Christmas Letter 1991

Contents

1. Total Solar Eclipse
2. Molten Lava Flow
3. Green Sand Beach
4. Biak Indonesia
5. Bali Indonesia
6. Brisbane
7. Kuta Indonesia

Hi

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

How are you? I am fine. I started back to work recently at Intelect Inc. doing computer programming in the C++ language on a telephone switch.

I hope you can come to Hawaii to visit me. I live in a two-bedroom bungalow on the North shore of Oahu. The ocean is about 130 feet from my door. It is a rocky shoreline and in the winter you can hear the waves thunder and break on the rocks. There is a bench on the edge of the grass just before the start of the rocks where you can sit and watch the waves crashing onto the rocks. The view is particularly nice at sunset. Here about 15 minutes after sunset we still get that multicolored sky effect caused by the volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere from that eruption in the Philippines a few months back. In the winter, there is great surfing nearby. In the summer there is excellent snorkeling and scuba diving at three tables beach around 100 meters north of here!

Lets see I have stories to tell about the total solar eclipse of the sun we went to see on the big island, the molten lava flow with the black sand beach and the green sand beach, all this happen on the big island of Hawaii. Then there are stories about my recent trip to Indonesia and Australia.

Let us start with the eclipse. I looked out the bathroom window of my hotel. It was cloudy.I was bummed. Ruth and I walked out to the city of Kona boat dock on the bay. Behind us there was a pit fire used to roast pig for a luau (A lavish Hawaiian feast.) one of the hotels was planning. In the bright sun you could barely see the flames. There were hundreds of people there in the harbor area. Everyone was surprisingly quiet. Many people had cameras, some with big telescopic lenses. Most everyone also had solar peepers. These are made of Mylar and they filter out the dangerous rays of the sun allowing you to observe the partial solar eclipse safely. The clouds were of the high altitude variety. The moon started to pass over the sun at about 7:15 am July 11, 1991.

You could see the moon waxing across the sun through the thinning cloud cover as it got darker and darker. Due to a dramatic stroke of luck the sky cleared as the clouds moved towards the mountains. At this time the sun was obscured by the moon about 85% and it was much darker. I looked at the luau fire and the flames stood out in contrast to the foliage behind the fire. I watched some flowers nearby to see if they would close but no movement yet. There were about a dozen scuba divers in the harbor. Someone had thought up the idea to be underwater during the eclipse to observe the behavior of marine life during the eclipse.

I found out later that some people went skydiving during the eclipse. Just so you can picture the dynamics of this celestial event, I will describe it. As you know, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Since this was in the morning, the sun was in the east. At first, the moon is above the sun in the sky. Then the bottom of the moon begins to obscure the top of the sun. As time goes on more and more of the sun disappears behind the moon. Then just before the occurrence of totality, only a small part of the bottom of the sun is visible behind the moon. Then about 1 second before totality we get the diamond ring effect. The corona of the sun makes a shiny ring around the moon and right at the bottom is the diamond. This of course is the last little bit of the sun before totality. At the moment of totality I heard a great cheer from the crowd.

We had a beautiful view, unobstructed by clouds, of the total eclipse of the sun. I looked back at the luau fire, it was incredibly bright. I scanned the sky. I could see some of the brighter stars. The light level was just a little brighter than the night sky on a clear full moon night. The crowd was once again very quite, except for the clicking of camera shutters. During totality, it is safe to view the eclipse with the naked eye. The sun is totally obscured by the moon and now due to the lack of glare, I could see the corona of the sun. The effect is similar to old religious paintings of Jesus or saints who seem to have this glow behind their heads. At the top of the moon, I could see a large solar flare. It's center looked yellow, moving outwards the flare was orange then red on the edge just like a flame, but not the same shape. Totality lasted about four minutes. Just before the waning phase of the eclipse, the diamond ring appeared briefly, but this time the diamond was at the top of the moon. We had to go back to using the solar peepers now that the glare of the sun had returned. Our view was clear of clouds for the rest of the eclipse. Slowly the moon slipped below the sun in the horizon revealing more and more of the great yellow ball.

It was great to witness this magnificent event!

We went to eat breakfast and later went snorkeling at the Kona bay.

The molten lava flow with the black sand beach is on the south side of the island. Kona is on the West Side of the island of Hawaii. It took Ruth and I around two and a half hours to drive there. The big island is indeed big.

On the way, we stopped at the volcano national park. It has a museum building right on the edge of the volcano rim with beautiful views of the crater. Inside we learned about the fire goddess Pele. There was some great fire and brimstone volcano type art along with various earthquake monitoring equipment. Ruth bought some type of educational videotape on volcanoes and Hawaiian mythology.

We proceeded along crater rim road to the coastline. There we had to park the car and walk around half a mile along recently cooled volcanic rock. It was extremely rugged. You could see different patterns had formed in the rock as it cooled. The land we were walking on was less than a year old. Or to put it another way at our current latitude and longitude a year ago we would have been swimming in the Pacific Ocean.

Volcanic rock is porous and therefore very light. At some places we saw these strands of glass or mica like stuff lying in crevasses between the rocks. The local Hawaiians call it Pele's hair. In the distance, we could see white smoke rising up from the edge of the sea. As we approached, we could see burning rocks floating in the sea. Just past where the molten lava was forming new land mass was a black sand beach. I was going to try and go down to it so I could sample the temperature of the water. I was prevented from doing so by a state park official. I had been to a black sand beach on a previous trip to the big island and when the sun is out they get so hot that you have to wear shoes.

The previous day Ruth and I had gone to a green sand beach. This beach is located near the southern most point of the big island. This part of the big island is also the southern most point in the USA. We drove down a narrow one lane road. When a car came in the opposite direction one of us had to pull over to the side. We parked the car near a place where you could launch a boat into the ocean. Then we walked along a rocky coastline for about a mile. Along the way, we could see waves crashing onto the rocks and the spray flying into the air. It was pretty. The last 700 feet of the hike was down a steep rocky trail with loose sand on it. We carefully made our way down the path.

The beach was a dull dark green. We walked down towards the water. I picked up some of the sand and examined it. It was a roughly equal mixture of green and black sand. If you took out the black sand, the remaining green sand would be a brilliant green color.

I had brought along my diving mask, snorkel, and fins. The sand slanted down from the beach about 17 degrees off the horizontal. There were around six foot waves breaking on the beach. I jumped through a breaking wave as I entered the water and swam out about 75 feet. Unfortunately, the high surf we had seen displaying it's power on the way here had done a good job of reducing the clarity of the water at this beach. I did a duck dive and swam to the bottom around 23 feet down. The bottom was rocky and the visibility did not improve as I dove deeper. I'd say the visibility was about 3 feet. At the bottom I looked up. Not too much light made it down this deep. I surfaced. As I swam back towards the beach and saw the waves breaking on the shore I decided that body surfing to the beach would be the safest technique. I took off my fins and waited for a big wave to come along. I saw a big one approaching and started to swim vigorously towards the shore. I rode the wave rapidly towards the shore. As I approached the shore, I rotated my body, feet down. When my feet touched the sand, I just ran up the beach being pushed by the wave behind me. It was good fun.

I enjoyed my trip to Indonesia and Australia. I flew from Honolulu to Biak Indonesia. I was the only person to get off the plane in Biak, this made me a bit nervous. As I walked around Biak city I noticed there were no other white people. I stayed at the Wisma Titawaka hotel along with the Garuda Indonesia flight crew. This was nice because these people spoke a bit of English. I studied a little Indonesian language before I left Hawaii and this turned out to be beneficial in Biak especially in matters concerning money and the cost of goods. While in Biak I went snorkeling and to the Japanese Caves. The snorkeling was fair. I saw some colorful starfish about six inches in diameter. I also saw the largest sea urchins I have ever seen with sharp spikes seven inches long. A local I met at the post office offered to guide me to the Japanese caves. He was reluctant to go after I told him I needed some exercise and wanted to walk to the caves but his pride would not let him renege on his offer. So we walked about two kilometers to the caves. On the way, there was a little museum with American and Japanese weapons from WW II. The caves themselves were quite large and we could only explore a small part of them since we had no flashlights. Biak is very hot, it is only a few degrees south of the equator. I should have wore suntan lotion as the back of my neck got a bit sunburned while walking to and from the caves.

I was sitting on the veranda of the Wisma Titawaka hotel along with some of the Garuda Indonesia flight crew where I observed a very amusing scene. Across the street there were piles of rocks, it seems the early phases of some type of construction was going on. There were a few locals milling about when a medium size dump truck pulled up. The locals got into the back of the dump truck. Soon locals started to come into the area from all directions and climb up into the back of this dump truck. After about 15 minutes the locals were packed like sardines in the back of this truck, there must have been 60 of them with barely enough room to inhale. I wish I had taken a picture of this. I can think of several funny captions for it. At first I thought it was just some type of fraternity prank to see how many could be crammed in the truck, but then the truck drove off. I had just witnessed an example of Indonesian mass transport.

Indonesia including Biak is predominantly Muslim. The exception is Bali which is mainly Hindu. The Muslim faith is no fun at all. Two or more times a day these terrible prayers would come blasting from loudspeakers attached to a tower which was part of a mosque. During most of Friday night, there were some student military exercises going on in the street. I could hear the marching and what sounded like a lifeguard whistle. Then of course there were the lovely roosters in the backyard to add to the racket. By Saturday night, I was eager to get up early and continue my trip to Bali.

In Bali, I stayed in Sanur near the Bali Hyatt hotel which had on display some excellent art. At my hotel pool, I met two Ozzys Mickel-Ann, and Jody and an American, Elaine from San Diego California. Both Ozzys were from Adelaide, one of them had married a Balinese man who owned the Greyhound restaurant and several shops, his nickname was forty-three. The nickname came from his soccer number. We ate at forty-three's restaurant several times, the food was quite good. All in all it was relaxing, I went snorkeling and scuba diving and got one hour long massages on the beach for around US $4.50. We also went to the monkey forest and fed the monkeys peanuts.

Scuba diving in Bali is great. I went diving at Pulau Menjangan Island, which is a small island near the northwest coast of Bali in the Java Sea. It was about a two and a half hour drive from Sanur. Then a short boat ride to the dive site right off the shore of Pulau Menjangan island. The dive consisted of descending along a reef wall to a depth of about 70 feet. The water was crystal clear. The colors of the coral and fish were spectacular. It was a visual overload so many beautiful colors. I felt my sensory system was being overloaded by the combination of the sound of my bubbles and breathing, the sensation of the bubbles flowing over my chest and body as I swam along and the overwhelming visual input. The were many fish but not very many bigger that a foot and a half long. It was mainly reef fish similar to what I have seen in Hawaii. We went on two dives that day.

Then I flew from Bali to Darwin to visit my friends Laurel and Mick and I met for the first time their seven year old daughter Suzanne and the nine month old twin boys Michael John and Christopher Daniel. We stayed in Darwin a little over a week and while there I caught a 27 pound Berrimundi at Buffalo creek. Nothing quite like fresh Barri for a beut feed.

On a Monday we left for Brisbane with Laurel, Suzanne, the twins and myself in Laurel's car pulling a trailer full of camping and baby gear. We got a late start so we only made it to Katherine the first night. The second night we stayed with friends at Tennant creek. The third night we stayed somewhere just west of Mt Isa. Sometimes we stayed at hotels sometimes we camped. Somewhere we stopped at the stockmen's museum. A decision point occurred where we could go to Townsville or head south east to Rockhampton. I was a bit short on time so we headed for Rockhampton. The tropic of Capricorn runs through Rockhampton. The rotary club put up a monument with a sun dial and visitor information center. We stopped there and took a few pictures. We drove to the coast and found a place to camp. The next day we took a boat trip to Keppel Island near there. The island had colorful parrots and a nice beach. There seemed to be quite an international clientele. It was a nice relaxing day on that island. I few days later we drove to Gin Gin.

I have fond memories of my visit to John and Kath Bowes cattle ranch near Gin Gin in April or May 1990. I had a fascinating conversation or should I say debate with John about Capitalism. Did we have too much of it or not enough in Australia. I of course took the view that we needed more, much more. In Gin Gin, I rang John and Kath just to say hello, how are you going?

The next day we finally arrived in Brisbane and stayed with some of Laurel's friends Gary and Susanne Houslip. These people were really nice. I had a fascinating conversation with Gary about Labor unions and politics in general. Susanne is very pretty and she promised to forward any mail I might get at her address. I had applied for a tax number while I was in Brisbane and submitted my resume to an employment agency there. Gary was so kind as to circulate my resume where he worked. Australian hospitality is great, all the people I met were really nice.

I unhitched the trailer and could cruise around the city with ease. Unfortunately, I developed a sinus infection and did not get to see much of the city. I did see enough of it to decide that I would rather live in Brisbane than Sydney. As far as major cities in Australia go, In my humble opinion, Brisbane is the most desirable due to the combination of warm weather, good scuba diving in the bay, good surf a little to the south, and the presence of some hi-tech industries.

On Saturday, I flew to Darwin. On Sunday, I flew from Darwin Back to Bali.

This time in Bali I stayed in Kuta. It cost me US$1.50 to get a motorcycle ride from the airport to Kuta. I found nice lodging for US$3.00 per night at a nice location halfway between the beach and Legian St. on Poppies Gang II right across the street from the well known Old Poppies Cottages. Legian St. is party central in Kuta. Kuta Beach is beautiful, but they do charge you a dime to get on the beach for the day. I rented a boogie board for the day there for about $3.50. The waves were good, but Kuta beach is not the best place for surf.

The rest of the story will have to wait.

Thanks.

John