Fishy Tales

I’m sorry to say that we didn’t see any dolphins on Monday morning. But as a reward for our early walk to the beach, we had the snorkeling nearly all to ourselves. There was one other couple in the water, but we were grateful for them because they pulled over to ask us directions to the beach and then offered us a ride when we told them that’s where we were headed. Again, it was just at the stretch of road that feels endless, when you start wondering to yourself, “Why did I think it would be shorter this time?” And voila—we had a ride.

The ocean was placid and cool, the sun hadn’t broken through the low-lying clouds yet, and it was one of the most peaceful snorkeling experiences I’ve had so far. That is, until a two-foot-long Ulua (Blue Jack fish) started chasing me. At first I thought I was imagining it, but I soon realized that despite my swimming in circles (around Peter), the Ulua continued to chase me. He nearly touched my flipper several times, and after a fewl minutes of paddling and screaming through my snorkel, I’d had enough, and swam to shore. Luckily Peter was there as my witness. Apparently these fish are notorious for following swimmers around…not out of curiosity, but because he was hunting me as prey. Here's Pete's short video of the Ulua:


Yesterday was one of the better days we’ve had here. I worked cutting down bamboo and stripping off the branches and leaves so that we could use it to set up supports for some of the low-hanging coffee trees. When their branches become heavy with coffee berries, they start bowing toward the ground. We also fertilized a large section of the trees, and then Pete raked a bunch of gravelly fill that Steve had dumped onto the driveway. It was a needed improvement.

The afternoon, though rainy, was pleasant. We hung out with Martin and Fran for a while after work, and we reveled in the lack of mosquitoes. Pete knocked down some delicious star fruit and we all shared a papaya. Fran informed us that Blackie, the black kitten, had been taken the previous evening by “a bunch of horrid fat children who were screaming.” The mother cat howled and hissed at the loss, and we were all feeling the absence, but it’s a better form of population control on the farm than drowning them (Steve’s alluded-to previous method). I’m sure the kids renamed him something stupid, like Pele.

Steve and Elizabeth had mentioned last week that they wanted to treat us all to a few hours in the hot tub at a local spa. So yesterday Elizabeth called to arrange for us four volunteers to have an evening in an open-air hot tub. The appointment was at 7:30, but we left a little early (using Steve’s truck) to go have dinner at Teshima, a sushi restaurant in town that’s been run by the same family for generations. In fact, the 100-year-old matriarch of the family can still be spotted around the restaurant. We saw her ourselves, but that was the first night that we arrived, when Steve and Elizabeth took us all out for dinner.

The food and the company were wonderful, and the hot tub was awesome. We were led through a garden pathway lit by torches, up to a secluded redwood tub. The tub itself was set above the ground with stairs leading up to a platform. It was surrounded by a low rock wall and topped with a semi-open hut, and a roof that opened up into the night sky. We saw the stars and felt a light rain while we relaxed and splashed around. You can only spend so much time in 102-degree water, but we wanted to savor the fact that we had a vehicle, so we all loaded into the truck and drove to Keahou, just 15 minutes away. We got food at the grocery store and then went to the Sheraton, where, according to Martin and Fran, there was a hotel bar that overlooked the bay and had bright lights shining into the water to attract the manta rays. We leaned over the railing and watched the giant, floppy creatures as they fed from the plankton that skims the water’s surface. It was well worth the trip, and we managed to get home a little after 10. No one was the wiser.