A hui hou

I fly out of KOA in the middle of the morning. HNL. SEA. GEG then the weary drive 50 miles north, through fresh snow, in the midnight hours. A real long dayʻs journey into a new dawn.

The roughest treatment from TSA during the whole trip comes at HNL - seriously do I need a chest area pat down when I am wearing a tank top? The rudest, from the Alaska airlines check-in counter assistant at KOA.

Knowing I will be back, I watch the little island archipeligo recede beneath the wings of the plane, trying to work out which island I am looking at.

A hui hou.

Ka Lae - going south

Ka Lae is the southernmost point of the island of Hawaiʻi (aka Big Island).

Evidence of what is believed to be the earliest Hawaiian settlement has been found here and it is likely that the first Polynesian voyaging canoes made landfall it this point, the nearest to Tahiti. The archaeological site was explored in the 1960s.

The ancient Hawaiians apparently drilled holes in rocky ledges of these cliffs for mooring fishing canoes on long ropes so that they could drift out to sea without being carried away by the fierce currents.

The wind always blows mightily at Ka Lae making it a perfect place for a wind farm. The day I visited was no exception.

When I hired the little Nissan toy car I was given a map of the island. The road to Ka Lae was marked DO NOT DRIVE A HIRE CAR HERE. My guidebook, however, told me differently so I chanced it. Apparently there was a time when the road was very poorly maintained. Unless one had a 4 wheel drive it was not navigable. Mostly I found it to be in reasonable condition, albeit single lane. There was one stretch of a couple of hundred yards which, inexplicably, is still very bad with potholes, broken tar and deep gullies. With careful handling and taking that stretch very slowly, Nissan toy car and I survived unscathed. Shhhh donʻt tell the car hire company that I drove a forbidden road.

However, the wind was SO strong, chilly and gritty when I reached the actual point that I did not do much wandering around or exploring. I believe there is archaeological evidence of a heiau and fishing shrine in the vicinity.

There were some fishermen casting out from the perilous red earthed edge, into the confluence of ocean currents which swirl here.

And that was it. Ka Lae was the last place on my list of things to do on this visit on the island. All that remained was to go back to the Kaʻu desert yurt and pack up.

Halemaʻumaʻu crater - Peleʻs home

My journeying on Big Island took me though Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and world heritage site several times.

Pele has been stinking up a storm recently. So much so that the National Parks Service folks at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park have closed off a section of the crater rim drive and trails within the Kīluaea caldera. The ambient levels of sulphur dioxide gas and other volcanic hazards coming from the vent in the Halemaʻumaʻu crater are considered too toxic for humans.

I also just happened to arrive at the park headquarters at a time when a million and ten huge tour busses were disgorging tourist automatrons in vast numbers. The congestion was not good. The volcano is the stateʻs number one visitor attraction and definitely had the feel of something much looked at on the day I was there.

I was rescued, however, by the Volcano Art Centre which has a newly opened gallery in a little old building with beautiful atmosphere and lovely staff. I found much creativity to delight, inspire and soothe any feathers ruffled by the tourist feeding frenzy at the rim. It was an oasis in the bedlam of the park visitor centre and for this I am grateful.

Whittington Beach Park

On highway 11, around the 60 mile marker, east of Naʻālehu, there is an unobtrusive sign for Whittington Beach park.

This little county park on the rocks where wild waves crash is downplayed in my guide to Big Island with a dismissive mention which somehow indicates that it is only a useful place to stop to use the toilets in an otherwise pretty undeveloped stretch of road between Kaʻu and Volcanoes.

To the contrary, I found it a beautiful peaceful place for contemplation and dreaming. The day I visited, a weekday, it had a calm and quiet about it, with a native Hawaiian fishing with a net in the fishpond mauka, waves crashing and water sparkling with luminosity, a couple of county workers lunching with great merriment in their truck in the parking lot. I too would be happy to have this place as a lunch break retreat in my workday.

The "beach" part of the title is misleading. This is not one of those sandy beach, sun umbrella, deck chair with pina colada kind of places. Rather it is dark lava rocks and fast swirling pools teeming with the silver sparkle of schools of juvenile fish. The salt water outside of the pools looked pretty fierce, wild and threatening the day I was there. I am willing to bet this water is seldom mild mannered. It doesnʻt have that kind of look.

There are grassy areas, though, with firepits, picnic tables, shady trees and restrooms. And that palm fringed fishpond. Oh yes!

The area has been subject to a number of devastating tsunamis over the years. The original village of Honuʻapo was completely wiped out by a tsunami in 1868.  The area remained popular for fishing, however,  until sugar companies colonized the area in the 1870s. In 1883 the bay was dredged and a wharf constructed for moving the sugar out by water. A railway line followed with the cane being transported by flume from field to waterʻs edge. Honuʻapo Landing was a busy industrial port right up until the 1930s when development of the island roads made more cost effective transport solutions available.

Another tsunami in 1946 destroyed the warf and most of the landings leaving the post-industrial ruins which are evident today. The tsunami vulnerable land was turned over to the County of Hawaii for a beach park in 1948.  It is named after Richard Henry Whittington, 1885-1945,  a prominent settler who had a home above the park.

Richard Whittington was born in California and followed his sea captain father to Hawaiʻi in his teens. He found work in the Nāʻālehu area, with the sugar plantation, where he met and fell in love with a native Hawaiian woman whom he later married, overcoming resistance from her family who did not like the idea of their daughter marrying a haole. He worked for sugar plantation companies for many years on various islands before returning to the Kaʻu region as a county roads supervisor and building his home on the pali (cliffs) above Honuʻapo in 1941.

Apparently this park is popular with locals on weekends. My weekday visit was an injection of peace and tranquility and inspired me to plan camping nights out here.

I REALLY like the fact that HI county parks are tobacco free. YES! Mahalo for your kokua indeed.

There is an interesting article on the history and current developments of Honuʻapo and the park here and the daily rest of the riot act on this collection of notices at the entrance ot the park.

Hana hou: the continuing hash brown research

One of the possibilites which I had in mind for accommodation in the southern Kaʻu region was the Hana Hou motel in Naʻalehu.

The motel did not have a room available for the nights I wanted, (after all they only have two rooms) so the yurt won out. I cannot think of any better place than a yurt high above the ocean for full moon on the lava slopes of an active volcano.

I did, however, have breakfast in the lovely relaxed Hana Hou restaurant. The sign outside is direct and to the point. 

I discover that the paniolo hash browns with cheese, avocado and spicy salsa isnʻt too bad a way to start the food day. I might just have to cowgirl up and become a regular.

Hana hou translates as encore or come again as South Africans would say.

Anaehoʻomaalu honu

Every time I am on Big Island, I talk story with the honu who hang out at Anaehoʻomaalu Bay.

This time I am saddened to find that, in the year since I was last here, a brash beachside development - a restaurant and beachside apartments - have sprung up right on the high tide line. The wind is seriously cooking. I walk through the preparations for a beach wedding, waitstaff overdressed in black penguin suits, white tablecloths disobedient in the wind alongside the resting canoes of the Waikoloa outrigger canoe club and tourists eating and drinking at the restaurant tables on the sand.

I walk a bit away from the noisy crowds and the backpage babes oiling themselves on beach recliners, to find three honu in the sheltered alcove of rocks. Where I met with three last time, written up here. They look thin and flat, dried out and wizened. So much older somehow.

I walk even further to lie down next to a single honu on granular sand. Together we assert our right to this beach, this afternoon sun. We meditate together a bit then I open my eyes noticing with curiosity how the tourists walk by without appearing to have seen the honu alongside of me. I conclude that this honu is practicing selective invisibility. Native Hawaiian fishermen with nets slung across sunburnt sienna shoulders tip their heads in acknowledgement of the sleeping one.

The world is as big as our experience of it.

When the lace edge of the kai laps at our toes I take leave of turtle dreaming. A hui hou.

Captain Cook lizard dreaming

In south Kona region thereʻs a town called Captain Cook, named for the first documented European sailor to arrive at the Hawaiian islands. Actually Captain James Cook did not fare too well. He was killed near this settlement on Kealekekua Bay, about a month after his arrival in January 1779.

Kealakekua Bay is the largest naturally occurring bay on Big Island. It was my intention to hire a kayak to paddle this marine reserve and historical park. This did not happen however.

The state of Hawaii has called a time out while it tries to make a plan on how to manage and protect this sensitive marine area. There is a, possibly temporary, ban on all kayaks, surfboards and other human powered watercraft in the marine historical reserve.

Hawaii DLNRʻs fb post and explanation is here

I was too early for the Kona stampede and rodeo which takes place in mid-March at the rodeo grounds on Refuge Road nearby.

Dreaming lizards. Everywhere. Thereʻs a Hawaiian saying: Mai kolohe i ka mo‘o o lele i ka pali. Do not bother lizards or you will fall of a cliff. ʻKden.

Kaʻu moon

Full moon just past I was in a yurt in the Kaʻu desert on Big island, on black lava, overlooking the ocean.

It was a wonderful time for moon and nightsky watching, especially in the early dawn hours when the moon sunk behind ohia trees on the horizon making for a raku fired effect.

Moonset on the dawn of the fullest moon, my camera created a fiery mandala from the lunar radiance.

Finding refuge: gameplan

Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is one of the premier national parks on Big Island. It is a place where refuge, protection and forgiveness could be found. It seems to me such a sane notion to build into oneʻs culture the possibility of redemption.

I like to stop by this park whenever I am on the island. My national parks access pass had also expired. I thought this was a good place to replace it: carry a little of the spirit of redemption with me in my wallet for a year. Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is also a really good place to connect with and learn about ancient Hawaiian culture, and to examine dry stone walls.

There are a lot of sacred sites on the island, hidden under layers of golf, suntan lotion and trampled beneath designer slip slops,  so many can be forgiven for lack of awareness. This in not one of those: the sanctity is preserved here, at least.

As I entered the park, my phone rang. A call from destiny, confirming that I was headed in the right direction, on the right path.

I took the call standing at the papamu of a konane gameboard, looking across Keoneʻele, the little sheltered bay where turtles play and which was reserved for the kingʻs canoe, looking towards the kiʻi surrounding Hale O Keawe, which houses the bones of the chief.

I took my shoes off. The warmth from the sand rose through me from the soles of my feet, deep in my marrow. Warm and light. I become bodiless.

Let the bones speak.

This earth, this water, this sun.

Then it rained.

Waiʻōhinu nourishment

About a mile from Naʻālehu,  Highway 11 takes one through the small town of Waiʻōhinu: a place of special bright water, magic and legend. Read some of it here.

I was thinking about fresh food and what I was going to eat for the rest of the day and there on the side of the road was a little fresh produce stand. Just like on Molokaʻi, just as I had told the old salt when talking about where I was going to get food: When I need it, it will be there in front of me.

One of the things I love about these Hawaiian farm stalls is that they are not staffed by a human being. The honour system rules. The items are priced. One takes what one wants and puts the money in the box. Talk about close to the source: this fruit is grown a few steps from where I am buying it. I love it. The absence of human custodian gives me a feeling that the food comes from an invisible presence: spirits or ghosts. A good feeling, being fed by the spirit of the land. Especially the spirit of the magic water of Waiʻōhinu.

Waiʻōhinu is also famous for Mark Twain having visited in 1866 and having planted a monkeypod tree (albizia saman) Because of this connection both literary and botanical, I bought a copy of Twainʻs essays Roughing it in the Sandwich Islands from the used bookstore in Pahoa. I found the colonial attitudes tedious and the style self important, and abandoned the slim paperback in the Kaʻu yurt.

The original monkeypod tree might or might not still be around, as it blew down in 1957. A shoot might have been rooted from this original tree. Albizia trees, however, are regarded as a pest in other areas of the island, as their branches tend to break off in storms to come crashing down onto neighbouring roofs. This seems a typical colonial gesture: plant the seed of something (in all innocence) which goes on to wreck havoc and destroy the peace.

No wonder I felt a dis-ease reading the book.

Naʻālehu: deep south

Of course I visited a library.

South calls to south. I am southern by birth and breeding, from the southern tip of the dark continent. Kaʻu regionʻs Naʻālehu, the southernmost settlement in Hawaiʻi, exerts a magnetism.

The library was closed and dreaming in the deep shade of a spreading tree on my first visit, a Saturday. It has a porch running  the length of the front equipped with tables and electrical sockets for wifi users. I like that: open air wifi comfort. The architectural style is usually referred to as "plantation".

One has to have a library card to use the wifi which is switched off when the library is not open. A non-resident pays a substantial fee for a visitorʻs card. My card, acquired on Molokaʻi many years ago, has expired.

Later I stopped by when the library was open. It seems there is only one staff member, or only one with a vehicle, as there is only one designated staff parking place.

The Naʻālehu area is protected geographically from the lava flows of Mauna Loa and experiences reasonable rainfall balanced by lots of sunshine. It is a place of soft rolling, green hills with cattle, horses and paniolos, far away from everything and south. Deep south.

Alongside the library, a turtle swims across the roof of a rusting building which was possibly a theatre at some stage. Driving into town from the Kona side, this turtle is the first thing I see. I mailed a pile of cards to friends and relatives from the post office next door.

Signposting in the town, like most everywhere else on the island, ignores the fact  that Hawaiian language uses the ʻokina (or glottal stop) as an integral part of the language, and diacritic marks to distinguish between short and long vowels. Hence Naʻālehu and not as represented below. What we take and what we keep and what we forget and what we remember is significant.

Black and white, rock and water.

Kalapana Rd, Hwy 137 in the rain, I stop to walk feet in the salt water pools and watch the wild winter surf crashing against rocks.

 Snuffling the air, in the presence of so much salt water and molten earth energy, I think about the meaning of prana - life force or vitality.

And I think about how this feels like a good place for pranayama, which of course is only one of the eight limbs. In the beginning is the breath.

Later I discover that there is a retreat centre not far from here, which hosts yoga teacher trainings several times a year.