February 2024 Hawaii Cruise - Day 10
Kona, The Big Island, Hawaii
Today we woke up to find ourselves in the harbor at Kona, Hawaii. Kona does not have a pier where cruise ships can dock, so the ship had to drop anchor in the middle of the harbor. That meant we had to use the ship’s lifeboats as “tenders” to shuttle passengers from the ship to land.
We signed up for a “History of Kona” excursion that was to start at 10:30AM. Our tickets, however, told us that we all had to meet in the main theater at 9AM, which was 1-1/2 hours before the excursion was to begin! I thought that was strange. But, we went to the theater at 8:45am and took a seat, with what appeared to be about 200 other people. They announced a few excursion groups that allowed many to disembark, and it seemed like everything was going smoothly. I thought that Carnival really knows its business and had this disembarking system down to a science!
Sure enough, at 9AM, they announced that our excursion group could head to the tender, and the remanning 150 people in the theater stood up to join a long line of people at the back of the room. And that is when the fun began, and caused me to rethink just how professional our crew really is.
We waited 1-1/2 hours as the line of people snaked through lobbies, down 3 flights of stairs, and down a long hall of passenger cabins in almost unbearable heat. It was unbelievable and reeked of extreme inefficiency. Finally, we got on the tender (no apologies from the crew), and we arrived just in time for out 10:30 excursion on 2 large tour busses.
We stopped at 3 places:
1. Kona Coffee Museum, where we could learn a little about the only coffee produced within the United States, and why Kona Coffee was the best in the world. None of this was of any interest to met at all as I am not a coffee drinker. I purchased a ginger ale and sat on the patio looking out over the ocean as almost torrential rain fell.
2. A state park which has a very sacred history dating back to the early days of Hawaii. Apparently, the park was known as a “refuge” in its operational days. So, if you committed a crime, even wife-beating, we were told, you only had to go to this sacred area, confess your sin, perform some kind of penance, receive absolution from the kahuna (Hawaiian priest representing the ancient Hawaiian gods), and you were basically good to go. Sounds like a good deal to me! But apparently those traditions no longer hold much water since US laws were installed in Hawaii. Nevertheless, the grounds were fascinating and the history was interesting.
3. Finally, we went to a tiny Catholic church called the Church of St. Benedict, but more commonly called The Painted Church. The church was built in the early 20th century, and the interior walls and ceiling were painted by a Catholic priest. The murals depicted various scenes from the Bible. A man was there to tell the full story of the church’s history, and interestingly, he was not a member of that church. He was an Episcopalian from Georgia who had lived in Hawaii for several years and was active in trying to preserve the church.
We arrived back at the Kona pier to board our tender back to the ship at about 2:30PM. It took about 5 minutes to get back to the ship, and then another 15 minutes for the pilot of our tender to securely dock our tender at the side of the cruise ship. He kept missing the spot where he had to tie us up. The crew on the cruise ship were calling out instructions, but nothing seemed to help get the tender in the right position. I felt like I was watching a scene from a Laurel & Hardy comedy. Finally, one of the crew from the cruise ship was able to jump on the tender, and within a minute, we we’re safely parked at the side of the ship, to great applause from the passengers.
A good day! Not our best, but a good day!
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