Honolulu style

Vacation hits a whole new level when you wake up from a good night's sleep on a perfectly firm mattress (not one of these mushy foam things) and have your coffee while watching the sun come up on Waikiki Beach from the 20th floor. Not sure it can get any better than this -- though we are determined to find out. 

Oh, about that secret mission. It was suggested we should secretly be buying a vacation home on Hawaii. Great idea!! After I sell everything else and move the money to a Swiss bank we should be all set to do that. Let's check back...

The morning agenda includes instruction in Hawaiian and Tahitian dance for the ladies and a surfing lesson for me.  Kathy and Pat arrive to find Shanté with no other students -- private lesson in the park alongside yoga, tai chi, etc. Shanté is delightful, an expert, and really inspired her students. 

I've seen the video, they really learned to shimmy.

I got a small group lesson with Pauli and an ex-pro named Michael Jackson (no, not that one) on Waikiki Beach. Both super nice, both tremendously experienced. There were four cute young women and me in the class -- I got way more instruction than I expected!  As there are no photos I'll summarize by saying that I got up on the board every time, rode each wave for quite a distance, and really only got wet from the backsplash as I paddled out to the next wave. I invented one new surfing move but, alas, there's no video of that either. Oh and we did see green turtles out there with us. Awesome!

By the time I got back to the condo, Kathy and Pat had visited a local market and had seaweed salad & poke bowls ready for lunch. Yum! 

We made a quick turnaround and booked it over to the Bishop Museum, a Hawaiian historical and cultural museum in an 1890's stone building. The great hall reminded us of the science & natural history museum in Edinburg. Stupendous!

Apparently the museum maintained its Eurocentric colonial presentation until about 2007, when the hall and exhibits were renovated with much more input from Hawaiian elders and knowledge holders. This tracks with the greatly increased use of Hawaiian language that we perceive since our 1992 visit. 

Things such as renewed appreciation that Hawaii was settled intentionally by Tahitians who navigated here on purpose (contrary to the Eurocentric viewpoint that it was by chance as some group fled and managed to find other land). This was partly reinforced by intentional canoe voyage in the Hõkūle'a to Tahiti and back without modern navigational tools (1970's-2000's)

Six seat racing canoe

Catamaran style boat built from two very large canoes.

Map of part of the Pacific showing islands and local fish hooks (strikingly similar).

We talked to a docent who pointed out the original feathered cape given to Captain Cook by the Hawaiian King in ~1780, containing about 4 million tiny bird feathers in red and yellow. Also a headdress.  Unbelievable!

The cape would drape a man from neck to feet, that's how large it is. Stunningly beautiful.

Finally some nice ~1800's paintings of volcanoes including 1880 Mauna Loa eruption. 

And finally the original painting of Diamond Head.

Later Kathy and Pat went to a cooking class while Dave watched the surfers on Diamond Head.

Tomorrow we go to the north side of the island to watch surfing on massive waves and eat garlic shrimp at food trucks.