Between sloth, extremely limited internet access, and holiday fun, I haven’t done much blogging OR painting. Actually, on the trip over, (once the gale force winds subsided) I did take some time to paint a little figurative piece, but never got back to it to clean it up to the point where I’d care to post it. I’ll work on that on the long trip home.
After the weather normalized, we began to enjoy the trip a bit more. We were happy to spend a day each on Maui, Kauai, and Oahu and on the big Island, Hawaii, we spent a day in Kona and in Hilo.
Each island is special and beautiful. Oahu is my least favorite as most of our time was spent in the big city of Honolulu. We did go visit some of the famous old hotels in Waikiki that my Dad remembered and had a pleasant time but in my mind Honolulu is just too much of a big city and we didn’t have much time to explore the rest of the island.
This is Tyler’s and Greg’s first visit to any of the islands. Since we each color our own experiences through the context of events, people and previous related encounters, I’m curious as to which island experience was the favorite for each of us.
My favorite experience was while we were in Kona, Hawaii. We went on a whale watch which I think was unique even to the whale watching crew. Within about 15 minutes of leaving the shore the captain of the catamaran had spotted a group of juvenile whales (although they were quite huge) which we followed or which followed US for the next 2 ½ hours. They drifted back and forth sometimes swimming up to the catamaran and sometimes thrilling everyone with breaches, pec flaps and other acrobatics. It was awe inspiring. Another time when I thank goodness I can see the beauty of life around this world. One of the smaller whales in the group was a peculiar grey color with an almost totally white “whale tale”. There was a fabulous naturalist on the trip named Denver who answer questions and really provided us all with so much interesting whale information. He told us that each “whale tale” is like a finger print. They keep track of the whales by photographing the underside of the tale and thus know which have returned, etc. Here are a few things I remember about the marvelous humpback whales like those we enjoyed watching while they were cavorting near Kona:
- On average humpback whales are born about the size of a Volkswagen.
- None of them except the calves eat anything while they are in Hawaii… (The food is too expensive.)
- The calves (being the only ones who eat in Hawaii) are the only ones which poop. The poop looks like a big two foot long yellow floating slug and the sea birds and fish enjoy feasting on it.
- They migrate from the area around Alaska every year to mate and to have their calves. (There are others that have different migratory paths but these don’t travel south of the equator and those south don’t travel north, etc.)
- The calves remain with their mother one year until they return to Hawaii and then the mother ditches them.
- There are NO twins. Each mother loses about 1/3 of her body weight feeding the calf while in Hawaii.
- A calf will drink the equivalent of two oil drums of milk EVERY day that it nurses – the milk is over 50% milkfat.
- Humpbacks are “mustached” whales…. They have baleen, not teeth.
- They have two blow holes on top. (Toothed whales have only one.)
- Humpback whales are the third largest whales and have very few predators other than man. (Sometimes Orcas or large sharks will attack calves or sick animals.)
- They have been classed as endangered but the population is on the rise again since they were placed on the list.
They are beautiful majestic animals and I feel privileged to have spent time in the Hawaiian sun admiring them.
I actually have a wonderful short video which I've been trying to upload, but the ship's internet isn't doing very well lately, (It's been down for two days now...) so I'll try to do it after I post.... on an edit... or perhaps on another post. ....................... Okay... SUCCESS!!!... Enjoy the show!!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
