The early bird catches the wave (or Wednesday at the water)

I don't sleep well. I'm not sure whether it's the >1 bottle of wine I consumed or all of yesterday's excitement.  Be that as it may,  I am making coffee at 4:30 am.  At 5:45 am I have the bicycle down in the smoking area ready for an excursion.

There is barely any traffic on the pitch-dark roads. But there is somewhere I want to be before the sun rises.

Oncoming car

The old Kona airport, just North of town, has long been converted to a public recreation area, and there is a beach!

under the volcano

The cruise-ship tourists are coming

When I return home to the hotel I am relieved to find that Grandma's bedroom door has moved (GREAT relief) and I head down to the water again (the water right behind the hotel).

And YES, this is still before local sunrise. In the pictures below the first rays at some point hit the most elevated wave crests ;-)

Carnage ;-)

Darth Vader Crabs can grab onto the rocks when a breaker crashes over them !  Scary buggers. Good thing they're afraid of me ;-)

I'm not sure what figure this is.  Surfing Hari Krishna?

You Go Girl !!!!!

At noon, Grandma and I take a stroll down to the water, but her hopes of seeing turtles are not fulfilled.  While I saw at least 3 different turtles per day in the days after our arrival, none dare to approach the rocks with the high waves (Imagine being a turtle being hurled onto rocks by high waves). Smart turtles ;-)

After a 1-hour long nap, I take the bicycle to Keauhoe Shopping Centre.  They restocked the yummy clearance Chardonnay and I drag away 3 bottles for $12.something.  In Canada you'll be lucky to get 1 bottle of very ugly wine for that.



Then I get an e-mail from Vancouver with translation work that keeps me busy for a while.  But don't feel too bad for me. This is my 'office desk':

Not my pic; not my kind of restaurant.

Dinner at Kenichi Pacific restaurant in Keauhoe Mall is  disappointing. This is the highest rated Japanese Restaurant out of 7 in Kona. Too expensive for the food quality; food not quite good enough crappy for the price; either way you see it, I have no intention of returning. And this time that is not only the opinion of Grandma, who will indubitably declare the food an utter atrocity if served by a waitress instead of a waiter (Don't ask me, must be some Freudian thing).


While drinking (and eating), I come upon the following discovery.  While the ratio for drinkable bottles of wine bought in stores in Canada vs stores in the US is around 14/5, the prices for decent, glasses of wine in restaurants is about 1/1.  That wine in US restaurants should be cheaper if one can get a drinkable bottle for a cheaper price, me thinks.

Them's not paddling !

Pretty pictures of a Tuesday NOT spent in Belgium

The waves are higher today. I can tell by the thundering sound reaching my bed.  Once it is bright enough to see them (still way before sunrise) I can finally see where that thundering comes from and head down to the waterline.

There is also a 2-minute video with waves and thundering, but Blogger thinks it's too big to upload here, so anyone missing tropical early morning waves can watch it on YouTube HERE.

After a bike ride to Keauhoe shopping centre (I find another Pinot Grigio for $3.99), Grandma is still too tired to go anywhere so I take the bicycle down town.   At the central market I get 3 bird of paradise flowers for US$ 2 (2 years ago I paid $1 for 3; this market seems to have doubled in price !) and head over to Honlua clothing company where I know works a very friendly girl whose birthday it is today ;-) . She's not in but I leave 1 Bird of Paradise with her co-worker, who will hopefully hand it over.

That is a 'Hawaiian shirt' made by the Australian Billabong company.  Globalization Confusion?

This time I catch the Thai restaurant (Bangkok House) open and head in for lunch. Ever faced the dilemma in an Asian restaurant whether you should order HOT or not.  Does the HOT item on the menu mean that the food is HOT for the spandex-clad senior tourist crowd, or does HOT mean that it's HOT for an Asian eater?  Bangkok House has solved this problem. Their menu lists Mild, Medium, American HOT, and Thai HOT.  I end up eating an American HOT Seafood Curry and am relieved not to have ordered Thai HOT after a bit of food takes the wrong turn down into my wind pipe.

 The food is delightfully YUMMY but for the price that they're charging, their Seafood Curry should contain a bit more seafood.  I also suspect them of using New Zealand frozen mussels.  Of course, the buck doesn't stop with them, it stops with all the crazies travelling to Hawaii (or where-ever) and ordering chicken curry (is Hawaii known for its chicken?). I vividly remember my time in Cuba last January when the Chefs tried to spoil the guests by throwing fresh local fish, fresh calamari, and fresh prawns on the hot plate and then wondering why this crazy German was one of the few people coming back for more with a smile, while 80% of the Canadian tourists kept queueing up at the Pasta Bar. (I just overheard the order at the next table:  Fried rice and spring rolls. How BORING! And the customers actually were HAPPY that the answer to their question of what kind of meat was in the spring rolls was: Australian Pork)  No wonder the restaurant owners can't afford to stock fresh local fish!

I am just pushing my bicycle back in through the condo unit door when I see Grandma stumble over the sliding door tracks to the Veranda and go down straight as an arrow. She manages to grab a couch on her left but instead of rotating her upper body to have the shoulder take the fall, she puts her chin down and greets the floor with her forehead.   The floor fortunately consists of a THICK and SOFT carpet and after a quiet "ouch" she is back on her feet 2 minutes later.  Grandma is the most stubborn person I know in this world, so after I mention a doctor 3 times over the rest of the day and keep getting negative answers, I decide to maintain the peace and head down to the rocks to watch a sunset that is promising to be a windy one.  The number of surfers on the ocean visible from the balcony is a good indication of the height of the waves.  And today there are lots of heads bopping along the water's surface like corks.

The ocean hisses and spits as if it was being heated in a cauldron that was put on a fire during Walpurgis night

Anyone into moving pictures with sound can click on THIS LINK.

29 again (or was that 39? 49? No way! You're kidding me, eh? Really? REALLY? ...)

Meet Chantal and my pseudo-nephew Mika. All the drawing artwork is Mika's handiwork!

I received a birthday card one day early, but given its originality and beauty, one shouldn't really complain about it being early. Heck, I want one of those on every single day of the year !

Today I have to visit that young woman in the Honolua clothing outlet, who noticed my birthday (when I substantiated my credit card with my driver's license) for the simple reason that it was her birthday also, to wish her Happy Birthday.  She even asked me how old I was going to be (NO, I'm not repeating that number in public) but I never asked her how old she would be because she looked like she would age herself if she used the '29 again' line.

A Monday Meeting with Captain Cook's Monument

Trouble brewing in Paradise:
We arrived late Thursday night, which means we have only been here 3 full days, and I have completely utterly adapted to the life.  Breakfast before sunrise in my undies on the veranda right next to the waves thundering on black lava rocks. Cheap good wine available in all stores.  Fresh and cheap LOCAL fish as well as local cheap pineapple and papaya to be found everywhere.  Who needs rain gear or a heating system in their house when the temperature never falls below 20 degrees Celsius?  All this has become NORMAL to me after only 3 days.  I am a bit uneasy about how I will react to Vancouver after having lived here for 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks.

It's still darkish when I leave the room and head for the rental car.

 The trail to Cook's Monument apparently leads through grassy areas and I was quite happy when a Google search revealed that there are NO snakes in Hawaii.  

And while there are also no LIONS, there are apparently wild pigs lurking in the jungelish surrounds, so THIS SONG is perfect accompaniment for this safari (And the Hippo and the stoned Dog are cute to watch too ;-)

Not a lion either but a rooster making a hell of a ruckus in the semi-dark landscape.

 It's still not quite light (6:45?) when I get to the trail head and judging by the number of cars I will be the only one on that trail for a while.

waaaay down there is the ocean: In the Jungle, the mighty Jungle ...

I guess the guy warning me about wild pigs after dark was not kidding !

Neither was the reviewer on TripAdvisor that mentioned)that a machete could come in handy ;-)

A relieved look after I managed to fight my way through the thicket (even without a machete)

Nice view. And there is an ocean still waaaay down there

I can see the ocean !

But it's still faaaar away ;-(

The ocean doesn't seem to be coming closer, even though I keep on walking and walking downhill

Just after sunrise: the light comes from the left

still way up

sliding down lava slabs

The way I came from

What is not mentioned: Captain James Cook was clobbered to death by the Hawaiians after he personally tried to take their king hostage right in their village.

This monument is not accessible by car; only by foot and by water (as of 2013 the water route is not quite legal anymore)

Washing off the dust ;-)

I came from somewhere up there (elevation difference of 1500 feet!)

View from the monument

A snail that could not snail enough when the volcano erupted

Lave folds, crushed coral, and wood

I am walking through the woods like Robinson Crusoe (where is my Boy Friday?) when I see these approaching

First I feel like Captain Cook when the first Hawaiians came over the Bay.  Then I remember what happened to him.

A strange shadow spirit seems to be telling me to go back up.

So this is what I o

What a gorgeous spot

Quite some time later I get to here and I know that my car is close ;-)

After a 2nd breakfast with grandma at 11 and a long nap, I hop on the bicycle to investigate the Kona Seaside Hotel at the behest of a Swiss translator who has booked a stay there in January.  Here are some low-res pics (I kept it low-res so I could e-mail MANY of those shots in one e-mail).  

 









I then check out that tempting looking Thai restaurant again, but it's closed AGAIN. This time I take a picture of the opening hours sign!

My way back leads me past "West Hawaii BEST Seafood Restaurant" and I decide to give it a try.  The first hurdle is the "Wait to be seated" sign.  There are 5 employees in the pretty EMPTY restaurant space that is only populated by a few of the divorced over 60 female crowd. The 5 employees are either mixing drinks or arranging chairs. I make eye-contact with every single one of them but none of them decides to move towards me.  Finally they owner or head-honcho take pity and directs me to a booth (best WIFI reception apparently).
I order a cup of their 'award-winning' clam chowder and a glass of Pinot Grigio (bloody fashion word).  The lukewarm clam chowder tastes moderately OK but the wine actually goes down very well.

An espresso cup of clam chowder?  For US$ 6.95?  ARE YOU PEOPLE NUTS ?

 But look at the size of that 'cup'. THAT for $6.95?   Guests that come here must have had very profitable divorces!  Try at your own risk or if you think you're the Right Stuff for a 60s divorcee ;-)

Shortly after I get home, it gets dark again. LONG day.  PRODUCTIVE day. GOOD day !
and GOOD NIGHT ;-)