Wednesday, July 20, Des moines.  I had a 128 day around the world trip planned, but on the 118th day, Thursday, July 14th, my daughter phoned me at 7 pm, and told me my wife was very ill, and put the emergency room doctor on the phone.  He explained that Marcia had blood clots in both legs and in both lungs...  and was severely ill; by eight pm I was at the airport in Kauai, Hawaii, seeking plane transportation home, the departure desk clerk from Hawaiian Airlines saw my anxiousness and got me on a direct flight from Kauai to Phoenix and then to Des Moines on American Airlines, getting me home a day earlier than trying to return to Honolulu then to the mainland.  Leaving my large suitcases stored at the hostel in Honolulu, I arrived in Des Moines at 1:30 pm on Friday afternoon, and was at the hospital by two pm.  Now it is a week later, and I have the time to do this last blog for a while.  Marcia has committed to help me finish my round the world trip and come to Hawaii with me for those last ten days when she recovers, and is feeling up to a vacation trip.  I'm looking forward to doing that together.  As an aside, I had purchased three travel insurances, two had expired, but one was a 120 day travel policy, and this occured on the 118th day, so this time my unused five plane trips, the unused tours, the hostel nights, and the recovery of my luggage will be covered with this policy, hopefully.  I will continue this blog in some future months when Marcia and I complete my bucket list trip!

Tuesday, July 12, 7:30 pm, and I'm back on the porch of the hostel facing the ocean.  Could take a picture, but it would duplicate Yesterday's picture, and so would my comments about the soothing warm breezes, so I won't repeat that.  Today I had my tour of Kauai island, and Waimeai canyon, it has the same colors, stripes, and similar shapes as the grand canyon, but it is wetter here, so there is a lot of vegetation in the nooks and crannies of the canyon, and the contrast between the reds  yellows, browns,tans, and the green vegetation makes this a dramatically vivid scene.  it is smaller, and quite a bit less wide than the big one in arizona, but quite impressive also.  We got to see it from a viewing spot on one rim that took in just about all of the canyon.  We drove in a large bus almost thirty of us from NY, MO, Germany, France, Montreal, Australia, and a few more nations.  Drove along the eastern and southern coasts, ate at a golf course club house with the Pacific at the other end of the fairway.  Had an island hamburger with a large pineapple slice and a delicious sauce on it, with non diet root beer, followed by a very delicious coconut pie, tonite I ate a small chunk of goat cheese, half a green pepper, a tomato sliced up with herbs and seasonings.  Had to compensate for that coconut pie!  Went on a short boat ride to a spiritual grotto of the original Hawaiians, drove thru small towns, saw remains of sugar cane and pineapple  processing facilities, which now are all closed for regular commercial production due to competition from other nations with much lower labor costs.  Only small, non commercial growing is done.  They are growing high grade coffee, because there are machines to harvest the beans off the low trees, so don't have to contend with the high wages of so many workers to harvest the beans.  We saw fields where the older coffee trees had been pruned back to allow the coffee picking machines to go over them, after they recover from the severe pruning and restart producing beans again next season.  The other main crop on the islands is the care and cultivation of all of we tourists.  There are housing developments going up in former pineapple and sugar cane fields.  But be warned, the prices of stand alone houses are in the seven figures, with a 2, 3,4 or 5 in front of those zeros.  Condos usually start with a 1 in front of those six zeros.  Weekly, monthly shared vacation housing per year is becoming common.  Also visited water falls, saw sites were movie or TV shows were filmed, many of them, including Thornbirds, Elvis movies, and a number of them from the fifties and sixties, as well as more recent movies.  I can't remember all of the movie names, but they were well known movies.

the Arizona battleship memorial across pearl harbor from the bow of the foreground aircraft carrier, just under the bow of the carrier is the battleship Missouri.  The Navy has these two next to each other to emphasize the beginning and the end of WWll, the start is the bombing on December 7th 1941, the end of the war was the peace treaty that ended the war with Japan's surrender on the deck of the Missouri,  the ship chosen by the president Harry S Truman, then president of the usa at the end of the war, he was from Missouri.

Damn, four paragraphs disappeared again.  Wish I knew why, all of a sudden this randomly occurs.  ??¿????   Oh well, starting over.  Monday, July 12th, Kauai, Hawaii, at beach house hostel, about seven pm.  The view is " South Pacific-ish"  , see:

the breeze is warm with just a touch of coolness, it's intermittent, for only a second or so, then it returns, the feeling is sumptuous, just heavenly, it's glorious!!!

I feel so mellow, relaxed, could easily say the heck with this blog, and go for a walk, so I think I will, I'll finish the blog sometime, whenever!!!

July 10, Sunday, Waikiki, at hostel, tried to surf yesterday, took tall surf board back after I couldn't control it in calm water, after a young guy said to try shorter board first, so I did, and I couldn't really control it, but did a little better, when a wave came in it did push me back a body length, bit that wasn't surfing it was the strength of the wave pushing me.  Tried for ninty minutes, and gave up after drinking a lot of sea water, and getting my feet and ankles cut up some, only a dozen cuts two bigger ones, rest scratches.  After cleaning up, tried to do something I knew I could do, walk a lot.  So decided to walk up the diamond head volcano.  And I did it.  The hostel is at the least commercial
 Part of Waikiki Beach, across the street from the Honolulu zoo, and a short block from the beach itself.  Took the road after the zoo, and followed the residential street up, and up, and up.  Thru an army base, into the national park, and up and up the back side of diamond head away from the sea. Around and up til I was on the opposite side of the volcano from Waikiki Beach, and a couple thousand feet , or so, i think.  Went thru a road-pedestrian tunnel under the rim of the crater, into the crater itself.  No beach breezes there due to the high crater rim, another thousand(s) of feet all the way around the Crater's floor.  Took a break, then started the climb up the Crater's rim.  First gentle sidewalk ramps, then rock paths, then steep rocky paths, followed by stairs up steeper sections. A few more ramps more stairs, a narrow, low people tunnel, a long stairway, and we were almost at the summit.  Going from the wwl and the WWll military emplacements, gun mounts, pill boxes, observation platforms... we were up and down a few more stairs.  From the top, a huge section of that side if the island could be seen, was beautiful, and well worth the climb.  Because of the abrupt interruption of the many hotels stretching to the sky, where the zoo began, and behind that the residential areas, it was easy to see where the hostel was, if the surrounding hotels didn't block the view of the three story hostel in between twenty floor luxury hotels, the grand Waikiki, and queen Kai________. Hotels.  At the end of the street near where the hostel is a jetty that juts out into the Pacific with a shelter at the jetty's end.  This was easy to spot from the top of diamond head and made confirming the hostel's location a sure thing.   The comercially dense part of Waikiki begins several blocks further away from the hostel and the zoo across the street--dramatically showing how desirable the neighborhood of the hostel is.  in fact the street address of the Polynesian beach club hostel is on Lemon street, which was originally an alley with several hostel's on that 'street', but it is definitely a former alley sandwiched in between the behemoth luxury hotels.  So there I stayed, in a prime real estate area, with under $50 a nite lodgings, and pancake breakfasts to boot, and other amenities as free wifi, good wifi, beach toys to borrow, discounts for residents on tours....  I really lucked out!  Hotels are sold out, not only because it's summer and tourists galore, but the military is having Rimpac.  a communication training exercize with most Pacific rim nations, including china, participating and many officers families staying in the hotels while the men or women military folks are ashore, they go out to sea, all of them, on wednesday, if the families still stay I don't know.   after I return from my twelve days of island hopping, and with free storage of my big suitcases at the hostel, while I'm gone to see the other islands, I'll be right back here for two more nites, and three days, before my flights back to DSM.

July 8th, the second time in 2016, cause I crossed the international date line.  In fiji the internet apparently doesn't like devices that aren't cell phones, cause I couldn't get thru.  Well that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.    but I couldn't get connected.  So now I'm back in the usa, Hawaii this time.  And the internet is working for free at the cheap hostel, not a regular hotel where I had problems getting connected.  Another stupid happening was when I made my reservation for this hostel for July ,,8th. It went thru just fine .  When I woke up yesterday in Fiji, radically repacked do wouldn't have to pay Fiji airlines another over weight fee.  Yesterday was July 8,th.  Flew to Samoa and layed over a jour got a special examination of the plane cause we were flying into the usa.  Landed in Honolulu about,12:30 am, but, for me, that was the nite of July 8t.h, even though technically it was the next day.  Bit between Samoa and Hawaii we crossed the international date line, so I was going to live thru July 8th the second time.  Did you notice that I was going to do over July 8th.  But all the folks in Hawaii, didn't get that privelege because they were already in Hawaii, and. They didn't do July 8,th twice.    Their sequence was July ,,5,6,7,8,9...  so when I showed up at the hostel the desk clerk became perplexed with me.  For he was working the nite shift of July 7th.  I had arrived one day later for me July 8th, the first one. Well they were fully booked, and there was no room for me. Do he thinking fast put my luggage in the hostel office, gave me a pillow, blanket and a hammock in the side yard.   About eleven I was given my bed in the four bed room, showered and went to investigate the town.   The hostel is half a block from the Pacific Ocean and the waves were coming in pretty strongly.  Had McD big bkfst, and strolled the beach.  Then walked the Wiakiki area of Honolulu. Am tired, and will finish updating this blog tomarrow.  

Just finished July 4th post, pressed publish, the wheels went around as usual, but it disappeared.  Will try this, so far.  Well it took it this time.  Planes gonna be late so here I go again.  Morning after I got to Queenstown I was across the street at tourist office waiting for the bus at 6:50 am.  Dan was the tour guide and bus... now van driver, because there were only ten of us on this tour.  Queenstown is in a mountain valley surrounded by mountains in the middle of the southern island of NZ.  We drove two hours thru mountains and in the valleys...farm land in the high valleys.  Mostly sheep, deer...they export venison to Europe mainly, and grow turnips as supplemental food for the live stock.  The sheep even pull up the roots, do the farmer doesn't have to plow in the spring to plant again.  Stark mountains, with flatter areas in grass, after the scrub bush had been burnt out, and roots removed.  Also saw lots of different cattle, some Scottish breeds too.  The trip over the last mountains was on a very steep gravel road down to the sea side.  Then we took a bigger boat for our tour of Doubtful Bay, and even out on to the Pacific to see neighboring cliffs and valleys of great scenic beauty.  The we reversed the process, bus trip up the narrow gravel road, the hour long boat trip across the lake, and on to another buss for the two hour ride back thru the mountains and highland farms to Queenstown.