Hawaii (feat. Shirley)

The sun is setting over Seoul, and we’re back in our hotel room after a morning and early afternoon strolling around Jongno-gu. If today is anything to go by, the pace of our digestion seems like it will be the main constraint on the pace of our travels through this city over the next few days.

We visited Hawaii as our second international trip together back in 2017, and mostly had not-so-great memories of our time there. A combination of torrential rain, mudslides and food poisoning had us stuck in our hotel for the entire time we were on Kauai, and the tourist destinations like the Road to Hana and watching a luau didn’t leave much of an impression on us. We left this time with much fonder memories; of walking up and down South Kihei Road for sunrises and sunsets, of catching baby waves each morning, of seeing whales above the water and hearing them below, and the thrill of freediving down to 70 feet below the ocean’s surface and back on a single breath.

South Kihei Road

We lived in an Airbnb a half an hour’s walk south of Kihei, and caught a couple of nice sunrises and sunsets from the road leading into town during our week in Maui. On this particular evening, we saw a whale breach way in the distance; the morning before, we watched the sunrise after we’d already been up for a couple of hours, the Hawaiian sky sharing the same shades of purple and blue as the sunsets we saw in Atacama.

Jet lagged

In going from Hong Kong to Chicago, to Dubai, to Beijing, and finally to Hawaii, we somehow ended up on New York time. Most days, we woke up around two or three in the morning, and got to do some stargazing before sunrise. Alice likely set a sabbatical record for most screwed-up sleep schedule when she went to bed at one in the afternoon and woke up a little before midnight on our fourth day in Maui.

Shadebathing

Alice drove me to a beginner break in Kihei almost every morning, dropping me off at the surf shop before setting up on the edge of the park facing the ocean, with appropriate sun protection of course. Every time I caught a wave, I would scan the shore and try to make out if Alice saw me. It was a good reminder that there’s probably not a lot more gratifying as a kid than looking up and seeing your parents cheering you on.

Molokini Backwall

One of our first dives outside of Key Largo was at Molokini Crater, when we visited Maui eight years ago. This time, we revisited Molokini on its back wall, the most challenging dive on the island. The coral and wildlife here in Hawaii can’t really be compared to what we saw in Raja Ampat, but this dive had one thing that Indonesia didn’t: a backdrop of the haunting songs of humpbacks, reverberating in the open ocean.

Studying on sabbatical

We found out a few weeks before we arrived that Shirley would be in Honolulu at the same time we would be. She decided to join us, despite having nearly no diving experience (of either the scuba or free varieties), and we spent a weekend together in classroom sessions about the physiology of breathing and safety protocols, and out in the open water with just our masks, fins, and snorkels.

Hawaii for Hawaii lovers

Alice and I were skeptical of Honolulu as a destination before we arrived. We wondered why you’d want to be in a big city when you were in Hawaii, and we figured that Waikiki Beach would just be filled with sunburnt tourists from the mainland. But our minds changed pretty quickly after Shirley took us around some of her favorite spots on the island. Oahu is a funny sort of place: clueless visitors from the mainland and diehard Hawaii lovers are big fans, while people like us circa 2018 (and a week ago) figure that it couldn’t possibly be the “real” Hawaii experience.

70 feet under

Learning to freedive was something I vaguely wanted to do when we set out on this sabbatical, but our time with the whale sharks in Triton Bay, and our newfound bucket list goal of swimming with humpbacks in Tonga, made us pull the trigger on this long, out-of-the-way detour to Hawaii to learn from one of the world’s best freedivers. I held my breath for four minutes (I only remember the first three minutes of it), and dove down to 70 feet and back on a single breath. Alice struggled with equalization and was upset she didn’t get certified after a weekend of hard work, but she did get her water entries down better than I ever did.

Waikiki

Alice visited Honolulu with her parents when she was nine, and they sent us some family photos from that trip as we arrived. Alice looks a lot different than she did back then, for the better. It seems like a near-certainty that we’ll be back to Hawaii at some point in the future, and on our last morning, after we woke up at a leisurely five in the morning, Alice suggested we make it out onto Waikiki for the first time to take some pictures with the sunrise for posterity.