MARCH 28

KONA, HAWAII MARCH 28

Today we were awakened about 7 AM when they lowered the lifeboat which is located on the floor below us. We went out on the balcony to watch and after it got in the water they pulled away from the ship to line up so they could start tendering passengers to shore.
As it got about 30 yards from the ship one of the crew that was standing outside of the tender on a little ledge he fell into the water. He was wearing a life vest but he started to holler at the driver as he was trying to swim fully clothed and with shoes so he really wasn't getting to far. The driver finally noticed and started to turn around but in the meantime someone on the tender platform threw him a life ring which really didn't help as we were watching him flounder around. They finally threw him a rope and 4 men pulled him in very fast. To hIm it must have seemed like an eternity.
That is another story no one on the ship is talking about. They only want people to know the good things and are very secretive when something goes wrong. After breakfast we took the tender into town and grabbed a free shutte to Walmart. It was wonderful because they had a huge Hawaii epartment where you could pick up anything you wanted there. We needed to replace some drugs we were running low on and the prices onboard are astronomical and the touristy places were also outrageous. Then we grabbed a shuttle back to the tender, had lnch and sat in the sun for a while but I had to go in as it got way too hot for me. My cold isn't getting any better and we were tired so we decided to have room service for dinner and of course some chicken soup to make me feel better. It was a very early night for us.
Tomorrow we'll be in Hilo but as of now the only thing we have planned is to find a pack and ship place so we can lighten our load going home. It's either pay overweight charges to the airlines or pay it tomorrow.