Hawaii journal: 2007 part 2

In a blog called Don’t Tell Me No, there is very little to say about Hawaii, which generally says “yes.” It is a non-confrontational place.

At Waimea Beach, for example, I had a chat with an “American Adventurer” who hauls his home, a converted VW beatle painted with red, white and blue stripes, around behind his motorcycle. He comes from Alaska and has been to all 50 states but found Hawaii the most hospitable. He says nobody bothers him here. His choice was aided by the weather I am sure, which allows him to sleep in his VW trailer without freezing to death. He lives on donations and odd jobs. I was wearing only my bathing suit so was carrying no money, and I felt badly taking pictures of him and his gear without making a donation, but he was happy to tell tales. He was married once, but the experiences he had as a child in a broken family hindered his embracing commitment, and the marriage ended. His former wife is now a lawyer, and he took off on his motorcycle. There are free spirits, or maybe lost souls, like this peppered around Hawaii. They seem to cause less trouble here than they would in, say, New York City, though I don’t know Hawaii well enough to say.

The birds, plants, and trees provide a textured background to every move in Hawaii. One small soft grey dove sat placidly as if on an egg in the middle of the road at the Waimea Audubon Center yesterday. We had to stop the car for it, the way drivers have to stop for a herd of goats in Spain, or a crossing deer in Pennsylvania.

I love the cardinals in my New Jersey back yard, but the cardinals here were more flamboyantly red. Like the American Adventurer, this bird is not afraid of making a display. We also saw peacocks, which are not native to Hawaii, but were walking around as if they owned the place. A flock of tiny birds barely bigger than hummingbirds flocked together, pecking seeds out of the ground. I thought at first they were leaves, but they swarmed upward and flitted to another seed mine. Studying the Audubon materials didn’t completely satisfy my desire to name these tiny creatures, but they looked like the plover in a photograph which was twice the size of the bird itself.

The Waimea Valley was a wonder. We saw our first Banyan Tree, and enormous, arching, tentacled, reaching trees of several sorts. People swam in the pool beneath a waterfall. The snack bar had great smoothies. There was peace and hushing all over. The Hawaiians lived there until floods and drought drove them out in 1895 and they never came back. Don’t know why. Can’t imagine why not. There were replicas of their huts, the huts being optional, used only in bad weather.

The whole windward side from Waikiki to Waimea, is lined with white beaches, most of them deserted. With so many beaches, it would take an invasion of many more tourists to fill them all. Further into our Hawaiian trip, we came to be more wary of the seas around the islands, more hesitant to simply jump in. The waters are treacherous, sometimes dangerous. These islands are isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by sea life, currents and winds which belong in the open sea. In the way that opposites are often contained in the same object, the stunning waters bear danger. The beautiful sea is a Circe.

Since Sunset Beach, the Banzai Pipeline, and Waimea are the world centers of surfing, there were a lot more people on those beaches, though the people were spread widely apart. Waimea River flows through the Waimea Valley and opens onto Waimea Bay, a pocket of beauty which was once reserved for royalty. Only royalty could surf there. The surf yesterday was as tame as the Jersey shore, but everywhere are posters and instructions about what to do when the surf is 30 feet high. One poster told of an unsuspecting tourist who sauntered out onto the rocks, only to run for his life when a 30 foot wave bore down on him, and then a second, and then a third, and a fourth. The waves come in sets of three or four.

I swam laps of the beach at Puukua. I felt in the water the way I sometimes felt on the land in Africa. I didn’t know what life was swimming near me, could not read the tides and waters well, and would have needed several more swims to get comfortable.

Hawaiian names sound the same to me. English flows from consonant to consonant, with vowels in between. In the Hawaiian language words flow from vowel to vowel. Kakaako, Kaimuki, Kaaawa, Kahala, Kailua, Kalihi, Kaneohe, Makakilo, Mililani, Nuuano, Wahiawa, Waianae, Waipahu, Waimanalo. They look and sound the same, though I am getting used to them and am more capable than before of remembering which street to take, Kalakaua, Kahala, or Kalanianaole.

The hostess at the B&B had given the room we originally booked to another couple. The husband of the other couple had health problems, which we heard all about at breakfast; past knee problems were all solved with a knee knee replacement (which he actually didn’t take that long to recover from, which surprised him). Now he suffers diabetic peripheral neuropathy, which bothers his feet some of the time – not all of the time, mind you – when he goes up steps. He asked his daughter for a garage door opener so that when he visits her, he can go up the stairs from the garage rather than the entry stairs. The stairs going up to the room we had originally wanted were difficult. They gave him pain in his this and pain in his that, and he is so grateful that we were willing to change rooms. Whew.

In the new room we are sleeping on an enormous bed, which was at one time the bed or Princess Ruth, a 400 pound titan of Hawaiian aristocracy. I lost Terry in it a couple of times during the night.

Breakfast was fresh fruit (half a papaya, mango, pineapple, strawberries, bananas), hard boiled egg, delicious toast with some exotic marmalade, and asparagus wrapped in cheese and ham. It was served by Sumiko, a humorous Japanese elderly lady, whose precise and tidy hand is everywhere in evidence in the house. The friendly, American-type owner is a pack rat whose overwhelmed but tasteful hand is also in evidence everywhere.

After breakfast the sun was shining, the breeze was breezing, and wandered through Waikiki.