Bye-Bye Blue and Green, Hello Brown and White

November 12 2010 by Darrin.

We’re home safe, and there’s nothing finer!  The drive wasn’t too bad, but as predicted the bridges were icy.  Fueling in Cheyenne, I noticed (but forgot to photograph) a windshield wash bucket frozen solid and capped in snow.  You won’t find that in Hawaii.  Nevertheless, we wouldn’t trade our place for anything.  Frozen buckets of water have their own level of charm, at least to us after two weeks in Hawaii!

Back to finishing our story…  With hours to kill after leaving Heaven’s Door, Anna and I took our time driving north along the east coast toward Waimea and finally to Hawi and Kapa’au.  This was all new scenery for both of us, as I’d not ventured farther north than Waimea in 2009.  It is some fantastic countryside, full of lush grass and sleek cattle.  (Trivia:  The Parker Ranch in this area was once the largest non-corporate cattle ranch in the USA, at about 200,000 acres.)

Driving through this area, we were in and out of clouds and rain.  The landscape was creepy, but awesome…

Our goal was to look south-east from Pololu Valley Lookout.  It’s the “other end” of the tough jungle land that has Waipi’o Valley as its southern border.  (We visited that a few blog-days ago.)  It’s kinda the same thing, just reversed…

On the way, I had some yummy VVT exhaust pizza.  Thanks Toyota!  Nice and crispy.  You can tell when it’s done when the interior smells like food…

On the way south to the Kona airport, you can see Maui off in the distance (and in its own clouds).  It’s probably all we’ll ever see of it!  We heard the rich and famous love it, so we’ll avoid it at all costs…

Okay, that’s about it for our trip.  It’s also about it for our love affair with Hawai’i.  There was a time when Anna thought it might be the perfect place to live.  There were things about it I really loved too, tho’ I wasn’t quite as gung-ho as Anna on relocating there.  After this vacation, nobody’s leaving Wyoming.  Why, you might ask?  Well, here are a few things…

• HUMIDITY - Everything is wet, all the time.  Clothes, books, toilet paper, towels, etc.  It’s impossible to clean camera lenses, and I can only imagine the havoc wreaked on electronics in (short) time.  Driving around, the island IS gorgeous…but then you open the glass to snap a photo and the thickness hits you and you remember how miserable it is outside the power windows.

• MOLD - (see above but) it’s everywhere and you can’t get rid if it.  A/C?  Why is there no air conditioning?  Well…

• HIGHEST ELECTRICITY COSTS in the USA.  It’s crazy.  The 2009 US average is $0.12/KWHr.  In Wyoming, it’s around $0.07.  In Hawaii, try $0.26.  At that rate, it would cost more in electricity to weld than it would for welding wire!

• HIGHEST FUEL COSTS in USA.  Around Kona, $3.89/gal for low-grade petrol.  And about $4.25 for #2 diesel.  Sheesh.  No thanks.

• GROCERIES are extremely expensive too.  $6 for a pound of Jimmy Dean Sausage.  $6 for a pound of local 80% lean beef.  Kiwis are 3 or 4 for $1 in Wyoming.  They’re $1 each in HI.  They come from New Zealand.  Ain’t Hawaii closer to NZ than Wyoming?  Pineapples are $8 minimum on Big Island.  EIGHT DOLLARS!  We get nice ones from Costa Rica for $3 at Sam’s.  They taste better, too!

• SMALL ISLAND - you’ll go stir-crazy after a while.  Don’t ask us how we know.

• MOSQUITOES - I have no problem with the little blood-suckers;  I eat poison, so my blood is poison.  If I do get bitten by one, I don’t even get a mark.  But Anna…  She gets devoured by them, AND gets horribly itchy welts that last a couple days.  I told her, “Eat Spam, honey, and they won’t bother you!”

• CRIME - you can’t go anywhere without seeing warning signs about not leaving things in your car.  Everyone locks their gates - even the automatic-opener ones have a manual chain and padlock on them.  And every home has a beware of dog sign on the gate.  (Don’t worry about the dogs - they’re everywhere BUT it’s so hot and humid, they just sleep in the shade and pay you no mind.)  The owner of Heaven’s Door warned us to lock our gate down the driveway, and suggested we use her floor safe for valuables when we were out sight-seeing!  It was a home in the middle of the jungle, for God’s sake!

• LOTSA ROAD KILL - Dogs and cats are all over the roads.  It sucks, and breaks our hearts.  We know it happens all the time, but we see it there 100 times more frequently than we see it here.  Anna came home and hugged her dog and cats for hours last night.

• STRICT GUN CONTROL- You want a gun of ANY kind?  Talk to the head of law enforcement, and hope he likes haoles and will let you have permission for one.  No hi-cap mags, no concealed carry, and rules that protect the wrong people.  That cinches the deal for me.  HIGH CRIME and no way to protect yourself.  Darrin came home and hugged his guns for hours last night.

• HIPPIES, HIPPIES, and MORE HIPPIES- They’re all over, wreaking of pot and mumbling gibberish.  There was one guy at the health food store trying to ask an employee a coherent question.  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it out without breaking into the giggles.  Anna thought he had a small child, until she realized he was talking to the potatoes, not someone under them.  (Seriously!)

• RACISM- you’re a minority here, and you feel it.  Of course, not everyone is like this, but you do often feel uncomfortable when you get the “stink-eye” from locals.  Our first host, Harry, is a substitute teacher.  He’s a really nice guy, and the farthest thing from a “person of prejudice” he could be.  (Heck, his rental is listed as gay-friendly, and he’s fundamentally pretty liberal on everything we discussed.)  But even Harry told some tales of feeling like the minority he is down there.  All us white folk be haoles, Bra.  Haole (HOW-lee) - literally meaning something like “without breath”.

• FAR AWAY - the 6-hour flight sucks, period.  I’ve done 17 hours (one way) to Australia and back - two round trips.  I don’t think I ever will again.  Oh, my achin’ back!

I guess there’s one other thing I must say, before closing.  It seems SUCH a dualistic society.  I don’t know where the locals derive their income, but they seem to have enough for brand new diesel pickups.  Then they park them under tarps tied loosely to their houses, among a couple hundred bags of old garbage.  And right next door, a palace.  Remember the cute church the other day?  For every one of them, there are ten of these needing love…

See this beautiful entrance, with house listed by Sotheby’s at over $2mil?

Well, here are your neighbors in different directions…

Trust me, this isn’t just around Hilo.  This is everywhere.  Even north at Pololu, there was this killer place (well hidden behind these little trees)…

…and it sat right next to this place I snapped a photo of as we drove by (sorry for the lack of clarity, but you get the idea)…

What, are we having a “who can collect the most garbage” contest?  It’s amazing.  I suppose, IF you bought a hundred acres, and IF you lived there full-time to defend it, and IF you liked humidity, and IF you had way more money than you needed to run the air-co, and IF you had a G5 corporate jet, then property in Hawaii could be really pleasing (between the raindrops).

Unfortunately, we strike out on all of those things, so Wyoming will remain our home for some time to come.  We have incredible freedom here, and we cherish it immensely.

On a more positive note, Anna had great luck getting something back she lost.  She’s had a small good luck charm she’s used for traveling for about ten years.  At the Comfort-Inn DIA on October 27th, it slipped out of the pocket of her jeans, and she discovered missing it at the airport as we were about board our flight to Phoenix.  I called and asked the hotel to look for it and keep it for us if the found it.  As you can imagine, we expected it was gone forever.  When we picked the car up on Nov. 11th, I remembered to ask about it.  The manager was a nice guy from, I’m guessing, Africa somewhere.  (cool accent)  He was skeptical that that they’d have it, but he and the staff looked in three places and FOUND IT!!!!  I asked him to come out to the car and tell Anna himself, so he could see how important it was to her.  Man, this guy played it perfectly, asking her to describe her “rock”.  Then he handed it to her and she literally squealed with delight!  Comfort Inn gets a killer review for that!  Here’s the charm, back in Anna’s hand after more than two weeks lost…

 One final note… Coqui (Coke-ee) Frogs.  Coqui Frogs managed to come to Hawaii from Puerto Rico a while ago, and they’ve infested the East side of the island.  Most people living there hate them, but Anna and I seem to love them.  I always sleep to “nature sounds” on my bedroom stereo, and I liked them so much, I made some recordings and edited them into a ~35-minute MP3 for use at home.  Download the file here if you wish…

COQUI FROGS in HAWAII MP3 FILE

It’s about 30 MB.  Please save the file to your computer if you want it for your “soundscape” MP3 source.

Mahalo for reading!

Posted in Hawaii, 2010 | No Comments »