Around The World Without Flying: Honolulu Part 2

Bishop Museum was an intriguing place that has been set up for educating Hawaiian children as much as for catering for adults who are interested in both history and natural history, which is a very good thing. Indeed, we saw school groups coming and going whilst we were there. It is quite a large complex that had once been a school, with a planetarium, a three-storey modern science ‘adventure centre’, a wonderful three-story museum that was over a century old, a Hawaiian native garden, and a library.

When we arrived we were given some lunch, and then went to the planetarium, where we saw a show of the stars and constellations seen in Hawaii. As it is not that far from the Equator, they can see some of the constellations seen in the southern hemisphere as well as those only seen in the northern hemisphere. In the lobby of this building there was a giant sphere (almost 2 metres across) which can be used to show animated weather patterns, tsunamis, and so on, over its surface.

Next we walked across to the museum itself, a beautiful building with a large 4-storey space surrounded by 3 sets of balconies that showcased different aspects of the story of Hawaii - the sea, the islands before they were inhabited, the migration of the Polynesians to the islands, their settlement in the islands, and their culture, social structures, art, and stories and beliefs. In that large tall space there was a full-sized replica of a whale, one side of which showed its exterior and the other side of which showed its interior organs. Canoes were also suspended above us. A model early village and a model hut occupied most of the floor space.

We had a wonderful, young and passionate guide for this, and spent much time in front of an exhibit of a magnificent feathered cloak that I gather is on permanent loan from a museum in New Zealand. Its story and symbolism, not to mention its actual structure, were truly fascinating. The people only ever took one or two feathers for any one bird so as not to harm them, and yet it contained thousands of features and took years to make. However, we then had very little time to explore the rest of the museum. You could spend hours there and still not see everything.

Next we were taken to a volcano exhibition, appropriately called ‘The Hot Spot Rock’, in the science centre. To enter that little theatre, we walked along a long, dark and very colourful corridor that told the story of creation according to Hawaiian folklore, with special lights highlighting all the parts of the story that was told with papier-mâché shapes coated with luminescent paint. Unfortunately, as it was a very hot day, the furnace that is used by their staff to melt rock and form molten lava was not operating. Nevertheless, we learned a great deal about volcanoes there. Until we saw all the samples and heard the fascinating talk, I had not realised how many different kinds of lava there were, or that the volcanoes on Hawaii are shield volcanoes, which are shaped like warriors’ shields because they are built up from layers of molten lava that had flowed out of the ground. The volcanoes in Hawaii developed over a ‘hot spot’ in the middle of the Pacific tectonic plate, not at the junction between two tectonic plates like most volcanoes.

Finally there was, of course, a little shop, but I always rather like museum shops as they hold books and so forth that you don't see in tourist shops.

If you would like to know more about this museum, visit: www.bishopmuseum.org

All-in-all, it was a good tour enjoyed by only six of us. Most of the other back-to back passengers chose to go to Pearl Harbour but I must admit the time I spent at the Somme in France, not to mention at the war museum in Darwin a couple of years ago, were sobering enough. In any case I really wanted to learn about Hawaii. But I do wish we could have had more time here!

Today it is actually Thursday 12 October - we are a day behind Australia. But that will change tomorrow as we cross the International Dateline and it is registered as Saturday 14 October. We will not have Friday 13 October at all! This will make up for the fact that as I have travelled around I have kept gaining an hour.

As a curious sideline, for anyone who is superstitious, not only will they be relieved they don't have to live through a Friday 13th, on this ship there is no Deck 13. We go straight from Deck 12 to Deck 14! This is not the only ship that does that.

In my next post, I will talk about out visit to Tahiti, which we visited three days ago. I am finally almost up-to-date!