Posing with Duke whilst we wait for the trolley. He's obviously a revered man here in Waikiki, everybody puts their leis on or around him.
Sitting and people watching is a fantastic past time. This man on the right was going to wander through his holiday looking at everything through his phone and the man on the left was jog-dancing. This is a phrase I've coined when someone is jogging more fancifully than necessary - they're really putting in something special for the people watching. The photo doesn't do his performance justice, but it was magic to see.
I've got a question for you...... What is it about us that makes people who are tiny bit special drawn to us? Is it our seemingly welcoming nature? Our approachable stance? Our friendly smiles?
Whatever it is, all sorts of people flock to us like a moth to the flame! It might be to ask directions, or to tell us their life story on a bus or sometimes it's to ask us if we can read a text! Here's how this interlude went....
We were sitting quietly waiting for the Waikiki trolley when the man sitting on the next bench over got up and approached Chris.
Man: "Excuse me, can you read this text? It's got no vowels in it. I took the vowels out."
(man with Jim Carrey hair cut from his role of Loyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber chuckles to himself as if he's about to prank Chris)
Chris: "Sorry? What do you want me to do?"
Man: "It's got no vowels. I took the vowels out, can you read it? I can read it."
Confused, Chris took the phone and read the text.....
'Wake up Uncle Keith and don't think there's a gun there when you wake up."
!!!???
He then proceeded to tell us the whole story of his Uncle who was drunk and he couldn't wake him up even though he said "wake up" four times.
"Because they could think that there's a gun there and you don't want somebody to wake up suddenly and they have a gun next to them, right? It would be different if they had a pillow next to them."
I turned to Marie and said, "You know what the saddest thing about this is? That I'm not one bit surprised that this is happening to us."
Not sure whether or not this man would turn 'nutter' on us or not, I bravely asked if he minded if I took a photo of him.
Me: "Do you mind if I take your picture?"
Him: "No, sure"..... "Oh wait, What kind of website am i going to end up on this time?"
Me: "This time?, Are you on a lot of websites?"
Him: (sighs)"Well, yeah, The Europeans like to put me on their websites and I've been on a couple American ones and on Asian ones too."
He then launched into this dialogue:
"I can't get a library card (tuts and sighs) because I don't have a Hawaiian ID card so I've found an employee of the library that I can bribe to get one 'cause I don't have a Florida ID either so I have to bribe somebody, but the employee that I can bribe only gets back to work on Tuesday which I think is absolutely ridiculous. I have my passport, but no-one wants to steal my passport cause nobody looks like me. I like to go to dangerous places like Panama, that's if you call getting robbed and stabbed dangerous cause that happened to me when I went there to Panama. That's why I don't have my Florida ID, cause it got stolen, you see?
I mean I want to got to Cuba, but I can't because I don't have my ID, you see Cubans can come to American but Americans can't go to Cuba. Does Cuba care? No. Do Americans care? Yes. It's just like if you have a semi truck licence, you can drive a car, but if you have a car licence, you can not just go and drive a semi. It does not work both ways.
Besides the occasional giggle from Marie and myself behind bags, we sat there in silence whilst he went on and on and on. When we quizzed Chris afterwards and praised her for her patience and understanding towards this man, she responded, "yeah well, you never know with people like that whether he had a gun or a knife. It's best to just ride it out, be friendly and pray for your trolley to turn up."
The trolley did eventually turn up and it was goodbye Lloyd Christmas. We did a few turn arounds to make sure Mr Christmas didn't follow us onto the trolley, but he just picked up his belongings and went on his way.... possibly in search of drunk Uncle Keith?
Once we were on the trolley we breathed a sigh of relief and sat back and relaxed whilst we were driven in the direction of the Diamond Head Volcano.
There was much to look at along the way.
Our trolley driver was absolutely hysterical. He made jokes the whole way and told us interesting facts about the surrounds as we drove.
He insisted on taking photos of everybody.
"Give me your camera. Give it to me."
A couple of quick snaps of the scenery
Then it was back onto the trolley
(I thought the girls looked a little like Laverne and Shirley hanging of the trolley)
This lady was a Japanese tour guide. There are more Japanese tourists here than I think there are local Hawaiians. They must love it here. There are lots of services in Waikiki aimed directly at the Japanese market.
The Waikiki Trolley service runs four different routes around Waikiki and the south of the island. There were people waiting at all the stops to get on, but because they only hold about 40 people max so unless people get off at your stop, you can't get on and you have to wait for he next trolley. They meant to come around every 30-40 minutes, depending on the route your on, but in our experience they never ran to schedule.
The most annoying thing was that when we were waiting for our trolley (there appears to be 2 of each of the 4 colours), about 15 trolleys that were set aside specifically for Japanese tourists would go by with one or two people on them - sometimes they were completely empty. Then when the Waikiki Trolley would eventually turn up, it would be so full that there would be standing room only. The poor people further along the line couldn't fit on and were told to wait of the next trolley - in about 40-45 minutes.
We've decided we're going to write a few stern letters to people here about some issues that need to be dealt with.
One of the challenges given to us was to climb the rim of Diamond Head Volcano to the very top...
Well we did a lot of prep work to build up our stamina for this mammoth feat. It took about an hour to climb from the base to the tip and it felt really good and we're all so glad we did it and ....... Oh, who am I kidding? We didn't even contemplate climbing it. The trolley took us to this look out where we posed for photos to appear exhausted and then it drove us down again.
And we were as happy as Larry about that decision.
There were some lovely views from the lookout.
And even better ones from the trolley!
As the sun set on this great day we headed down to Dukes for dinner. We'd been trying to get into Dukes for a few nights running but with the long weekend, they were flat out and just couldn't fit us in. Even though the restaurant is part of the hotel we're staying in, apparently they don't give any preference to the guests staying in the hotel.
So the night we finally did get in (after booking 4 days ahead) we got a lovely table overlooking the pool and it was so windy they had to put the plastic barriers down and I went up and got us jumpers because the wind was so cold.
It made the evening so unenjoyable the only thing we could do was order the Hula Pie - the Duke's Special to cheer ourselves up.
That night, after the girls had gone to sleep and I stayed up a bit listening to the wind and the waves and the rain which was coming in sideways directly in our balcony doors. It was quite the storm. The palm trees were barely holding on and were flapping around wildly.
These following three photos are not mine, but they look like what was going on out there.
Well, maybe not this one, but it's a cool pic.
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