Day 4:

We woke up early (this'll be a theme :P ), didn't feel like doing much so I caught up on my writing and Baka sent his team of crack Ninja-espionage mercenaries off to battle crime. We finally mobilized around 10 and went on a tour of Iolani Palace in downtown Waikiki. It was very nice architecturally-speaking, but still quite bare of artifacts as the restoration people are still scouring the world for all the auctioned-off furniture. My history lesson for today... Hawaii's monarchy wasn't overthrown by internal strife or any of that nonsense, it was thrown over by Dole... yup those innocent cans of pineapple juice that I grew up on for all those years... that company, and its CEO were the main forces behind the overthrow. Del Monte helped. You just can't trust men who work with fruit. Or something.

After the tour we decided to go back to Waimea to explore this highly advertised "Adventure Park" which boasted of ATV, horse tours, kayaking, waterfalls, vistas, gardens, and general funfunfun! Yeah. So, we get in the car and head over... unfortunately we fell of the highway at the wrong point in a little place called "Pearl City," which is apparently where /everybody else/ lives (you know, the people who /aren't/ tourists). We proceeded to get hopelessly, unbelievably, horrifyingly lost. It was actually kind of fun. We toodled around plazas, neighborhoods, nicer neighborhoods, all sorts of places, eventually I realized that we had put more miles on the car trying to find a way back on the highway than we had in driving across the bloody island. We were both dubiously impressed and proceeded to buckle down and "get found" so we were back on track and heading north once more. Now to actually get /in/ to the park cost a whopping 24 dollars, with additional fees for ponies, or atv, or garden, or breathing... so we opted to just do the kayaks (not in the park but near by). It was 'river' kayaking so it fell marginally with in the line for "Things not too insane for Me" but looking at the map of the park we figured it'd be plenty of fun. Unfortunately what that map didn't show was that they had dammed off the river on both ends! The lower end was the beach, but I didn't mind that... not being swept out to sea is good! But neither could you go "up stream"! so despite the fact that you were on a "river" it might as well have been a pond. We toodled up and down the 200 foot stretch a few times in our two-seater, cracking various nautical jokes and generally getting wet. We also found some ducks to chase, which Baka found vastly amusing. When my arms started to give out we headed to the car and went, where else? The Dole Plantation!

I'd love to say we went to see what this country-killing-corporate-devil place had done with its hard earned profit, but really, we went for the maze. Yup, the 'World's largest living maze' at the Dole Plantation, fun in the sun for the whole family, not to mention those Japanese tourists. We devoured some pineapple ice-cream, and gave it a go. Apparently some crazy dork has beaten this thing in 6 minutes, he can have it, Baka and I opted for the 'walking' method and polished it off in a tidy amount of time. So the maze works on a 'timed game' scheme, they record when you go in, and when you come out. Inside the maze are 6 "base stations" where you take a rubbing to prove you've been there (they give you little pencils and all). We stalked through the maze using a lazy-man's depth-first-search method (We're programmers, we can't help ourselves), and humming James Bond music or the occasional battle cry in Japanese (just to scare the /real/ ones). We were well satisfied to return to the hotel and geekily check our email... the rest of our party had finally arrived in Hawaii.

We met up with the new arrivals (their room was conveniently down the hall) and we hiked off to a Chinese restaurant to chow. They were naturally tired after their hideously long flight, so they crashed after eating, but Baka and I wandered some more, eventually finding our way to the Ghirardelli’s Ice-cream Shop down the street. Their ice-cream is positively sinful, and /Baka/ destroy you, but you'll love it, I promise.

On the way back to the room I bought more milk-tea (Baka got his seltzer) and a bottle of pineapple wine for Christmas. I of course forgot to buy a corkscrew. So I sat watching the Japanese channel and musing over my un-openable bottle of wine while Baka returned to battling the communist menace with his Ninjas.

Next Adventure!