IS IT SAFE TO LOOK AT THE MOON?

Cruising to Hawaii

The sea air felt good as it warmed me under the bright sunlight coming through the open roof. The sea was calm and the ship was sailing through the waters of the Pacific! The pool was occupied by vacationers who were escaping the coldness of the winter. There were deck chairs, with people either snoozing or reading or just chatting with each other. My husband and I stepped into the Lido Deck!

Yes, it's the open air deck of a cruise ship, the Veendam. For anyone's information, Veendam is a Holland America Line - one of the ships that travel from San Diego, California to the islands of Hawaii.

I remembered how frozen I felt minutes before we boarded the ship. We went directly to our cabin, and changed into appropriate clothing - to enjoy the warm breeze of the sea, and enjoy the laziness of the afternoon!!!

Then came the time to visit the beautiful islands of the Hawaiin Peninsula. What a treat it was. We stepped off the ship, and found our way to a shop - the Segway Shop. The instructers, a guy and his friend from Europe, were superb. We got about 15 minutes of practice (since we have never in our life operated a Segway!), with some sort of nervousness and a weakening of the knees. The practice was over (10 minutes of leaning forward/backward, left/right, bending knees - and off we took to the streets of Maui, sailing into the warm breeze, waving to cars as they sped to their destinations. Believe it or not, cars stopped when we crossed the streets! My thought at that time was, would California drivers have stopped?

We stopped at a Japanese Temple, observed people walking at parks and lanes, took a rest to stare and look at what was left of sugarcane fields, smelled the sweet aroma of coffee plantations, but we were awfully disappointed we did not see any pineapple plantations. No matter, we loved the rolling waves of the sea; participated in learning the "mahalo" (meaning thank you) word, and enjoyed the company of other Segway-learning people!

Then, of course, there was always the shopping areas, the people with smiling faces, and the crowd of vacationers tripping from one area to another.

In the end, we boarded the ship again as we relaxed once more at the Lido Deck; that is, after enjoying the lunch. We wanted to stay a little bit more, but the next island was waiting and we dared not miss it!!!

So we said Aloha to Maui as we sailed to Kawaui!!! Aloha can mean either Hello and/or goodbye!!!