Hawaii was wonderful. Four couples with a Costco card in a big house on the beach near Diamond Head. Man did we cook some fantastic meals.... No kids, perfect weather... if it weren't for all the other people on the island, it would be paradise. 80% of the populatiuon of the state lives in or around Honolulu and most tourists apparently still want to go to the Waikiki area. This is the first time I've been back to Oaho over 25 years. Things have changed. Last time I was there, Hanamma Bay was a little park with amazing coral and fish and no entry fee. The people in the water actually looked good in a bathing suit and knew what they were doing - never touching coral, etc. You took a bag of frozen peas snorkling and let the fish swarm you and you could walk around the edge of the bay to the "toliet bowl" - a rock formation where the tide surge can lift and lower you and the water level in this huge bowl by 25 feet or more. Ton's of fun. Now it's $5/person to enter plus parking. The park has it's own little police force and ambulance service. They force you to watch a 15 minute video (mostly on water safty and warning obese people to get their doctor's permission before swimming) before they let you in, it's super crowded (which is hard to accomplish as it's a huge place) most of the people there are amazingly unskilled, unaware and tremendously obese, you can't feed the fish (there arn't that many fish anymore anyway) most of the coral is dead (everythign itn eh bay shallow enough to be touched or stood upon) and the toliet bowl has been closed for years because of liability fears. The place gets over 1 million people a year now even so, from my limited observations, mostly loud, fat, stupid, blindingly white americans from the midwest. They actually have a giant electric golf-cart like shuttle bus thing that will take people the few hundred yards up and down the little hill leading to the beach for those unfit enough to walk!
We did visit some amazing inland conservation gardens and parks which were surprisingly empty of people. The torists seem to flock to the beach and ignore everything else. Sadly, about 20% of all Hawaiian species - birds, plants, etc. - have gone extinct since man arrived in the islands. Apparently, the trend continues...
The novel is progressing slowly. My time on it is inversely proportional to my time on DB. But I've recently finihsed some other projects, so I should hopefully be able to kick both into higher gear.
