As surreal as it is for me to say, I only have a week left here on the farm and I think that there is more to say about the corner of the world I have found myself over the past couples of months. Recently I have had the "opportunity" to see more of the island as I have circled it multiple times in the hopes of getting one of the company's delivery vans service. One major disadvantage of living on such a rugged and rural island is that your local Dodge dealer is 2 and a half hours away and on the other side of a 13,000 foot mountain. When I initially went to go pick up the van I was a bit intimated as I had yet to drive in Hawaii and had never driven a vehicle of such girth that I can stand up in the back seat and still have head room. This Dodge Sprinter and I, however, became intimately acquainted once it refused to shift out of park an hour into our drive home in the midst of lava fields (This wasn't as perilous as it sounds -- the lava was not molten). If traveling the world has given me nothing else, it is my resourcefulness. I tracked down the phone number of the mechanic and in my decidedly un-hang loose attitude, I made him stay on the phone with me for the next hour as I tried to get the gear shifter out of park. To do this, he suggested I stick a pen in a slot below the panel that lists the gears -- greaaat, glad we pay you the big bucks. Regardless, it would have worked like a charm if I had in my possession a pen that day, but no, the unfurled paper clip necessitated a bit more wrangling. The following week I had the privilege of doing the same thing but in reverse where I was going to drop off the van to have them fix it so that we didn't have to drive around with our trusty ball point pen in hand. Since I have become familiar with the drive I was able to stop at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach which is in the middle of nowhere on the south side of the island. It is almost eery to be in the United States and have there be so much undeveloped coastline with the exception of this one little beach that tourists pour out to see for, you guessed it, the black sand. Thankfully I arrived early in the morning before the buses and had the unforeseen opportunity to go swimming with these dudes. There were massive turtles snoozing on the beach, presumably exhausted by the swim from Australia at the ripe age of 105. After checking them out, I went swimming only to find quite a few bobbing up and down along the shoreline -- a pretty magical experience for 9 am on a Wednesday.
While picking up watercress on our delivery run, we drove past this driveway for which my photo does not do justice. The owner must have somehow ground up old green, brown, and clear glass bottles to have soft edges like sea glass and spread it as gravel. It shimmered in the sun like a mosaic and was totally smooth to walk on (I bravely tested it).
The Ohia tree is emblematic of the Hawaiian forest -- they are truly massive trees accented by feathery red flowers. This photo is taken 3 stories up on the roof of my shack which makes my unscientific mind deduce that it is about 70 feet tall.
I always have freshly cut tropical flowers in my room -- a fringe benefit. The rate of growth for flowering bushes is incredible here, especially since it is now rainy season. Seemingly overnight a shoot will turn into a full on branch and then be budding the day after. It's also a little funny to see plant varieties that I am used to seeing slowly dying in the corner of an office on the East Coast thriving and at exponential size outside here.
The avocados practically knock on my door and ask to be eaten. They are huge yet delicious, and yes, the one in the middle is a perfect circle.
