NONIE AND BRETT’S BELATED HONEYMOON- Episode 2

OUR FIRST DAY IN PARADISE AND IT HAS HOMELESS PEOPLE

 6:30 AM, BC time. Well rise and shine Brett. Damn, it is only 3:30 AM, Kona time. Should I just get up?  No, stay in bed.

 7:30 AM, BC time, 4:30 AM, Kona time!  My coffee addiction is starting to really rage.  I should be on my second latte by now.  No, stay in bed.

 8:30 AM, BC time, 5:30 AM, Kona time.  A nightmare, I was being chased by a barista from Starbucks who was clutching a Venti screaming ‘Do you want sprinkles on that”. No, stay in bed.

 9:00 AM, BC time, 6:00 AM, Kona time.   Another dream!  This time, I got up, went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee.  No, I wasn’t dreaming I did get up and brew a pot of coffee.  Oh well, I’ll try and get onto to Kona time tomorrow. Hey I think I see some light outside.

Sitting on the lanai at 6:00 AM, I was shocked to see people starting to arrive for the 7:30 mass at the church behind our condo. .  By 6:45 AM the lot was full and they were parking on the grass in front of our condo.  It dawned on me!  This is Easter Sunday.  31 years ago, Nonie and I woke up together on Easter Sunday as newly weds.  I remember one hell of a hangover as well.  No hangovers in Paradise, this Easter Sunday.  

Nothing beats that first cup of coffee, especially if you wake up on a tropical island that took thirty-one years to plan. They say anticipation is half the excitement. The condo is much nicer than the kitchen suite at the Fort Nelson Hotel, where we woke up on Easter Sunday; thirty-one years ago. 

 Nonie is still sleeping like a rock.  I have always envied her ability to sleep anywhere and through anything.  I believe it is because she has shared a bed with me for over 30 years and it can not have been easy. See above for explanation.

A lazy morning with a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and a bowl of cheerios as an appetizer.  No real plans for the day except to explore the immediate area around the condo and search out additional provisions for our stay.  This will mean a trip to Costco but being Easter Sunday, I am not sure what we will find open.

We are staying in the town of Kailua Kona. Its original name was Kailua but there was already a town called Kailua in Hawaii so the Post Office renamed the town Kailua Kona as it is located on the Kona Coast.  It does not have a downtown but if it did, it would be just a block away from where our condo is located. All the real shopping is located in strip malls along the main island highway. 

The downtown is located on the water and centered on the area around the old pier.  At one time it was a working pier with anything and everything coming to Kailua via boats that docked at the pier. Now, it is just a place for the tourists to hang out and the cruise ships tenders to dock. It also serves as the location for the Ironman Hawaii swim start.   

The majority of the businesses located around the pier have evolved into tourist and cruise ship passenger support businesses.  From dancing hula girl toys, exotic diamonds and just about every style of food that you could want.  Nonie found her restaurant.  It is called Bubba Gump's. You will to have seen the movie Forrest Gump to understand the name of the restaurant.  It serves shrimp of course. It reeks of opportunistic tourism so I have my doubts. 

Within the first block, we discovered a local market.  It was a hybrid market; half the stalls sold tourist crap and the other half sold market goods.  There were locally grown papayas, tomatoes, lettuce, mangoes, etc.  We spent about 2 hours wandering around the area adjacent to our condo.  

Photo:Triphoba

While walking through a small ocean side park we discovered the Kailua Kona version of the James Gang, a nickname we use for the homeless in Penticton. They were sitting around taking pulls on a gallon jug of fine wine. Looks like this is their home!  

 Photo: Hawaii Herald-Tribune

The life of a homeless person in Hawaii would probably seem like paradise to a homeless person in Penticton. All perception I think.  Being homeless in Hawaii or homeless in Penticton would still suck. Time to hit the road to Costco!  

We decided to continue our exploring by car (Jeep) before making our way to Costco.  We started with a drive up Ali’i Drive which could be considered the main street of Kailua Kona. It is about 5 miles long and littered with hotels, condos and little public beaches.  The road peters out into an old gravel road which we learned is called the “Kings Road”.  The road was built for the exclusive use of Hawaiian royalty. (The Big Kahunas)  It was kapu (forbidden) for anyone else to use the road and if caught punishable by death. We decided to risk it anyway. The road was cut through an old lava bed and led to cliffs called End of the World and littered with caves. 

As we were enjoying the view a boat roared up to the cliff and just as it looked like it would crash head long into the walls, it was swallowed up by a cave that we could not see from our vantage point.  The site is sacred to the indigenous Hawaiians but it does not stop the locals from using it for cliff diving. As we were headed back to our car, several young people passed us headed to the cliffs.     We stopped to watch them make a few dives but it was hot, dry and we were thirsty so headed back to our car. 

 

No surprises! We found Costco closed but we did find a Safeway open.  We were told to expect prices high on the big island and were not disappointed. Nonie quickly deduced that it would be cheaper to purchase our produce back at the market so headed home and walked back down to the market.  Some tomatoes, strawberry papayas, sweet onions and a pineapple later, we were back at our condo.  Our first meal in paradise!   KD and hotdogs. Whoohoo.  I think anything tastes good if it is eaten on a lanai in paradise.

BEWARE OF LITTLE OLD HAWAIIAN LADIES IN MINI VANS

7:30 AM, BC time, 4:30 AM, Kona time.  Damn those birds. Coffee??? No, stay in bed.

 9:00 AM BC time, 6:00 AM, Kona time. I am enjoying my first coffee on the lanai.  No Kona coffee yet, but in the next day or so, we will hit the coffee area and score some Kona gold.  Maybe some coffee to. HAHA.

Another lazy start to our day!  I find it very difficult to pull my self away from the lanai in the mornings.  It is a tiny thing, room for two chairs and a round table but it has some attraction over me that I find is hard to resist. Today we are headed north and do some esploring.  Esploring is version of exploring that Nonie and I coined in our mini adventure to Cuba. 

We have decided that the Hawaiian language has too many vowels.  It makes it very tough to read a map or tell where you are, as all the places look alike, no matter how they spell the name.  Makalawena Beach looks just like Nawaikulua Bay when you are zooming by at 45 miles per hour.  Okay, so this is just an excuse for us to get lost a few times.  As I type this on Word, spell check is having a fit trying to make sense of all these vowels.  I think that the computer has actually run out of red squiggly lines.

Due to the Hawaiian vowel surplus, our first stop was unplanned.  We were headed to a totally different park but fooled by all those vowels, our first stop was Kapalaoa State Park instead of Kamaii State Park.  A rugged little road took us over a barren and lifeless lava field. 

 If this is the shape of some of the park roads, the Jeep is starting to look like a good choice.  The road was made from crushed lava which can be very sharp.  I am thankful that we have a full size spare tire on the back door.  There were a lot of deep ruts but none that the Jeep could not handle.  We arrived at a parking lot but not a parking lot.  The road took a real turn for the worse and no one was brave enough to drive their vehicles beyond this point.  We took a short stroll over a lava field At least a hundred years old, there is no vegetation growing except for a few little tufts of grass that had found a toe hold to lay down some roots.

Back on the main highway we continued north into the South Kohala district.  Heading north into the south!  If we keep going we will eventually get to North Kohala district which is located in the north. If time allows that is where we are headed. Ahh, esploring!

We stopped at a petroglyph field called Puako which is the oldest field in Hawaii and dates back hundreds of years. It is located near one of the fanciest resorts on the big island called the Orchard at Mauna Lani. The President and Big Kahuna at Valley First spent a couple of days here a few weeks before our arrival. We found a public parking lot just on the edge of the resorts golf course and located right on the ocean.  In Hawaii, no one can own the beaches so accommodations for public access must be made by the resorts.

Getting to the petroglyph site involved a kilometer walk on a lightly developed trail. The trail took us through a very old lava field.  Old gnarly trees had taken root in the lava. They looked more dead than alive, very old, but not very big.  The branches wove into themselves forming a thick canopy above our heads.  The leaves were very small and sparse. There was a very strong wind and the branches rattled and knocked against each other making this very spooky noise.  Seemed like the kind of place that a hobbit would get into trouble.

 

The site of the petroglyphs is not very large.  It is about 30 feet wide and 100 feet long but with hundreds of petroglyphs covering the site.  Most of them depict a human form; neither man nor women.  There is no history of why these glyphs were created. The site would have been in the middle of lava field and very difficult for the early Hawaiians to access over the rough lava. It would have taken a great effort to get to the site.  Personally, I think it is just ancient Hawaiian graffiti. 

Visitors  have developed a new form of graffiti littering the highway. Pieces of white coral gathered from beaches are transported to the black lava fields along the highway.  There; the coral is used to spell out names and messages.   It was probably started by Ironman visitors as the highway is the bike route for Ironman Hawaii.  They are similar to the chalk messages left in Penticton which are meant as encouragement for the athletes.  In my opinion it is just visual pollution and should be discouraged.

Photo: Wikipedia

We decided to check out the adjacent Fairmont four star Orchid Resort once we got back to the parking lot.  We could access the resort along a beach trail from the parking lot.  We strolled the grounds acting like we belonged.  The resort has a beautiful beach, protected by a natural lava breakwater and a coral reef. Not sure it is all worth $400 bucks a night but at least the beach was free.

Photo:fairmont.com

Hungry, we decided to move on to a beach park further down the road called Kauna’oa.  It is a public beach but completely inside the grounds of a hotel.  The hotel has allowed ten public parking stalls to access the beach and when they are full, no one else may park on the site. We arrived at the resort and found a sign that said that there was no public parking available. I think they just leave the sign up all the time. We end up driving 1 mile back to another beach called Hapuna.  From there you can access Kauna’oa but Hapuna was a nice beach so we decided to have lunch here. The beach was made of a fine white flour like sand.  It had great breakers but it a little windy.

It was late, so we decide to head east instead of north to the town of Waimea for a quick visit and then circle back around to Kailua Kona.  We arrived in the centre of town and pulled off the main drag to park and get our bearings on the map.  As we were turning left into a small parking lot, out of nowhere a purple minivan tries to pass us on the left hand side and clips the left front corner of the Jeep.  

AH CRAP!!  We pull off to the side while the van turned around and parked beside us. I get out, headed over to the van ready to do battle with the idiot.  As I reach the van out steps a POST CARD.  The crazy driver is a regal old Hawaiian lady wearing a beautiful muumuu and one of those cool island hats with the lei head band. 

Image:Paul Kane

I discover that she is a long time Waimea resident and her husband was on the Waimea police force for 30 years.  He had passed away twenty years before.  How old is she?  I walk over to a nearby store where a nice sales clerk helps me get in touch with the police dispatch.  They promise to dispatch someone, but not sure how long it will be.  After about 45 minutes, the POST CARD wanders over to the mall and borrows a phone book where she gets the number of the local detachment.  She comes back to her van and phones them.  She talks with them for about five minutes.  She informs us, that they are all out on an emergency call and will still be another 20 minutes. Less then ten minutes later, a policeman arrives. Nice fellow. He takes all our documentation and starts filling out the paper work.

He has never met the little old lady, but knows her name.  Seem her husband was a push with the Waimea police force. OHOH.  Can you say cover up!  He gave us back our paper work along with the accident report.  He sends the little old Hawaiian lady on her way. I get the feeling he would like to talk to us after she leaves. He wanders around the Jeep till she drives away.  “We don’t assess blame in these investigations, just report the facts. BUT it certainly looks like she was to blame” he says.  He went on to say that she just lived a few blocks away and was probably in a hurry to get home for her soaps. 

It was now after 4:00, so I decided to head straight back to Kailua Kona and report the accident to the rental company.  The trip back took us through some beautiful grass lands but I was too focused on getting back to report the accident, so did not really enjoy the view. The winds were very gusty. About five minutes into the trip, a gust caught us and it seemed like the hood of the jeep was going to lift off.  I pulled over and inspected the hood latches.  The latch is a little rubber thing that stretches over and locks into a small catch on the hood.  I found the rubber latch had broken and no longer worked.  The latch was located on the opposite side from the accident so I don’t think that it was caused by the accident.  I borrowed the strap off Nonie’s purse and used it to tie down the hood. WONDERFUL.

I was a little stressed about facing the rental company, but they made it very painless. We were in a new jeep and on our way to Costco in less than 15 minutes. A typical Costco so we did not buy much as everything is packaged in large or jumbo economy sizes which were way to large for our two week stay. Once again the check-out ladies were quite impressed with Nonie’s cloth bags. We ended up stopping at Safeway where, yes more expensive, but had stuff packaged in an appropriate size to fit our needs for two weeks. We did buy a pre-cooked chicken at Costco and enjoyed it on our lanai along with a bottle of cheap Californian red.