Thursday, February 07, 2008

Hawa hawaii....day 1 and other BS

I have been postponing this for almost a week now...so in the words of "Rage Against the Machine"...it had to come out someday, it had to come out somehow...what better place then here, what better time then now...

True to the spirit of the blog, this ones a travelogue to a land far far away, in the middle of nowhere holding the promise of an enchanted world. The aformentioned land being the isle-land of Hawaii...or rather the islands of Hawaii. The trip promises a flurry of places with unpronouncable names, cliches upon cliches on the wonder that is nature...and loads of self promotion. I would not like to give away the entire plot right at the beginning...but you get the drift. So take your pick and think hard, very hard if you really wanna go through this long drawn out literary torture. I for one would just go ahead and keep writing assuming someone out there is praising my absolute grasp of the plot and language......

Another STOP sign, effectively the last escape route....and if you are still reading this....welcome to my world. You are doomed. Okiiiiieee...now that we have fulfilled the customary requirements of basic BS..lets get on with the story. The idea to visit Hawaii was essentially a "Eureka!!" moment. In a fit to please the missez...my brain got wired in some solemn way to pop this "Bulb" called hawaii over my head. So from then on till the day we left, started the continious squabbling over where to stay, which flight to take, which car to rent, what activities to book, what shorts to buy for swimming, what not for snorkelling, what swimsuit for sunbathing on the beach, which skirt for wading in the sea, which tops to wear at all the various occasions we were not going to attend and so on and so forth. The ususal stuff. And on the very last day before leaving...darn we do not have a "nice" camera. Nice being the operative word here. So Sony was made 350 $'s richer and I brought home a mat finish Sony DSC H3. All the banalities out of the way...we were packed and ready to embark on a week long vacation, which always seemed too short to begin with, and the missez had hammered that home time and again. I too secretly thought that it would be too short, but how could I ever agree with her without a fight. That would be like breaking atleast 7 different rules of "The Manual of Marriage" and another 20 different ones of "The 1st Anniversary Bible". So now that sufficient water has flown under the bridge, I can make this knowledge "of agreeing with the missez" public. There would be quiet a few "sufficient water under the bridge and I can make knowledge public" moments throughout this post. So from now on I would simply refer to it as a "WUBI" moment.

Day 1: Thursday Jan 24th' 08

We had to get up very early in the night that day, and this does sound like a contradiction but thats what it is. 3 AM to be precise. I slept around 4 hrs. Missez claims to have slept for like an hour becasue I didn't help her in packing...although I know that all the excitement had got to her. The first flight was at 6.05 from Newark. I had booked a limo, the prior night to avoid all the negative excitment in the morning but as usual the limo was late ,the driver was kinda lost. I took it in my stride and lo and behold we were chatting with a jovial sardarji on our way to Newark. I stumbled in my stride during the security check at the airport...there were too many things to manage...and the missez was overwhelmed by the moment. But we got through without being the subject of public humiliation. 3 something hours later we had landed at DFW airport in Dallas, TX. I must mention the size of that airport. It claims to be as big areawise as the island of Manhattan. And it really is big. One flight down, one to go. I spent the next 9 odd hours tossing and turning in an airplane seat, trying to find that mythical sweet spot of comfort. The missez on the other hand was all comfy in her petite frame and spent most of those hours sprawled on a couple of middle row seats. By the time we were over the islands, all the passengers were wide awake and the excitment was palpable....breaking into loud cheers on the first sight of land and sea through the pigeon hole windows of the airplane.

We had no checked in baggage and were out of the arrival area in a snap to catch the first glimpse of the magnificient view. A blue Mustang convertible was acquired as the vehicle of choice and the very first thing that I did was to take the top down. Missez loaded up on all the possible touristy material ever printed on Hawaii and off we went to our hotel. Hawaii as I mentioned before is an archipelago of islands. We had landed on one of them called Maui and would continue to stay on it for most part. Let me bore you with some history and geography or as I like to call it the "lay of the land". Maui as an island is a result of the convergence of the lava flows of 2 dormant and not so dormant volcanoes one each on its east and west side. Thereby providing a classic combination of pristine beaches and lofty mountain peaks all within a stretch of a few tens of miles. We were staying on the touristy side of the island, the west side, with all its resorts and shopping areas and miles of pristine beaches lapping at the foot of these resorts. Our hotel too was right on the beach...and our love affair with multistorried buildings continued as we were put up in a room on the top floor of a 12 floor building, with a view of the magnificient ocean right from the balcony or as it is locally known the lanai. The sliding glass door to the lanai would remain open thorughout our stay whenever we were in our room bringing in the sound of crashing waves and the beautiful view of the spotted blue and white of the ocean and the sky.These were pretty much the last things we heard and saw to end that very long day. Our bodies were still operating in Eastern Time and the tossing and turning had taken its due toll as well. So it was lights out for day 1 at 7.30 PM Maui Time.

1 comment:

The First Step said...

well written dude....its legen.....wait for it....dary!!! full of awesomenessss