza (pan fried dumplings). YUM!!! This is going to be great! We stopped by the supermarket to check out what they had and to look at prices and felt like we were back in Asia. It was just like walking into a supermarket in Hong Kong! Asian vegetables, fruit, noodles and spices, plus a bunch of stuff we had no idea about and an amazing seafood selection. We decided to try the poke, a Hawaiian specialty of raw fish (or tofu) with sauce and spices, and opted for the tuna. YUM!!! This is really going to be great! The sushi is cheap as well: twelve or fourteen pieces of ahi tuna for $3.99. Looks like we are going to be eating a lot of fish!

I can’t get over how hot and humid it is though and we are sweating profusely as we wander down into Waikiki and head for the beach. There is a breeze blowing off the ocean which makes it a little more bearable, but there are people everywhere! We get off the small strip of beach and escape the apparently endlessly ongoing construction down at the Hilton and Marina end of the beach and head for the main promenade area. It is pretty much the busiest road in Waikiki and there are cars, taxis, buses, bikes, minibuses, scooters, bikes and people everywhere – quite the island paradise! The ocean is gorgeous though, blue and turquoise and green with waves gently lapping against the edge of the sand. The sun is shinning, the water is full (and I mean full!) of heads bobbing around with their surf boards waiting for the next perfect wave, kids running in and out of the water and people generally hanging out. And we are fascinated by the Banyan trees and the flocks of birds they attract. Every evening just before dusk they set up a cacophony of squawking that I will always remember!

We walk down to the end of Waikiki which is apparently a number of different ‘beach parks’ but in reality is one long strip. I love being near the ocean again and we can’t resist dipping our toes into the Pacific! It will be so refreshing to jump in! We wander back to the hotel through the International Market Place which is a little more our style than the designer boutiques, stores and malls that line Kalakaua and Kuhio Avenues (don’t think I’ll get used to those street names either!). And we find the places where I have interviews the next day. Crap! That’s right! I need to start thinking about work! This isn’t a vacation…!!!!!

Sunset Hawai'i style...

We left Colorado on a Wednesday morning in early October singing along to the song “On the road again” on the radio! Driving over Raton Pass we said our goodbyes and both wondered when we would be back again… it wasn’t sad though, after all, we still have all that real estate that we need to sell, so we’ll be back!

On the road again...getting ready to leave Phoenix

We stopped off at Gloria and Bob’s in Albuquerque and said hello and then left with Gloria for Las Cruces. We would have stayed to watch the Balloon Festival, but the forecast was windy and we were already heading south later than we had wanted, so we decided to push on to Toni’s. We arrived around 6.30 and promptly opened the beers in celebration! Yay! On the road again!

Sarah - the latest addition to the Jarry family

Introducing Sarah, the latest addition to the
After a couple of days in Las Cruces, during which we managed to go for a run; eat at Andale, one of my favourite restaurants there; have a pedicure (Gloria’s first ever); visit Valerie, Taneka and Crystal (Nick’s cousin and kids on his Mom’s side); meet Sarah, the latest addition to Todd, Laura, Xander and Jotham’s family and generally hang out…phew - it didn’t seem so busy when we were doing it all!!! …we left for Tucson. We drove through an amazing storm that we were able to see sweeping across the desert from a good distance. There had been an unusual hurricane which came up through Baja California in Mexico and affected the whole area. The rain and wind were pretty impressive, but fortunately we were both heading in different directions and we soon cleared through the wind, mist and rain.

A fuzzy storm picture...

In Tucson we caught up with Marci, Savannah, Jane and Gil, Mark, Chris, Jan and Judy (for a 30 second visit before we were marched on to the next place!). I haven’t laughed so much in a long time as I did at the party we attended on the Saturday night. Must say I have never heard “fart” being referred to as the “F” word before…it created a great deal of confusion with everyone while the story that was being told! But it led to a lot of laughs once we figured out what “we never do the “F” word in front of each other!”

Marci and Mark at Rocky Point

From Tucson we headed to Rocky Point, or Puerto Penasco, Mexico. So much for leaving early on the Sunday morning, I think we were all a little tired and hungover, but we managed to get there by 11.30 or so. Jerry was there to meet us (another cousin!) and show us to our room – the three bedroomed, three bathroomed Presidential suite. Very nice it was too. We couldn’t resist taking a bunch of photos of the rooms before we put anything down or even got to taking photos of the beach from the huge sliding French doors!!! The afternoon was windy, but warm and sunny. Unfortunately the hurricane had churned up the water so we couldn’t really snorkel. The pools were also cold water pools and the air temperature didn’t make them too inviting! We enjoyed hanging out and relaxing down there though and then walking along the beach. The sunset was lovely. As it sank lower in the sky we were finally able to see the outline of the land and mountains on the other side of the Sea of Cortez. I couldn’t believe it was that far away…

Our room at the hotel!

Hanging out at the beach bars...
Puerto Penasco is unfortunately undergoing some hard times at the moment. Jerry told us that all building in the resort stopped dead when the mortgage and financial problems hit the U.S. market. Unemployment is now over 40% and the town is having to deal with social problems that haven’t arisen in a long time. A lot of the workers are able to return home to the south of Mexico, but it still doesn’t put money in their pockets. I think the whole market crisis is going to be much more far reaching than people are aware of at the moment.

Pelicans on the water

From Rocky Point we headed back to Tucson and then to Phoenix ready for our flight out to Honolulu on October 15th. We managed to get to the hotel via Ikea, which was, as always, a huge treat! I’m still upset that they just announced that one will be opening in Denver next year. Marci and Mark presented us with a memento of our trip, a very handy, amazingly cool wine opener that in true Ikea style cost about $5! We love it and christened it when we arrived in Waikiki!!! Thanks to Mark for being our chauffer and Marci for being tour director - we had a great time!

Hopefully I will be able to keep everyone in touch though at the moment we only have sporadic access through an internet café. Hope everyone is well!