Friday, February 17
4:00 am Calgary
The temperature is -16 °C, with a high forecast of +2 °C.
4:10 am Life
We are up early to catch the 7:30 am flight to Honolulu.
6:00 am - fully checked in and waiting in the departure lounge.
7:45 am - in the air
8:10 am - cloud layer at about 9000' as we fly over the mountains - the peaks above that were visible as little islands in a sea of white. Neat.
12:30 PM (local time) - now the islands are green in a sea of blue. We have arrived in Honolulu.
We picked up our luggage and easily found a taxi to take us to the Best Western Coconut Waikiki hotel. The ride in was a delight. The driver was an elderly man who drove very carefully and slowly, yet no one passed us. The pace of life here appears to be much more relaxed. This is good. The desk clerk said that our rooms would not be ready until 3 PM so we checked our luggage and walked a short block to an iHop restaurant for some lunch. Our body clocks indicated it was 3:30 in the afternoon and we had yet to have something to eat. The days of free food on airplanes appears to be over.
1:30 PM lunch - hash browns with eggs & sausages, and 3 cups of coffee and I was ready for the day. We are clearly in the tropics. The temperature was in the high 20's, with, surprisingly, a fairly strong wind. It is always a joy to see the lush, green, vegetation.
2:00 PM We had arranged to meet friends from Lethbridge and they arrived at the hotel just as we returned from lunch. We were able to check into our room early and then head to a nearby Irish pub. We all ordered a Longboard island lager beer, brewed by the Kona Brewing Company. Very, very nice. This is the way to begin a vacation.
We then took a leisurely stroll along the beach - the sand is beautiful but not very wide. Maybe the tide was in. We shall see. The shops are very touristy, but definitely up-scale and classy, not at all tacky. The hotels along the shore are very posh and elegant.
6:00 PM Dinner at Thai restaurant near hotel. Delicious!
12:00 PM Literature
I made good progress with "The Stand" while we were flying over the Pacific Ocean.
4:00 PM Birding
While walking along the main street parallel to the beach we went by a few small parks where we saw a few birds. The first ones we saw were the common House Sparrow, but then we saw our first new bird - the Red-crested Cardinal. It is very beautiful. Hopefully I will have my camera with me from now on so I can take a few pictures of them. There are numerous feral doves around but we also saw the two local doves: the Zebra Dove and the Spotted Dove. There were a number of Common Myna birds on the ground. We also saw a dark-headed bird that we were able to identify when we returned to the hotel as a Red-vented Bulbul. The cardinal, the two doves, and the Bulbul were all new "lifers" for us. We have seen the Myna in Australia but it is a new sighting for us in the USA.
I am still trying to familiarize myself with the Bento database features on the iPad2, but was able to add records for the 5 new "USA lifers" without too much difficulty. They are #'s 123 - 127 for the USA, and #'s 606 - 609 for our lifetime list. A good beginning as we had no binoculars or camera with us at the time. We had only recorded 9 birds, all near Lethbridge, for this year before this trip so these were #'s 10 - 15 for 2012.