Aloha! E komo mai at joosten808.com, the website of Jeroen and Michelle (and a baby soon).
This website has been created to let the folks back home know about our whereabouts, how things go now we're together and to share our adventures with them. For more basic information about all this, please see the 'about' section, were we explained a bit more about our story.
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Like I wrote yesterday, I would post a new message with some pictures of a botanical garden and such... so here it is :)
The Saturday after my birthday, Michelle and I went to the Aloha Swap Meet, some sort of flea market near the Aloha Stadium. This is a market, which is held every weekend around the whole football stadium, with some pretty good deals. Think, for example about 8 t-shirts for only $20. Here are a few pictures of that market:
It wasn't that busy anymore when we were there, mostly because it was already 1 PM when we arrived, and most people go earlier. Well, I can't blame them, the want to have get it over with before the hottest part of the day, plus there's a lot of booths that close at around 2 PM.
Here's a picture of the stadium:
After we walked around the stadium, and felt pretty warm, we went towards the Dole Plantation, where they, besides pineapples, also have a botanical garden, and the world's biggest maze.
It took us about 30 minutes to get through the maze (you need to find a few locations in the maze), not really too slow (you receive a small map, mostly because of the size, so you can make some speed), but the record is currently 8 minutes (this has to be someone who knew the way out of his head and ran quite fast haha). It took us a bit longer in 2007, mostly because we didn't use the map the whole time back then haha. The total size of the maze is 3.15 acres (about 12,7 km2) and the total path length is 2.46 mile (almost 4 kilometers). Here are some photo's, taken in the maze:
Like I also commented in the last of the above pictures (just click on them, so you can see it, haha) is that there is an open spot in the middle of the maze, which looks like a pineapple from the sky (you can also look here, to view this from the sky).
They have some signs outside the maze, and that's especially fun to see because Hawaii has the most remote islands in the world. The Netherlands was not named, but when we have to take London, Munich and Paris into consideration, then it should be about 7,500 miles (about 12,000 kilometers).. quite some distance...
But ok, we also went to the Plantation Garden, like said, where you can find a lot of native plants, which also grow out in the open (some even grow in our garden haha), but now all of them together, so that's makes it easier to find them ;) Here's some photo's:
You can also find some creatures there, just look at the following photo's (and look especially close to the last two, as it might be a bit hard to find because of the colors):
Fun, isn't it? :D I know my mom would say something like 'ew' haha, oh well, not everyone is fond of them, but they're harmless and look quite cute on these pictures.
And here another three, last, pictures of the Dole Plantation. The first is of the many pineapples they have, the second one is the view when you drive away from the Plantation, and the third is the main building of the Dole Plantation, which has a store and a foodcourt inside, where you can eat almost everything with pineapple:
We went further towards the North Shore after we left, so we could eat some Garlic Shrimp again at Giovanni's Shrimp Shack. I tried, while Michelle was driving, to make some more photo's, but it didn't exactly work out to do it from a travelling car, at too little light. Two of them are nice to show, though:
It is the 4th of July this Saturday, or Independence Day, and it kind of depends what we will do, but if there's fireworks, then I might try to take some photos, it's supposed to be really beautiful.
And when you liked these photo's, I might have some more nice photo's for you soon as I want to go to Waimea Bay Park, where they have a waterfall and quite some nature. It kind of depends when we will go haha, but we will go for sure, promised ;)
Here's a new message from us, it has been a while so I figured we could write something again ;)
I think I will start with Michelle and the baby as everything goes very well with them, we finally figured out a name for the baby, also thanks to my daughter Larissa, who was asked to make the final decision between a couple of names. Michelle can feel the baby kick quite a lot of times lately, but of course you'll see that I am out of luck when I want to feel it, as the baby instantly stops when I put my hand on her belly.. Oh well, I'd like to think she doesn't wants to hurt her daddy ;)
We went out during last friday and saturday, mostly because of my birthday. Yep, I start to become an old ba***rd haha. Nah, it's not that bad haha. Next to all the presents that I received from the Netherlands, I received a new digital slr camera from Michelle, including 2 zoomlenses, filters and some more stuff. It's really a nice camera, which had to be tested, of course ;)
Well, I can tell you that I have to learn a lot as it is no longer point-and-shoot, no, I can adjust all settings myself now, such as the whitebalance, lighting, arpeture, etc. etc. Of course you can adjust some settings on a normal digital camera, but not many people do this, but it is much more fun to do it with this camera haha.
Anyways, we went to the southcoast last friday, where some people were surfing. We went here mostly so I could see if I could zoom in some more with this camera (surfing usually happens on quite some distance from the coast). And I have to say it works pretty nice, here some pictures:
The first picture has been made smaller, mostly because it was shot in a big size. The second picture is the same as the first, but cropped and on, almost, normal size .
Above pictures are just to show how far you can zoom with this thing, the surfer in the picture was quite far from the coast. Below some more pictures, shot on the same spot:
Some photos are sadly a bit darker than I wanted them to be (also because of the clouds during the day), but oh well, we only just have this camera, we still have a lot to learn ;)
Before we went to Waikiki for a dinner, we went to town when it started to become evening. I shot some more pictures there, mostly because I wanted to make a panorama picture and wanted to shoot some photos during the sunset. Here are a few of those pictures:
I know these are almost the same photos, but I wanted to show that the sky of Hawaï knows many colors, especially during sunset. There is only a few minutes during the above photos.Here are a few more photos:
And then we were sent away by the security.. we were there quite some time and they thought it was pretty suspicious that there were some people, shooting photos, from the roof of the parking garage. It was too bad, but oh we, we decided to go towards Waikiki for our dinner.
As for the panorama photo, here's one (I made it smaller in size, the original was about 20 megabyte big):
It's quite easy to make such a panorama photo, you just have to make sure that the camera is on a tripod, that you make enough photos to overlap everything (I believe there's 34 photo's in the above panorama), and that you use the right software. I use a free program, and I have to say it works like a charm. The program does everything for me, place the photo's, align them, adjust the shades etc etc. :D
Right, we went to Waikiki after all this and we decided to drive through town afterwards, so we could find a certain building (I will place the photo of this building below). Just when we found this building, the police pulled me over (or I should say, I drove into a parkinglot and he then came on from behind). It turned out that I didn't stop for a stopsign. He checked our papers and checked if I didn't drank any alcohol (probably because we said that we had a dinner just before, and I have to say that it is not like the Netherlands where they use a breath analyzer, no, I had to follow a pen with my eyes while he aimed a flashlight on my eyes... I don't know but I doubt this is a correct way to do it.. oh well, I didn't drink anything so I didn't had to worry). After a short lecture, he let me go without a ticket. I was pretty lucky with that. I have no idea why, but I think it might have been because of my birthday, that he had seen the birthdate on the driver license. According to Michelle it might also have been that it was because I didn't cause any problems and just stayed nice, or because I was honest about my mistake... whatever it was, I like to stick with my birthday as for explanation ;)
But oh well, the building we were looking for is the following:
Looks good, doesn't it? (Yes, I know, I used a lens which made stars of the lights, I shouldn't have done this but oh well haha.. it's all in a learning process).
Can you believe this is just a mural, and not something like 3D?
This piece of art has been painted in 18 months (10 to 14 hours a day) by an artist named 'John Pugh'. They wrote the following about it in the local paper:
"Pugh said the epic wave behind surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku is Queen Lili'uokalani herself, whose enduring legacy lives on through the children's center named for her and in other ways. To get the wave just right, he hired a glass artist to make a model of a wave he could study throughout.
He said the children shown in the mural offer gifts that pay tribute to the queen. In a window to the right side is Prince Kuhio, who served in Congress and created the Hawaiian homes act to return more Hawaiians to the land."
So, yeah, to prove that it is just a mural, here's a photo from up close:
That this painting can really fool people shows from a part in the same article in the local paper, where they wrote about a crew of firemen who thought that the children in the mural were stuck and couldn't come down any more. When they wanted to save them, they found out about their mistake haha.
Ok, tomorrow, or the day after, I will post a new message about last Saturday. We also went out on that day, and I made some photo's in a botanical garden. But ok, that kind of depends on how busy I am (I am quite busy lately for some reason). And now to bed, it's getting late..
And here are the next two video's. In the first one we drive over the Pali from the westside (leeward) towards the eastside (windward), and in the other one, I drive exactly the other way around, so from windward back to the leeward side of the island.
It was sunny the whole morning, even when we drove towards the Pali from the consulate, but the weather wasn't on our side for some reason (which can happen easily when you are at the Pali, there's more rain in that area than in others as the clouds remain close to the mountains). So you will see some rain falling down in the first video.
I made these video's actually a bit because of some people who recently asked me about how it was to drive on the Pali, this because of my earlier post about the Pali. It was those questions that made me think about making a video of the Pali, when we would drive over it again.. and so here it is :)
I hope you liked the videos a bit (even though they might be a bit monotone, but yeah, that is my own feeling, it is after all not the first time I drove over that road haha). I will post some more videos soon. Michelle and I want to get out more often, so we should film a bit more also ;)
