E komo mai

This blog got a nice burst of traffic - relative to it's normal, extremely modest level of popularity last week. New viewers, welcome (that's what the title means) and I hope you will stay if it was interesting. I had occasion to mention the blog to a number of coworkers and it looks like a fair number stopped by which is nice to see. Blogger doesn't label it clearly but I believe that's 35 per hour peak.

Back from Kauai three weeks now I haven't done the many follow-up posts I had planned to - yet - but more is coming soon. Stay tuned to this channel: now the onus is on me to keep it interesting.

Day 102: end of the road for this trip

Mahalo to the island of Kauai and its people for an amazing time. I'm writing from the Lihue airport awaiting my flight home via Honolulu airport. I've been on-island since  after Thanksgiving and must say that this time period here was just right.

I packed this morning (it always takes way too long), my load lightened by a friend in Hanapepe holding a storage box full of island stuff for my return. No specific plans for a return, but it is only a question of when not if, and I don't think it will be long. Watch this space.

Dogs love to play with coconuts: like a big round green bone with coconut instead of marrow on the inside. If you have ever tried to open a coconut without a machette you know it's a good match for a dog's teeth and jaw. So I drank my last chilled coconut (with a bamboo straw) and tossed the rest into my friend Ed's yard for his dogs since I didn't have the tools to get the  coconut meat myself.

Dropped off my last library book (I posted my collection of books home yesterday, saving 15 pounds of baggage weight, for a few bucks at media rate) and headed to Lihue to gas up and get breakfast.

The Tip Top Cafe has the best macadamia nut pancakes on the island and I had them with their homemade jam instead of syrup. The Tip Top is an informal "seat yourself" diner - with a sushi bar - where the waitresses roll around carts to serve and take away dishes. They are said to have the best sushi available here though I haven't had it myself.

Smooth rental car return and check-in and all that, which brings my here at Gate 6. They asked me to sit in an exit row on this flight - not sure if I'm doing them a favor or vice versa. It's a short climb-and-descend flight. The four pineapples from my farmer friends went through inspection in the bag and will be my main souvenirs. Looks like boarding will start in a while ...

Further

In an hour I should be on a Hawaiian Airlines jet ascending above and away from Kauai, bringing this trip to an end. One road begins and another begins.

I intend to keep this blog going. I filled up a 80MB drive with over four thousand photos and some video, not including all the hale video and photos that I have already delivered to Uncle. All this needs organizing and will lead to more posts and photo collections and videos.

In addition, I have a list of topics to write on that I just haven't had time to get to yet. Some will be travelogue/guidebook but some I hope to dig in deeper and write about more important things.

This trip has unexpectedly fostered a short story that I am working on, and experiences and learnings from this trip are informing the writing. I greatly enjoyed working on this in December and January and look forward to completing the first draft and getting it polished.

Several Kauaians I am sure will stay in touch so I can maintain some contact while on the mainland.

This blog has been just right: I have enjoyed writing, recapping my activities here, and hope that some of it is informative as well as slightly entertaining.

Believe me, without this blog I would have been sending family and friends all kinds of long email out of the blue, so this project has spared them that. One relative who is not digital I have been sending this in printed form so as not to exclude anyone. Blogging is just right since it isn't addressed to anyone in particular, everyone can read what they like, as much as they like, or not as the case may be.

Aloha!

Day 101: the end of the road west

Polihale beach (state park) is as far as you can get on land before encountering the impassable Na Pali cliffs that dominate the west side of Kauai. This west end of the road anchored my penultimate day on Kauai of this trip. For my last full day this trip I was tempted to sneak in one more hike at Koke'e - with the variable winds it was a lovely day for it - but I decided that visiting my friends here was clearly the way to plan the day.

With fresh fruit from my pineapple farmer friends I played Santa Claus handing out rambutan to the guys at the Kalaheo Cafe breakfast club I have now joined a few times, the owner of the place I stayed in Kalaheo most of the time here, and to my "Hawaiian grandmother" at the Waimea visitor center.

The end of the road west

The road out to Polihale is greatly improved since I was last out there but it's still a bear: 4.8 miles of dirt road, rock, and sand (actually sand on dirt, not driving on pure sand). The beach here on the other side of PMRF (Pacific Missile Range Facility) is much like Kekaha beach but the waves are bigger, coming from open ocean as this is around the bend. Most people were on the sand: only experienced people who know the area should be in the water here. The waves were breaking big and well out there.

In Waimea the dining choices are limited, especially if you don't eat meat. My "regular" meal for lunch or early dinner (they close at five) was Seared Wasabi Ahi fish taco at Island Tacos. At this point I walk in and just confirm that I want "the usual". I left them rambutans instead of dessert.

I wanted to get a pineapple history book I had seen at the Talk Story bookstore, but when I went back I couldn't find it again. The lady was helpful (she hadn't been there when I had seen it before) and, after helping some visitors call to find a place to stay, she looked but couldn't find it either in "History" or "Kauai". Just as I was about give up the lady of the couple looking for a place overheard us and said she had just seen that book and went and grabbed it. The Talk Story bookstore folks got a big bag of rambutan. They offered to give me a book, but it was better to just give since Kauai has given me so much I can't possibly lose out giving wherever and however I can here.

Day 100: the end of the road North

In my last week here I'm wrapping up things, this day at the north shore end of the road. Wednesday morning found me out early at Hanalei Bay watching surfers at sunrise.

Weather forecasts variable winds - weakening of the trade winds that usually blow - a rare circumstance that means often nice weather with clearing and often good surfing. Hang gliders are only safe when winds are down and saw four of them the previous day above Anahola.

The end of the road, north shore

From there I just had to drive on out to the end of the road at Ke'e beach to begin wrapping up my Kauai time, but quickly turned around and drove about a mile back to the Limahuli garden. No time today to hike the wonderful Kalalau Trail though it would have been a fine day for it no doubt.

Well before 8am there was plenty of parking still, but I was reminded how crowded it has begun out here even in recent years since I first visited. Last time I was out here at Limahuli I couldn't help but notice for the first time that from the end of the road back over a mile every pullout and possible parking spot along the highway was filled with cars. And yes I realize that I am part of the crowd contributing to the congestion. It's a hard but important figuring out how we balance popular spots that are inherently valuable by virtue of being natural and unimpacted by humans that now want to visit them in numbers.

This week the hale builders are back and working all five days, planning to complete major work by Friday. This morning we built out the roof, completing the makai side and most of the mauka side. Selecting and passing wood up to people on the roof lashing it in, cutting off long ends, splicing in extensions to short pieces.

My particular specialty, not surprisingly, is operator of the digital camera equipment. Today we shot 5 second interval stills to make a time-lapse movie (sped up 75 times) of the work with a GoPro camera. To get perspective from the top of the hale we lashed the camera to a large pillar piece and supported it vertically at one end pointing down. I climbed up the olokea (scaffolding), held on to the roof ridge beam, and reached out to adjust the camera angle and start it recording. An unlikely marriage of digital and native technology and not something I could have possibly imagined would be part of my experience here.

After lunch I headed back for a last visit to my friends with the pineapple farm (snagging four to take home) and drove back to Hanapepe where I was invited to dinner at friend's home here. Overlooking the Hanapepe River and the ocean at sunset (until the mosquitoes were too much - next time, long pants and long shirt) was a perfect ending to my last north shore day for this trip.

Last week

The pace is picking up as my wonderful time on Kauai continues, but of course the return to the mainland inevitably approaches. It would be misleading to say that I haven't had time to blog but rather to say I've had so many things to do while I'm here that I just haven't gotten to it.

Heliconia

Also there is a trend of the experience being harder for me to capture here, as I get into the rhythm of living here, rather than visiting, it takes more explanation and requires more time to compose it into words. Another blogging challenge as I write here is that it's hard to write briefly: each topic tends to open up and get longer and longer so it's hard to get a whole week down without spending an inordinate amount of time while Kauai awaits me just outside.

This morning as I look out over the valley in the dawn light, I can catch up here. Several posts should follow up with more detail, but for now, in no particular order...

Worked three days last week in the NTBG Lawai gardens, beginning with Monday in Mark's Garden again. I think Mark was really pleased to here I had so christened his area and was able to share it, in a very small scale way here, with more people. We worked cleaning up along the west side of the stream a ways north of the bridge in the south portion of the McBryde. Mark whacked weeds for part of the time while I raked out the sloped planted area. After lunch we cleaned up by the dam and then swung through the waterfall area. With a little experience from before under his tutelage it was great to single-handedly clean up a clump of heliconias, turning it from neglected looking to nice looking (next time should shoot before/after photos). The torn dried out leaves look really shaggy, not to mention the dead blackened withered flowers (and inside there the rotting stalks are gooey-stinky) but afterward with only green leaves and robust stalks it's a handsome plant, even without the showy flowers.

I visited my friends on the pineapple farm for another great time in the field learning a bit more about pineapple propagation and what it takes to produce those wonderful Sugarloaf pineapples. Not to mention gourmet home-cooked dinner (wasabi basted grilled fish!) and plenty of talk story.

In the Allerton garden I got to work in the bamboo garden clearing out fallen and falling plants, some of which out by the road were potentially a safety issue. I had asked about working there and learned they only go in rarely (with so much else for the small staff to do, and it mostly takes care of itself) but I guess some gusts tips the balance in my favor. It's a wonderful place to be in the middle of when the wind blows and the plants make music.

On Thursday my friend Peter joined me for a short visit to the island after hearing me go on and on about it. We had good plate lunch from Koloa fish market and he got a quick tour of the south/west before dark.

Also on Thursday I moved from Kalaheo to Hanapepe that just worked out as it provides plenty of room for the two of us (it's set up to sleep 4 comfortably). The owner is Japanese and very friendly as well as island-style laid-back and the place is clean and well stocked so it's an easy place to be, plus a great location for seeing the west.

Peter wanted to work in the garden since he volunteers at a large food garden in his community once a week already. We did raking and clean up in the morning, then toured the garden in the afternoon. We were very fortunate to get an amazing tour by the garden foreman of areas of the garden I hadn't noticed before much less even knew existed. Unfortunately, there are large sections that are largely neglected due to insufficient funding, but we were able to get in and see it all easily. This deserves detailed post with photos to begin to convey: an absolute treat and great that Peter was here for the ride.

Saturday we visited the north shore stopping at Anini Beach, Hanalei Beach, Hanalei Sunshine market, Common Grounds, and the pineapple farm. From Hanapepe that's about 100 miles of driving and it was a long but fun day.

Sunday we did a wonderful hike in the depths of Koke'e with local friend Ed and his 4WD. The Mohihi-Waiala'e trail - deserves another post with details - starts six or seven miles off road at the end of a gnarly dirt road and goes across a stream, up some hills, and heads toward Alaka'i. The first part of the trail is hard to find and we got off-trail losing some time but it was a good little adventure. We didn't get all the way to the end of the trail but it was a good hike with plenty of canyon views, varied terrain, and unmistakably it is way, way off the beaten path, absolutely quiet and still (no helicopters even!).

Monday morning: we are off to the Waimea town historic walk ...