Don't Ask and Ye Shall Receive

An interesting aspect of life on the Big Island is that the weather is so wonderful that you barely notice it. Aside from the rain, of course. We almost never look at the forecast because we know it’s going to be 83 or 84 degrees during the day, with a chance of rain in the afternoon/evening, and a low between 70 and 75 degrees. The only time it gets unbearably hot is when there are no clouds, which is almost never. Yesterday morning, however, it was nearly cloudless, so we packed up our snorkel gear and headed down to Honounou.

The walk to Honounou is between 4 and 5 miles, and is downhill almost the entire way. We figured it would be an easy walk so we didn’t even hitchhike. We’d both gotten so sick of hitching rides that on Thursday evening (after staying on the farm all week), we walked the 4 miles into Captain Cook for groceries, and dinner at Senior Billy's. It was a pleasant evening and we had such a nice walk there, that we walked back home in the dark with a sense that we’d somehow triumphed over the motor vehicle.

Back to yesterday: Pete’s flip-flops were wearing so thin that he started getting blisters from the heat of the pavement. My temperature was rising quickly. And even though we weren’t on the proper side of the road to be hitchhiking, a nice young woman (a tourist from Florida), stopped and asked if we wanted a ride. She was bored and out for a drive and, “sick of hanging out with old people.” She dropped us off at the beach, where we snorkeled and relaxed in the shade.

Maybe you recall the first time we went to Honounou—you know, the time where we tried to hitchhike home and nobody stopped for us so we walked the whole way back. Well, with Pete’s feet being sore, and us having a few more hitchhiking skills under our belts, we decided to stick out our thumbs at the entrance to the beach. Unfortunately, in 20 minutes we only saw 6 or 7 cars, each one full of Mom, Dad, and the kids. But then, off in the distance, a red pickup truck was puttering down the road. Steve has a red pickup…could it be? Yes, it was! He’d been at the beach, too, and was heading home to cover the coffee beans before the afternoon rain came in.

We’d been having such good luck with cars with so little effort that it couldn’t get much better. Until this morning. Deborah, who rents the other yurt on the farm, was walking by the tent with a (belated) birthday card that came in the mail for me this morning. When she asked what we were doing today, I said we weren’t doing much since Pete’s blisters were healing. Being the kind soul that she is, she offered her car and the suggestion of a destination: Ho’okena Beach, less than 10 miles away. The price: “Please pick me up a dozen eggs at the grocery store.” An hour later we were on the road.

Ho’okena is a really small town on the South Kona coast. Deborah warned us that it is somewhat of a locals’ beach, so to leave as soon as anyone gave us any crap. After following a long, winding road (that phrase seems to come up a lot around here…), we realized that we’d driven right up to the shoreline. The beach was alive with families and young vacationers, but far from crowded, and not nearly as "local" as some of the other beaches we've been to (Ke'ei and Manini). The best part was the sand—real, actual sand all along the shore, even on the ocean floor. For the first time since the waves of Waikiki, we were able to just swim without the fear of jagged lava rocks or coral. And because we had the car for another couple of hours, we went and had lunch in Kainaliu, just one town north of Kealakekua. The car and the eggs were delivered without incident, and we returned sated by the sun and the sand.