Valentine Day Trip to San Antonio. Day 2: The Mission Trail

Second full day in San Antonio would allow us to see some of the oldest places in the area by one of the most exciting means Ray and I know of: touring around them on bikes. We rode for about 14 miles on the picturesque path along the San Antonio River passing dams and aqueducts towards our destination: the Missions.

In early 1700 several Franciscan monks arrived on a mission from Spain to help convert lost indigenous souls to Christianity. Apparently, the local lost souls were in enough trouble at the time as Apache and Comanche were attacking them from the North and the diseases brought by early Europeans were attacking them from within.

With such lucky co-incidence of necessities and desire for a greater good, Franciscans started several missions which attracted Indians and turned into small communities which provided and protected, educated and spread Spanish Culture to the region. Thus a city of San Antonio was formed at the mission of San Antonio De Valero.

Four more missions spread south of the first one: Mission Conception, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan, and Mission Espada.




Perhaps there were more missions stretching in multiple directions, but these five survived until our time and formed what’s known as The Mission Trail.

The Missions were built as fortifications with rooms for Indian families along the perimeter of the walls, one or several churches inside, the Granary (food store), the school (yes, they had them there too, sorry kids – you probably were just getting jealous wishing you grew up at that time), and the Convento (where the priests and the peaceful visitors would stay).

This arched gallery is a part of the Convento

Leeza at the entrance into the remains of the Indian home

Ray in front of the church in one of the missions.

The Missions were built from the Texan granite which was chiseled with axes in the nearby quarries. These scratch marks must have been left by the original builders of the Missions.

Remains of the quary.

All Missions were built in early 1700’s, existed for about 80 years, and were then abandoned since there were not enough Indians to continue to support these communities. Even protected by the walls from the outside enemies, the indigenous people died from foreign diseases faster than new can be recruited into missions. We learned that each mission contained about 85 Indian families and was run by 3-4 Franciscan monks making an average population of each community about 120-150 with the large ones ramping up to 180 people. The life in the mission was well regulated. One had to accept Catholic fate to become a member.

Each member of the mission had a job or a trade assigned to them: young men would herd cattle, gather corn, hunt, and train to become soldiers. Each mission would have several soldiers assigned to it to train the population in how to use and make weapons, and how to defend the fortification.

Each day would start with a bell and a mass after which the community would go about their business.

Twice a week, the priest would distribute food to women of the mission based on ‘the need’ (anyone from former Soviet Union sees the similarity here: “from every person based on the ability, to everyone based on the need”?) Hence a married woman would get a slab of meet and a bag of corn on Monday, and then some lard, sugar, and more corn on Thursday. Windows would get a smaller ration.

Priests would teach Indians how to build irrigation systems, raise crops, and make fabric. They also taught Spanish music and songs, and would absolutely freak out when their parish would run away at night to dance around the fires.

Ray in front of the church at mission Espada pondering whether he could live at a Mission.

Ray is no longer in the picture. This answers the ‘will I ever be able to live at the Mission’ question.

Franciscan monks are actually returning to live and owrk at the Missions. Here is a part of the fortification which is being actively used by monks.

Working church at mission San Juan. Services are held regularly for the locals.

Another view of the fortification wall.

The guide at the last mission (Espada) warned that on the way back we would be going uphill and against the wind! Despite the wind, we stopped to marvel at a 300-years-old Spanish Aqueduct which still delivers water! The entire area was irrigated by the system of aqueducts.

Ray under the aqueduct. You could see wated dripping from the top and reflecting in the sun.

Another view of the aqueduct.

We have learned and seen so much during this wonderful ride! It is exceedingly impressive and very hard to believe that Christian Religion and Spanish culture could be spread to the entire region by means of such infinitesimal communities and in such a short time. The descendants of Tejano’s (the nation created as a result of assimilation of numerous Indian tribes) are still very much residing in the area making an integral part of the cultural puzzle in the Southern part of the US.

Leeza's lucky charm (given by David years ago) travelled with us and enjoyed some authentic Tex-Mex with us after the bike ride.

To learn more about San Antonio missions, visit http://www.texasexplorer.com/SanAntonioMissions.htm

Look for the upcoming posts from Ray about our visit to the Alamo and our adventure en-route to San Antonio!

David's Middle School Graduation

My son David graduated from the Middle school this year. I suddenly realized that something changed significantly in our lives and things will not be the same as they were for the last 14 years. While this occasion is not a turning point event such as high school or college graduation, it made me realize that my son’s childhood is over and that we have another adult in the family. In other words – beware, high school student in the house!

This post will focus on the Middle School dance and the Graduation ceremony along with some funny episodes we encountered on the way.

The Middle school dance was the first semi-formal event for the students. It all started with the letter advising the parents that their kids were only 14 and that tuxedos, long evening gowns, limos, or taking kids off school to take them to a spa before the dance was not encouraged or even permitted. I have to admit that the letter was somewhat a shocker to me: I love formal events, love to dress up, and love limos, but consider something along those lines for 14-years-old kids would be completely out of my spectrum of thinking. I could not believe that the school had to issue such a proclamation (obviously based on their prior experience) and that there would be parents who would consider all or some of these things for their still very young kids.

Apart from the ‘letter’, the middle school dance was a fun event. Many parents volunteered to make this it a special experience for the kids. Some parents made decorations or organized catering; others served food, chaperoned, decorated the gym for the dance, etc.



The kids would not see the decked out gym all the way until the dance so the element of a surprise was there too.
Here I would like to include a tip on how to turn your child’s special event into a miserable one: sign up to be a chaperone at the dance, and do not ask your graduate if it would be OK with him. I work full time, and not just any full-time, Wall Street full time. With such work hours, I did not get engaged into too many school activities and felt an extreme need to express myself in light of my son’s graduating middle school. David was appalled at first and said, “Mom, I am very pleased you are trying to take part in my school events, but chaperoning at my dance!!! You should have at least asked me.” We settled on my being at the dance only for the first hour pretending I did not know David. When I suggested that maybe I would not chaperone, David said ‘OK, it would be kind of nice to have you there. Besides, you cannot say ‘yes’ first and then not show up’. So my teenager gave me two lessons: do not over express yourself as a Mom, and stick to your promises. At the end of it, it was a super fun one hour.


David and his friends before the dance at our home.



A week later, the actual Graduation ceremony followed. Even though it took place on a week day, the family gathered to share this occasion with David. The event had several typical staple moments with speeches and wishes of success but also was filled with warm touches which highlighted how special the event was. The students walked through the aisle to their seats so everyone could see them; the most extraordinary achievements were recognized, and the kids even got a chance to go wild for a short time with the refreshments and running around after the ceremony.





As for David, he is starting High school with five Honors classes out of five possible making me very proud of him.


On the last day of school David brought his yearbook home. Unlike yearbooks from previous years which just contained black and white pictures, this one had color pictures, tributes to all important sporting events at school, pictures of all Honors Societies (David is in the French Honor Society), and booster messages from parents. The kids and teachers signed each other yearbooks. This will be such a great memory for David as it is the last year he and all of his classmates stay together (some of the kids will move to different high schools).



I ‘d like to finish this post by sharing the disaster-turned-success story about our yearbook post. The school sent a request for kids’ pictures and booster messages in October with the deadline in April. Since I only get few hundreds emails per day, I missed reading this one and when I finally found the message, it was way past the deadline. While I was crying hysterically about being a horrible mother who was not even capable of submitting a booster message on time, Ray who never loses his cool suggested to get in touch with the school and see what we could do. The ‘yearbook committee’ at school was exceptionally accommodating. While the book was ready to be sent to the printer, they agreed to add an entire page so both Ray and I and David’s dad had a chance to prepare our posts. Of course, the whole page would cost $130 where the regular size message would only cost $16.

At the end, David loved his page! When we looked through the book at home, we found many more whole-page posts placed after David’s so there probably were more parents in Mahwah who did not read all of their emails in time.
David’s graduating the middle school feels like he has closed the last page of his childhood book. He is still often acting like a kid and needs a hug every now and then, but then who does not? At the same time, he is getting more and more independent every day and has started his first job making and selling the best gelato in North Jersey.

I am really looking forward to the high school experience; it will be a change, but it will be a great adventure too!

Halona Blow Hole

Before we even boarded the plane for Hawaii, I was looking over various maps of Oahu searching for the best bicycle route possibilities. Starting from Waikiki, the southeast tip of the island looked achievable in terms of distance, difficulty of terrain, and riding safety. At least according to a pretty decent web site I found on the topic. The thought of riding out to a beautiful beach with pure pedal power seemed a reasonable plan.

Once we arrived, though, got the Sebring convertible, and made the mental adjustment to running on "Hawaii Time", the whole biking enterprise sort of slid down my priority list!

Still, thoughts of what lay out there on the southeast tip continued to dance in my head, and so the day after we arrived we hopped in the car, put the top down, and headed east.

The most remarkable place we found that day is called the Halona Blow Hole. To be precise, not the blow hole itself (very quiet that day) but a small cove cut into the volcanic rock right next to it. It is by far one of the most beautiful and enticing places on all of Oahu that we saw, and in fact is the very place where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissed on the beach in “From Here To Eternity”

We had plans to see a lot more of the east and northeast coast that day, (part of which I cover in [this post]), so resolving to return we moved on. Later in the week we returned with blankets and books to read, and the notion that we might get our feet wet as well.

There is a narrow path coming down from the parking area where the first pictures were taken heading down to the water. We hiked that, and climbed the rocks up the other side.

This is the view from those rocks back to the parking lot:

Leeza climbed up on the cliffs, and found a place where she could see the ocean on one side, and the lagoon on the other.

Leeza finds her meditation spot and summons the ancient island gods to commune with her.

The view back from our perch to a small beach. Although it drops off quickly, the lagoon is very swimmable and during our stay there attracted a growing group of people interested in just that.

If you look at the center left of this last picture, there is a hole in the rock that goes back about 100 feet under the road and to the foot of the hills. Not sure if this is natural, or man-made. It made for a good changing room, though!

Exploring Hawaii - North Shore of Oahu and Dole Pineapple Plantation

The North Shore of Oahu is very different from our home hood of Waikiki. It is a quiet retreat where you would not find high-rise resorts, upscale stores or fancy restaurants. It is a place to escape from hustle and bustle which gives you an opportunity to slow down and think and have few calm moments. At the same time, North Shore is a place to push yourself to the unthinkable limits if you dare to ride waves on one of the famous surfing beaches.

To make the experience even more unique, we left our Sebring to rest at the parking lot and took a mighty Honda V-Star for a ride. After few clunky turns, Ray regained his expert riding skills and was carving some very sharp edges on the island highways.

The most popular surfing spots on the North Shore are : the Banzai Beach Park (The Pipeline), Sunset Beach Park, Waimea Bay Park, and Ali’s Beach. Only expert daredevils have the courage and the skill to challenge 20-ft tall monster waves Hawaii is famous for.

This is Sunset Beach. The waves may not be 20ft tall, but they are massive and ferocious. Enlarge the pictures and look close to spot tiny dots of surfers in the waves.

When Ray and I took surfing lessons and asked our instructor if she would surf at the North Shore, she mentioned that one should be able to hold his breath for several minutes because of the danger of being pulled under the water for a long time.

On the way to North Shore we passed Dole Pineapple plantation. While Hawaii is famous for its pineapples, the fruit is not original to Hawaii. It originated in South America and was discovered by Columbus during his visits to Caribbean Islands. Columbus brought it to Europe and the fruit was later brought to Hawaii by Captain Cook in 1770’s.

Dole was the first to build a plantation on Oahu. He also constructed a cannery to solve the problem of long distance travel required to transport the fruits to the mainland.

Neither of us has ever seen how pineapples grew and we both thought (how ignorant of us) that they grew on trees. Apparently, pineapples grow on very low plants which produce one fruit at a time. Cultivating pineapples is a hardship even today because each one needs to be planted by hand. Gathering pineapples is an even more difficult job: each fruit needs to be cut off the plant by hand. Pineapple leaves are very sharp so the plantation workers have to wear solid protective clothing.

Turns out there is more than one type of pineapples. While writing this post I learned that there are actually five of them. The most widely available one is called The Smooth Cayenne. We also saw the Red Spanish pineapple.

We got pineappled-out when we completed our plantation tour with pineapple ice-cream and a chocolate-covered pineapple.

If you like to learn more about the history of pineapples or about Dole Plantations visit these links:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodhistory/a/pineapplehist.htm
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/22634/the_history_of_the_incredible_pineapple.html?cat=17
http://www.dole-plantation.com/

Some useful links about North Shore beaches
http://www.aloha.com/~lifeguards/nshore.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/43329/best_beaches_on_the_north_shore_of.html?cat=16

Exploring Hawaii - The Big Island

The Volcano National Park on the Hawaii Big Island was on top of the list of places we wanted to visit while on this trip. The prospect of seeing an active volcano was intriguing: it is not something one sees every day in NJ suburbs. Not only could we see the volcano, we could take a boat to the hot steaming lava. Laura and I made our plans for an overnight trip to the Big Island to see the lava, explore the Volcano National Park, and to discover one of the famous snorkeling areas. We could not imagine how much more there would be for us and that the trip would turn into a fantastic adventure we could not picture while planning it. In the next few seconds I will take you to see God at Work, to visit a small town which probably is not listed on most maps but is as full of life as NYC (well, almost), to the southernmost point of the United States, and to black sand beaches just to name a few. Ready? Lets go!

We arrived to the Big Island pretty late, upgraded out mid-size car rental for a hot red Mustang, and headed to the town of Pahoa . We had a very important purpose – get to our hotel and go to bed as soon as we could because next morning we had to be up and waiting for our group to go see the lava at 3:30 AM. Good plans… Pahoa did not look like every other sleepy small town. On the contrary, the place was hopping even very late at night.

After spending some time looking for the hotel owner (who also happened to own a pizzeria in town and at the time of our arrival was making pizza), we found our hotel, got settled, and went to explore the area. The quaint country inn had character. It was intriguing to navigate through nooks and crannies of our unit until we found another entrance (or exit) leading to a small backyard garden which also served as a hangout place for local cats.

We abandoned our thoughts of going to sleep and went for a walk through the town. We passed a local museum which featured a photography exhibition about a local Hula dance group. There was a jazz band playing at the museum and they were very good. We walked by small cafes, ethnic restaurants, a bookshop, a very busy and noisy pub, few small galleries, quaint shops and Akebono Theater – the oldest one in the state of Hawaii! We did not take pictures at the time, so I am including the link to another site which has good information about the town.
http://pahoahi.tripod.com/pahoa/pahoa.htm

Next day started with one of the most incredible adventures of my life. At 3:30 AM Laura and I were driving to meet the rest of our Sunrise Lava Tour group pondering two things. 1 – were we the only people in the whole world who got up at 3AM to see the lava? 2 – how could this be a Sunrise tour when everything was pitch black around us?

I would like to refer you to Laura’s blog entry about the tour and skip right to lava. Laura does a fantastic job describing the drama around huge waves and prospects of being eaten by a Great White which was apparently spotter in the area.
http://hawaii4-oh.blogspot.com/2009/05/hot-lava-on-big-island.html

Halema`uma`u volcano greeted us while we were still very –very far from our main destination. From our boat we could see long thin streaks of the scarlet hot lava flowing from the volcanic crater at the summit of Kilauea mountain. It was hard to define space and time because of how dark it still was. The sight of crimson streaks in the darkness was majestic. The sun was rising when we arrived to our destination. The air was getting warmer and warmer with every minute. We could see a large pillar of thick smoke rising from the ocean. And there it was – lava rushing to spill into the ocean to meet ocean bed to cool off and become new land.


Enlarge the picture above to see a dude who sneaked close to the lava. If he were caught, he would have paid $5K in fines. It is too dangerous to be that close to lava and hikers are turned back .5 miles away from the lava flow. He must have walked in the complete darkness to reach lava at sunrise. $5K is steep, but I support the adventure spirit!

Our captain mentioned that a chunk of the island that was about 50ft long was developed in just one week. I have never seen a one-week-young land - this was like watching God at work!!!

Water in the area was very warm. Surrounding us was not smoke and ashes, but steam which rises from the water. It is not harmful to one’s health. On the contrary, the fumes which are erupting from the crater are dangerous. Or so we wanted to think during our 30-minute-long intimate encounter with lava (check how close one of the boats is from the lava).


The trip was unforgettable! If you are ever in the area, treat yourself to this incredible experience! We liked the boat tour, so here’s the link to their site. http://www.lavaocean.com/

Since the moment we got back ashore until we boarded the airplane back to Oahu (5 minutes before the take off) we
went through a kaleidoscope of exciting events.

Feeling a little green but very happy we got back to land and followed one of our tour-mates to the local natural spring fed pool which is volcanically heated to a comfortable 90 degrees. The air around the pool has a slight sulfur smell. The water is very clear and we could spot fish. Just a narrow inlet separates the pool from the ocean. The pool is surrounded by coconut trees. As we were taking down the roof of our Mustang before leaving, we spotted a sign 'Watch for Falling Coconuts'. What a usefull warning! We stopped and watched, but could not see any falling coconuts :) Do not miss the Ahalanui Park if you are visiting Volcano National Park!

We started our journey to the West side of the big Island and on the way stopped in Manoa Loa macadamia nut plantation and factory (the most addictive food on Earth!) where we were hoping to see how the nuts are processed. We were especially interested in the chocolate-covered variety, but it seemed that the factory workers were having lunch as all machines were standing still.

We spent over an hour driving through the Volcano National Park. The countryside was black for miles and miles around as huge and small chunks of lava mixed together covering the land.

On our left was Pacific Ocean sneaking into the view every now and then and on our right were the volcanoes and magnificent Mauna Kea It is said to be the tallest mountain in Earth even taller than the Everest if you consider the over- and under-ground pieces. The top of this 13700 giant cannot be seen as it is covered by clouds but it is said that one can ski Mauna Kea. There are also astronomic observatories on top of the mountains which I hope to visit one day. As we continued south we stopped at the Black Sand Beach - Punalu'u and were entertained by a bale of sea turtles which were playing in the waves. Black sand on this beach was very sharp. Later I learned that the sharpness of black sand grains depends on how the lava it is made of enters the water. When extremely hot lava (750 to 1,250 degrees Celsius) flows directly into water, contact with cold water shatters it into small sharp pieces. On the other hand, if a stream cuts through an older lava bed it will break down the lava into smaller pieces but these will be more rounded since the water action is bumping them around against each other and the ground.

At the south of the Big Island is South Point - the Southernmost place in the US.While we did not visit it this time, we did stop at the Southernmost Bakery in the US and treated ourselves to some Southernmost pastries.

This was a non-stop adventure and if we wanted to, we could have stayed for days and see new places and experience new things. If you like to learn more about any of the places mentioned in this post, here’s some additional references:

Ahalanui Park
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=hawaii+lava+boat+tours&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&ei=jXguSoKPFpuNtgeB_LX5Cw&sa=X&oi=local_group&ct=image&resnum=1

Punalu’u – Black Sand Beach
http://www.volcanogallery.com/Places-Punaluu.htm

Volcano National Park
http://www.nps.gov/havo

Mauna Kea
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/vis/