As promised in our previous post, the short video we shot of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge from the coastal road can be found here.

A small update (08/07/2010): I wrote yesterday in this post that it was the Black Pearl but I just found out that it was no longer named the Black Pearl but the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’, Captain Blackbeard’s ship. This probably explains why the ship looks so damaged (and why they were rebuilding the ship when it first arrived). The ship, however, did arrive as the Black Pearl, but the current name is the Queen Anne’s Revenge.. Due to this, I changed the titles and text in this message of this message a bit.

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I have blogged before about the Pirates of the Caribbean and them going to film here in Hawaii but until recently we thought it wouldn’t be really accessible, it would’ve been more luck than anything else to see something of it all.

However, last week, we read in the local paper that they were filming in a pretty nice accessible location and today we decided to take a look if they were still there. After searching a bit along the coast (we knew on what side of the island they would be but not the exact location haha), I suddenly noticed a few masts and figured I would know where the ship would be, and I was right (they would be here for about two weeks, or so we were told, so if you are in the area and want to take a look in the coming days, you can find them here (click)).

Unfortunately we didn’t see them actually do some filming, and we didn’t see Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) either (it was probably too late on the day), but we did see the ship ‘the Black Pearl’ ‘the Queen Anne’s Revenge’. I can tell you it looked a lot better than the last time we’ve seen it, when they were still building and doing repairs and such (see pictures of that here). It looked more ‘finished’ now. Well.. finished?

To be honest, it kind of looked like the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge has been on fire… I don’t know if this is supposed to be because of the many fights in the earlier movies of the Pirates of the Caribbean, or if it was something that happened in this movie (and what we will have to see when the movie comes out). It is, however, very clear that when you look closely on the pictures that you can see the ship was pretty battered. The masts look a lot shorter than they should be (or so I think), you can see soot and burned wood everywhere, pieces of railing are missing and you can continue this list. It was pretty cool to see.

Next to the pictures of the Black Pearl Queen Anne’s Revenge we also made a few pictures of the surroundings, which I will add below, so who knows, you might recognize some of the area when you’re watching the movie

And like promised, a few pictures of the surroundings.. I am curious if we will still recognize it all when we watch the movie..

We also filmed a little bit from the road that goes around the bay over there, I still have to convert that and upload it to Youtube. When that’s done, I will add it to our blog

I know.. it is pretty quiet on our blog lately. I cannot do much about it really because there are not that many things happening, and ok, maybe sometimes there is but sometimes I just don’t feel like writing for all kinds of reasons, plus it is a lot of work to write a piece like this, and to translate it. But don’t worry, no news means good news

I wrote in one of my older posts that we would have a new layout soon. Well, that layout is waiting, but I haven’t had much time to actually implement it into the blog. Mostly I am just too busy as Isabella is becoming a handful nowadays. It might take a while longer haha.

But ok, how are things here? Things are doing welll We cannot complain, nice weather and we go out once in a while, like to the beach for example. Isabella really likes the beach haha. Here are some pictures

Last weekend we also went to the Byodo-In temple at the other side of the island:

I don’t think we have that much new pictures besides these (we have them, of course, but they are a bit older by now and they don’t show anything really new in the sense of the backgrounds and such).

Isabella will have her first birthday later this month, so we surely will have some more pictures by then. There will be (and I am not surprised that this amount will be doubled) about 50 people coming to her birthday, we’re doing a buffet through a catering with some Hawaiian food, yummy We will do this a week before her real birthday because there will be some relatives from the mainland who will be visiting the islands, so they can celebrate along (this was the wish of Michelle’s mother). There goes our small party which we originally wanted haha. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, we will still do something small on her real birthday

Maybe we will go back to Kaneohe later this week as we found out last weekend that they are currently shooting for the Pirates of the Carribean on that side of the island.. who knows, we might see some famous people

Yesterday was the last day of May, Memorial Day. This day is similar to the Dutch “dodenherdenking” (remembrance day). People remember their loved ones on this day, those who fell during active duty in the armed forces, but also their other loved ones.

Like I said in my previous blogpost, we were thinking about going to the beach and to get a lantern which we could lit later in the evening, during the ceremony, with on the lantern a written memory (think about a small piece of text, with the names of the loved ones), and place it on the water to let it float into the wide ocean. The candles in the lanterns are meant as a guidance for the spirits to their next life, and to bring their loved ones on earth some peace.

They would start to give lanterns out to people at 1pm, and since there would only be a limited amount available, we were waiting in the queue at 1.30pm. Well, ok, Michelle was waiting in the line, I couldn’t find a parking spot (it was very crowded) and so I dropped her off first so she could claim a spot in the line. To give an impression:

The first picture was made by Michelle with her telephone while she was waiting. You can see the tent in the distance. By the way, try to find Michelle on the second picture.

After we had a lantern and floating device in our possession, we found that we had about four hours left to do something else before the ceremony would start. We decided to visit her dad’s grave, to lay some flowers at his grave, like she does every year. It was pretty busy at the graveyard, like you can also see on the next picture.

The graves here do not have standing tombstones, but tombstones that are put flat in the ground, everything that you can see in the picture are flowers and such that are put there by their survivors. There were also people having a bbq at some of the graves, something you don’t see so quickly in the Netherlands but which is a tradition for many over here (this comes mostly because of the Asian influences in Hawaii).

We drove back into town after this, parked the car and went towards the beach, where it became more and more crowded. Just before the ceremony we heard in the welcoming speech that they had more visitors than last year, which was 40,000 at that time, so there were more this year.

While we were waiting for the start of the ceremony, we played a bit with Isabella who thought the sand on her feet was amazing. She was making all kinds of cute sounds and was really busy, she really enjoyed herself.

You can see on the last picture that it became more crowded. The ceremony also started by then, with a speech from the spiritual head of the Shinnyo-en Buddhism order, as you can also see on the screens. She was there on a stage but that was pretty far away, that’s why there were screens (plus it was nice they had these as she spoke Japanese and they showed an English translation). They also had hula dancers and a few artists who sang some fitting songs.

After this it was time to walk towards the water and lit the lanterns, but before we would let them float on the water, there first were some canoes that transported even more lanterns with messages from people all over the world (you can send your wish or thoughts to them over the internet or by mail, and volunteers will place these on the lanterns) and that placed the lanterns on the water as they passed by.

And then it was time to let the lanterns float on the water and to send wishes of happiness over the world.

We walked a bit into the water, the water was nicely warm, placed the lantern on the water, and then something dismal happened. A little boy, who was there with his parents, came from nothing and took the lantern with him for a couple of feet while he was swimming. We were quite stunned that this happened as we wanted to do it slowly, to take some pictures of the lantern and then push the lantern into the wide ocean when we would be ready for it, but that was not possible because of this boy. In my hurry and shock I tried to make a picture but I apparently moved a bit too much and it blurred a bit. You can still see that the kid pushed the lantern:

I thought this was a shame, and I am actually a bit angry about it. I understand it is just a kid, but if it was my kid who did this, he would have received a spanking (so Larissa and Isabella, you know what not to do). I don’t think this is acceptable and I don’t understand why his parents didn’t tell him he couldn’t do that. They said something like “hey, that is far enough”, but nothing like “hey, don’t do that”. You have to understand that some people write some deep wishes, thoughts and memories on these lanterns, things that make them think about their loved ones. For many people this was an emotional experience, and that was the same for me. And then a brat like him comes along who pushes the lantern away. I was terrified that he would push too hard and that it would turn over or that it would make water in the front.

Yeah, I think I should’ve said something myself at that time, but I was so shocked by this, that I really didn’t know what to do. Next time I will do some things different from the start (like walking further into the deep, where there are no small kids). I thought it was a shame. The whole thing was pretty spiritual and it gave me a good feeling, and then something like this happens.. not that much fun, but oh well, fortunately it didn’t take away all of the spirituality.

Right, before I stop with this post with some pictures that I made after we had the lantern in the water, I want to add that this is a really beautiful experience, and something we want to do again next year. If you want to go on vacation to Hawaii, and you don’t know when, you should consider to have Memorial Day in your itinerary so you can enjoy this also, it is really special.

Spam is something which lots of people in Hawaii love to eat. In total the people here eat about 7 million cans of Spam per year, which would be more than 4.5 cans per resident, the biggest number of the whole US, and possibly even the rest of the world. It is even so that Hawaii knows an annual festival called ‘Spam Jam‘, with Spam as the main piece of interest.

So, Michelle, Isabella and I went yesterday to the Spam Jam 2010 in Waikiki, to see what it is all about. The event took place from 4 pm to 10 pm, we arrived there around 6 pm. I can tell you it was quite busy, there was an estimate of 20,000 people last year and I think they have reached the same amount of visitors again, it was pretty busy.

The event was held in Waikiki, on Kalakaua Avenue, which is like the main street of Waikiki. The road was partly closed for all traffic as there were all kinds of booths on the road where people could eat all kinds of dishes with Spam as the main ingredient, and there were also a few stages where they had some bands perform.

So what kind of dishes with Spam did they have? Think about stuff such as Spam Hotdogs, Volcano Nachos with Spam Chili, Spam and Kalua Pork Enchiladas, Spicy Spam Wraps, Spam noodles, Fried Rice Spam and this list continues on and on. There was really a lot for sale.

It was fun to be at the Spam Jam, but there sure was a lot of people.. I think they would be better off if they held it in a park instead as it is just too crowded for a public road (plus, traffic around that area was terrible, it is supposed to be one of the busier streets on Oahu).

Last Saturday and yesterday (Tuesday) we went for the first time out for a swim in the ocean together with Isabella, or better said: in a lagoon that is connected with the ocean at Ko’olina (so it is seawater but in a more protected environment). And, in case you didn’t know yet, it was also the first time that I went for a swim in Hawaii since my arrival here. I know, it sounds unbelievable, but it is true, it was the first time for me haha.

Anyways, last Saturday was the very first time. Unfortunately it was not the most fun time for Isabella as she cried quite a bit. I think this was mostly because she was awake for some time already when we went to the beach and that she got tired when we were there (and yeah, the water was also pretty cool compared to the outside temperature (it was hot that day) so that was probably also a bit scary for her). So she didn’t exactly enjoy it, and neither did we. We did go in the water, but only for a very short time. Here are some pictures of that day (which are, by the way, not all really sharp as the camera was inside a waterproof bag, which made it look like there was some layer on top of it):

We decided, mostly because Isabella didn’t enjoy this time, to go again next Tuesday (which was yesterday, and now I read this back, it sounds a bit odd: it is like we wanted to tease her by going back haha).

We would make sure this time that Isabella would go towards the beach right after her morning nap. And so we did. She wasn’t awake too long so we had good hope that she would not start to cry right after we put her in her floating device. And fortunately for us, she didn’t

She appeared to think that it was all a bit odd and different, but she went through it all pretty well. She was not afraid or something, she was more like examining it all.

Of course we also made some pictures this day, so here they are (and again are they not all very sharp because of that waterproof thing):

Again we didn’t stay too long. This time not because Isabella or something but more because of the weather. The temperature was ok, but there was a pretty strong and a bit cool wind (which, by the way, got me in my neck as I now have some muscle pain in my neck). But oh well, that’s all ok, we had a lot of fun, and I think Isabella also thought it was fun.

By the way, here is a short video of the swimming (really just short, plus, again, the image might be a bit vague due to the plastic layer that was over the camera):

When will we go again? I don’t know yet, not for now anyways as there is quite some wind and cool weather right now.. we want to have some nice warm weather, of course

Recently someone told me that it seemed as if I posted more messages through Twitter than actual blog posts. This is true, of course, I do post more frequent on Twitter. It is however, as far as I think, not really like I write less on this blog than before. I have said it once before, there is not always material to make a nice long blog post, and often I just didn’t write anything back then when I didn’t use Twitter yet, but now you get to see those things in small messages so basically there is more to read about than before, which seems even better to me

Anyways, it is time for a bit longer post right now

Yesterday we went out in search of the Black Pearl, the ship from Pirates of the Carribean. I told about it before, that they would shoot their fourth movie (’On Stranger Tides’) here in Hawaii, and I also knew that the ship arrived about a month ago and that it was in dry dock for repairs and such. They wrote about this in the local newspaper, and that’s also why I knew it was not somewhere inside, but that you could easily see it from the road.

And that was true!

We found the ship after a short search in about the spot where we expected it (here), there was a fence but you could easily look through the fence. We looked at it from a parkinglot near a boat ramp, from which I just found out it was a private boat ramp (which explains the security at the entrance of the parking, who was not there, by the way, when we entered it). I don’t know how far they could stop us from going there, though, according to Hawaii state law they always have to grant you access to the coastline. I think they just want to discourage people from going there than to really stop them.

Whatever it is, we did see it, and pretty clear as well. Here are some pictures:

As you can see, the Black Pearl is currently not really black, it’s more like black-brown.. I think they will give it a new color (well, it will probably be black haha), and that they sanded it because of that. You can also see that they removed the cabin from the stern and that it now just shows a framework. The figurehead is gone, and so are the masts. They’re really renewing some things on it, and probably also adjust some things for the new movie.

You can see one of the guards sitting on a chair behind the fence on the second picture, they hired those because of the large number of people who want to see the ship.

Here are some more photo’s:

Some of the materials that you can see in the foreground of the pictures are, I think, from the Black Pearl itself. Many of those things look like how you can expect them on a ship such as this.

By the way, I think we viewed this ship pretty late when you see the following pictures of when the ship was only just in dry dock about a month ago. I also added a photo of how the ship looks like in the movie itself. By the way, these pictures are not made by us, they come from the Honolulu Advertiser website:

Like I said, you couldn’t see the stern like that anymore, which is a shame really. I would’ve loved to see it with those statues and such. Oh well, they still have to shoot the movie, who knows, I might get lucky and see some of that.

A fun fact: The Black Pearl (or ‘Sunset’ as it’s name really is) is actually a motorboat with a maximum speed of 9 knots. The masts are only there for the view, and it is actually a ship around a ship.

After we took some pictures here, we went to the other side of the harbor, to the Ko’olina resorts, where you can find some lagoons, and where you can walk nicely with a stroller and such. And because the people from Europe and the US mainland want to see the summer so badly, here are some pictures to get you started haha:

For those who wonder why I am wearing a black thing around my wrist, this is because I recently found out that I have a Carpal Tunnel Syndroom. The splint is making sure that I can’t move my wrist too weirdly and such. Not so nice to have, but I think it is the price I have to pay for all those years (about 25 years) of sitting behind a computer too much. I will now have to take it much easier when it comes to computers and such (and I am doing that also).

In the last picture you can see a building that is still under construction. This is going to be the new Disney resort: Disney Aulani. I think this is going to be a beautiful (and very expensive) resort when I look at the the pictures and drawings.

In the second last photo it looks like there is a pineapple growing in a tree.. which isn’t the case.. I have no idea what it really is but it is no pineapple, that’s for sure haha. It kind of also looks like a way too big pinecone.

And then we went back home again. However, when we were on our way to the car, I noticed that we could also see the Black Pearl really well from this side of the harbor:

So if you really cannot get in on that side of the harbor, then you should just go to the Ko’olina resorts with binoculars or a zoom lens for your camera (you can also see it really well with just your eyes, by the way), where you can still easily view it.

And that was our little trip of yesterday.. I don’t think I have much more to tell you. If there is anything else, I will let you know

Oh, we will go out for swimming soon (and you might not believe this, but it will be the first time since I am here, can you imagine that? Hahaha!).. we bought a few of those swimming pants with diapers inside of them for Isabella, a factor 50 sunblock, and we will buy a small hat and a thing for her to sit in, in the water.. that’s all going to work out nicely, I am looking forward to it already

Isabella and I have been in a car accident this afternoon, but to tell you right away: Isabella and I, and the other involved people also, are unharmed.

It happened this afternoon with Michelle’s car. Michelle took my car to her job, and I would gas her car up as that one was getting pretty dry. And on our way to the gas station, it happened.

On a T-crossing (is that the right name in English?) I wanted to go straight, while the lady coming from the opposite direction wanted to turn left. She stopped, drove a bit further and stopped again, which gave me the impression that she had seen me and that I could go on (mind you: there are no odd signs or anything on that road, so I had the right of way) until she, all of the sudden, continue to drive and I couldn’t avoid her anymore. I braked with all my power, threw the steering wheel to the right, but I was unlucky, the car didn’t want to stop on time and we hit each other.

I made a quick drawing in MS paint (I have nothing else on this netbook right now) of how things went:

I drove the blue car, and the women in the other car drove in the gray/silver car.

Michelle’s car has a pretty bad looking damage:

As far as I could see, the other party is the one who was wrong, and her insurance should probably have to make up for the costs on Michelle’s car. The woman also admitted that she had some problems with her eye (she went to the doctor for that, she said, but it was still causing her problems), and that she didn’t see me because of that. Either way, it is not exactly fun.

Right, I will go to the ‘after-hours clinic’ in the hospital with Isabella to do a check on the both of us. I don’t think anything is wrong, Isabella smiled and laughed after the accident and didn’t appear to be in any pain and I don’t think anything is wrong with me either (except for some muscle pain in my right arm), but they advised me to go anyways, just to be sure. I’ll let you know what their findings were

Like I promised in my tweets yesterday, I would upload some pictures of our visit to Maui. However, when I was watching the pictures and videos today, I noticed that we didn’t had that much pictures, and they’re actually mostly whale pictures and not much of our visit to Maui itself.. and as for the videos, they are also a bit disappointing as we didn’t even have enough to edit it to a normal video.

I can explain, though, we wanted to film some on board but I was mostly busy with my photo camera, and Michelle had her hands full on the baby, who woke up while we were on the ship and got hungry. And, well, the number of pictures we made of Maui are a bit disappointing because we left both cameras in the back of our car the whole time, instead of the front so we could easily make some pictures.

I guess we will have to go to Maui again soon to make some more pictures and videos.. we might do it multiple days, so we can do a bit more than just watch whales from a ship.

Anyways, I should make a short report of our trip to Maui. Like I said before, i was especially curious of how Isabella would behave in the airplane. She usually is a very sweet and quiet girl, but yeah, how would she behave when the air pressure will be different and when she gets her ears popping? Well, it all went a lot better than I expected. She was ok with everything and I don’t think she was impressed by it all, even though I had my own ears popping quite a few times haha (I have it worse on these short flights anyways, it’s like they climb at a faster rate with those small planes). The turbulence during the landing in Maui was also no problem to her, she went to sleep because of the rocking haha. No, I doubt I would have worry for when we make the long trip to the Netherlands.

Going through security with Isabella was also pretty easy. I read a lot up front to see how it would be, and I also read quite some horror stories, but we didn’t experience any of that, everything went extremely fast and easy.. it was almost like I traveled alone.

Once we got to Maui, we first picked up our rental car, went to Walmart for some bottles of pre-made milk for Isabella, and then we ate some food at Sam Sato, a local restaurant, as Michelle love their dry noodles.

After that we drove from Kahului to Lahaina, on the west side of Maui, and we noticed that the land there was so extremely dry. I already read about it a couple of weeks ago in the paper that some areas didn’t get enough rain, but I never expected it to be this bad. It really looked like a desert at some spots.

Once we got to Lahaina, we weren’t sure if we wanted to make a boat trip to watch whales. They announced that we might see high waves, as high as 25-30 feet, around the isles, and well, you don’t want to be on a small boat with that kind of waves haha. But fortunately it looked like the water was really calm, the sun came through and all of the sudden we noticed a whale jumping up from the water, a bit like the one in the following picture:

No, unfortunately this isn’t made by me, we didn’t see any other whale jumping up like that unfortunately. Michelle just noticed this picture and her reaction was “Hey, we didn’t see them like that during our boat trip, we have to go back, we only saw lazy whales” haha. We will do that for sure, it was really fun to do.

We bought some tickets for the boat trip and boarded shortly after. We have seen quite a few whales, and even though it was not like the one above, it was still very much worth to do it. It was really beautiful to see it all. But ok, I know some people want to see the pictures instead of me talking, so here I’ll keep quiet for now so you can see the pictures. Some comments are below the pictures as usual

Right, I think this should do it for now. I promise to have more different shots the next time we are in Maui (and we might have some underwater shots, we wanted to make a submerged tour but we didn’t had enough time for that now).

On the first pictures of the humpbacks you can see a mother with her calf, and on the last photo’s you can see a female with a male between us and the female. He probably did this to protect her from us because, well, imagine yourself that our ship would want to mate with her, that’s something he obviously didn’t want haha.

After we returned ashore, we drove towards Kihei, where we wanted to get some Shave Ice, but Isabella became a bit cranky, she was tired and didn’t sleep much, she got hungry and she needed a clean diaper.. well, I would be cranky too in her case haha. So we parked at a beach park and stayed there for a bit while we relaxed and watched the sun going down on sea.

Once Isabella was ready, and we got hungry, we went back to Kahului where we wanted to eat at Koho. And what do you think, once we finally sat at our table, Isabella started to cry pretty hard… I didn’t know where to look, it was so busy and then your baby starts to cry.. pffff… thankfully she was quiet once Michelle held her and she could see the ceiling fans (she loves those, especially when they’re on haha), and then we could still enjoy our food, which was very good in my opinion.

After Koho we bought some donuts at Krispy Kreme, who make really delicious donuts. And after that we went towards the airport of Kahului so we could fly back to Honolulu.

By the way, I really noticed how easy it is to become prejudice thanks to the terrorist threats and such, we had a pretty odd person on board of our plane (we saw him already at the check-in) that raised some questions with me (and with the flight attendants as well as I could hear (we sat on the front row in the first class, so you hear everything they say)) and there were a few more people who didn’t make me completely feel at ease.. it is a prejudice, and probably nothing special, so it is kind of sad when you think about it, but yeah, thanks to all those negative stories in the news, you sometimes think twice. I really notice you look more around these days during flying.

Oh well, the flight back went pretty smooth. We sat pretty comfortable in the first class, and Isabella had fun as well I think. There was no turbulence when we arrived (which is pretty nice because those planes are very small) and the flight was also over in no-time, we were hardly airborne for 30 minutes haha.

Right, like said, next time we will have more different pictures, and probably also a video

Yes, you’re reading correctly: pirates in Hawaii. It is, however, less bad than it sounds

Earlier today (Jan 18) it was announced that the new Disney movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, will be filmed in Hawaii this summer. They will film on both Oahu (our island) and Kauai. The movie will be released in the summer of 2011.

I wonder though, how long do they want to keep the “of the Caribbean” up if they start to film here? The Caribbean are located in the Atlantic ocean, Hawaii is located at the other side of the world in the Pacific ocean.. It looks to me that they would be better off calling the movie “Pirates of the Pacific” haha. Then again, it is “stranger tides”, and the Hawaiian tides are, of course, not the Caribbean..

Oh well, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are nice movies to watch in my opinion, I wonder if we will recognize some areas in the movie, and if we will notice anything of the filming itself.

I also read today that the previous movie, “At World’s End”, was also filmed here for a small part, on Maui and Molokai. So basically they already went wrong here haha.

Hawaii is doing a nice job in the movie industry, new movies and series are recorded here very frequently, they just finished a few (amongst which “Hereafter” of Clint Eastwood with Matt Damon), and there will be other ones coming as well (like, for example, “The Descendents”, a movie from Alexander Payne with George Clooney, that just began the pre-production here). I have to say that I often like it that I see known places in movies, especially when you live there.. you then get that “Hey, I know that” thing.

Hmm.. maybe I should get an eye patch and a wooden leg for Isabella somewhere, and see if I can get her as an extra pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean haha!