I made it to a sunrise this morning. A quiet transformation moving up out of the Pacific Ocean, serene and magical. People sat on the beach, transfixed, paying silent homage to its beauty.
Less serene was the two hours I spent on the phone doing the yucky side of travel.
Our last flight is with Jetstar, booked via Bravofly. While Bravofly started out helpful enough, when I could not add baggage or entertainment to our original booking on either the Bravofly or Jetstar app, my email to their help counter took three days to get a half-hearted response which told me that it all depended on which airlines I was flying on. Huh?! I sent back an email reminding them that all the relevant information was in my email to them and I was running out of time to get assistance.
Which received no response at all.
Now a phone call to Jetstar was warranted. I phoned and after a tedious process, I was to the point of payment, and then: the phone cut out.
And it kept cutting out. 5 more phone calls of varying length ended up being cut off.
I gave up phoning from the room and ended up downstairs outside the hotel to finally get the extra bits booked. This is the first time I have EVER paid for seat allocation, and if I hadn’t we would have all been split up. Nuts!
All our other flights required us to buy seats in order to ensure we would sit with our family altogether and for all but two 2 hour flights, we have been together. After firming our money for all the extras I felt I may as well have booked a Qantas flight where all that stuff was included anyways.
Today, I encountered once again the meth addict that I have seen nearly every day . Tall, willowy and exotic with surprising sprinkle of freckles across her chiselled cheekbones, she really stands out.
Sighting 1-she stumbled past us as we went to the grocery store that first day and it was obvious she was on a downer snd needing a fix .
Sighting 2 -She was dressed to sell herself, and that is exactly what she was trying to do, flouncing dangerously on the curb of our hotel, bosoms popping out dangerously; pouting and stalking about with flair and long protesting arms when the security guards chased her off. She snuck back a few times but the guards stood firm, and with a final roll of the eyes and disgusted flounce with her chin unable to point any higher, she left.
Sighting 3-as we went to dinner, she was outside the eatery, trying to sell herself to motorists in peak traffic. She was on a high and everything was over-exaggerated. As I walked past her, she stopped and said something to me about my shirt ( I couldn’t understand what it was that she said) and I discovered she has a deep male voice. I would have never guessed!
Our dinner was at Cheeseburgerland, nothing amazing yoghurt as my tastebuds were still not en pointe but everyone else enjoyed their meal.
After dinner, we walked down past International Marketplace to the beach to see Thursday’s free Kūhiō beach hula show.
Don’t laugh everyone else who has been to Waikiki, but this is the first time we had been as far as International Marketplace and we had no idea this part of Waikiki existed. We had only walked this far beachside!, not street-side.
It is a lively vibing area. Flaming torches line the wide pavements on both sides.
We arrived at the beach as the torches were being lit and sat down to watch just as the man blew several notes from a conch shell to open the show.
The first performer to come out, got to the stage using a walker and she was about 80 years old. I thought to myself ‘well, if this is our hula dancer, we are not getting the A team tonight, that’s for sure.’
She ended up being a narrator and musician.
We watched about 45 minutes out of a one hour show featuring beautiful hypnotic hulas, each telling a story.
The two hula dancers ( one was a guy) were flawlessly in sync with each other.
Flynn, however, was not being hypnotized by the hulas, he was desperate to be on the beach after avoiding it all week
so I released him to the call of the beach after he had watched a couple of the hulas. I then stood at the back so I could see him as well as the dances.
Zac had badly hurt his toe on something hard as we entered the beach, and we needed get him home and have it iced. He insisted on walking, so we carefully made our way home.
We sorting through and organized our luggage a bit before going to bed.
Dory the Explorer 