Last night we were watching the news, as I said in the last blog, when we heard about this Tsunami warning coming from the earthquake in Japan. We set our alarms for just before the estimated time of arrival of 3am, and flipped on the tv to watch. That was short lived though, Josh barely stirred, and I fell asleep as nothing happened, and as news casters boringly repeated old news while waiting for something to occur. It was like last year when we watched the footage from Mexico as Hawaii was in alert and waiting for a wave, but nothing happened. Only here, this time, the air raid-type sirens went off numerous times through the night, and we woke up hearing that a 6 foot wave hit the beach here in Kehei and a 9 footer hit Lahaina. Shortly after we woke up we drove down to the main rode and took a few photos of the evidence and ocean carnage. Hawaii, you were lucky again.
As we got down to the Cove, where we surf, the water was WAY out. There was a road block by the cops to block off the lower lying areas in-case of some residual waves. All day the tides were doing strange things (as they did in Mexico last year without the large initial wave), surging in, in, in until it was higher than high tide, then slowly drawing back out as the ocean water levels around the world are trying to even themselves out.
Later in the day we drove to Lahaina to check out any destruction that may have occurred. There wasn’t much to see, except less boats in the harbour. Instead they were hanging out in the bay, where its safer, waiting for the tides to settle. This one particular boat didn’t make it.
We were lucky we weren’t in Waikiki last night, as it was entirely evacuated as we heard on the news. Our hotel room last week was only on the 2nd floor, and maybe only 2 blocks away from the water. Not sure what we would have had to do, or where we would have had to go to. But it would have been another interesting twist in our randomgoodness saga.
Tonight we sit watching more news about Japan and its massive unfortunate earthquake. Lucky for us, it was another beautiful day on Maui, and we are safe and sound. Only no one was allowed on the beach or in the water, restricted and shooed by the lifeguards. There were gawkers galore hanging out and taking photos, glad that it was much less of an issue than it could have been I’m sure.