June 29, 2014
I woke up in the middle of the night with a burning pain on my back, not in my back, on my back. If you read my last blog you saw the pictures from our snorkeling adventure. I always wear a shirt when I swim for a couple of reasons.
First I am Scottish, as a child my hair was white and my skin translucent. I could sunburn using an easy bake oven.
Second, I am embarrassed by my mantitty/moobs. And now, with the loss of thirty some pounds, I have developed a marsupial like pouch at the bottom of my still ample belly. I don't know what I was thinking.
No shirt for the hour I was in the condo pool. Then for some totally unfathomable reason, I took my shirt off to snorkel for ninety minutes. This was the result. Squatch Lobster!!
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| Squatch Lobster |
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| Red, Red Spine |
It kept me up most of the night. Every time I moved it hurt like hell. This picture doesn't do my pain justice, I am as red as a cooked lobster! I swore to never take my shirt off again. I could hear the guy trimming his nose hairs at the pool cheer.
Not one to let something as small as lobster back slow me down. I insisted we get out there and snorkel. I made myself breakfast, a nice sausage, onion and cheese omelet.
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| Omelet |
We loaded up the cooler with frozen bottles of water, hard boiled eggs, lettuce, ham and assorted fruits. Sunday in Kona is insane! Everywhere you looked there were people looking for parking. We weren't concerned. We were headed twenty-five miles out of town to a spot that everyone said was the best snorkeling. What they didn't tell us was that there was a festival going on today. State troopers had people parking four miles away up on the highway. No problem. It's the Big Island of Hawaii, there must be a hundred beaches. Using our GPS we found one another fifteen miles up the road. We found parking right at the beach. Most of the beaches we've been on this trip have been rocky or black sand. Mostly rock. The water is beautiful and the fish and stuff great, but the beach part is pretty lame.
I can't remember the name of the beach. Hawaiian names are hard. They have a lot of vowels and not enough consonants. If it starts with a K I call it Kumoniwanalaya, if it's an H it's Huminahuminahumina and if it's an L it's Lululugie. This particular beach was a K and had real sand coloured sand! It also had a papaya tree that had some ripe fruit on it.
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| Add caption |
Lisa had tried to shake some off to no avail. When she told me I went to the tree and gave it a Squatch shake.
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| Nice Papayas... the fruits not bad either |
We added the two papayas to our cooler and started to check out the beach. There were lots of tidal pools with small fish and things. We saw a couple of kids with nets in one of the larger pools. They caught a Snowflake Eel about three inches long. It's white with black spots on it.
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| These things grow to three feet! |
A lot of the pictures didn't turn out because it was so bright, and I couldn't see the LED to check them. We explored the pools for half an hour. I then went for a swim, fully clothed! Hat glasses and all.
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| All dressed up and nowhere to go! |
This beach had a good mix of sand and rocks. Most people were swimming though there were a few snorkelers on the outside rocks. I swam around for about twenty minutes while Lisa continued to check out the tidal pools. When I came out of the water I went to the showers they had on the beach to rinse off. I brought a change of clothes, so I peeled off the shirt I was wearing, rinsed it off and wrung it out. A woman I had seen snorkeling out on the rocks came up to rinse off and said to me
"Apple cider vinegar will take care of that burn. It stings like hell at first, but then will feel better"
" You lost me at stings like hell" I said. " It's already feeling better" Lisa came up and started a conversation with her about the snorkeling. She told us the visibility wasn't that good but better than it has been. She said the snorkeling was better up north. Where we had just come from. We decided to continue south looking for a better beach. I never went into the water again! I put on the shirt I brought for just that reason and we were off. I realised that I had left my handkerchief in my pocket while swimming.
Bathing suits dry fast. Cotton handkerchiefs, not so much! I squeezed out the excess water. I then held it out the window and it was dry in about a minute. I have a wet shirt on the floor in the back seat....hmmmm. My giant shirt is considerably heavier than my handkerchief. By putting my arm through the arm holes of my wet shirt I wasn't going to lose it on the highway. It took about four minutes to dry and about four hours for my arm to recover. Think of a flag fluttering in the wind. Now think of that wind moving at sixty-five mph! Thank goodness it was lunch time.
We needed gas, and since we were beachless, we decided not to eat our packed lunch. Besides, the highway runs a long way from the beach in most spots and is dull and dusty. Ten minutes later we found a gas station and an L & L Hawaiian Barbecue. Voted the best on the Big Island. I don't know who voted for this, but whoever it was they like their BBQ deep fried with rice, eggs and gravy! A lot! Lisa and I both ordered the BBQ combo. Short ribs, beef teriyaki and Korean chicken. Still no BBQ. Lisa had it regular, rice and macaroni salad. I had it with a green salad. It was quite good.
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| Lisa lunch |
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| Squatch lunch |
After lunch we had a decision to make. Head north the way we had come, or south towards the ominous black clouds. After a short debate, that I lost, we continued south. The sun was shining and our bellies were full. We had a rock station on the radio and all was good with the world. We stopped at a coffee place because of the sign. The southern most coffee shop in the U.S.A
They also sold Orchids.
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| Also a delicate flower |
Not a mile down the road, " Stop the car Lisa, stop the car!" she skids to a halt on the shoulder of the road. I couldn't believe my eyes. I did not expect to see this in Hawaii.
A couple of Bison and some Big Horny Cows!
We saw a sign for Green Beach and Southern beach. Why not?
We went to southern beach first. It was a typical Big Island beach. No sand. Lots of sharp lava rocks and wild surf.
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| Beauty on the beach |
We left there and headed over to Green Beach. It has sand, green sand caused by volcanic activity. It was a three mile hike into the beach, or we could pay a guy thirty bucks to drive us in with his 4x4. That's when it started raining. We never took another picture!
When we got back out to the highway we saw a sign that said Kona, where the condo is, 73 miles, Hilo, the exact opposite direction of the condo, 46 miles. After a brief debate, that I lost, we headed for Hilo in the pouring rain. I had taken our paper map into the condo so we were running on memory because the GPS wanted to take us back the way we came. Evidently we both suffer from sometimers, sometimes we don't know where the hell we are!
We thought we would see downtown Hilo and maybe stop for dinner. At 7:00 on a Sunday night, that was a non starter. The place was a ghost town. Luckily Lisa knows a short cut. Lisa's short cuts usually make us late for wherever we are heading. We had no where to be, and since it was getting dark and still raining we headed to where we believed Highway 200 was located. Eleven miles out of town we found Highway 220. Maybe we have the number wrong? Half a mile up 220 it turned the wrong way. We turned around and were headed back to the main road when Lisa stopped and asked a woman where 200 was. Turns out it's called Saddle Road and runs through downtown Hilo. We drove back to Hilo found the road and headed for home. Highway 200 goes across the middle of the island, from the south east to the north west. We went from sea level to 6855 feet and back down to sea level and the temperature went from 72 degrees and raining to 54 degrees and then to 82 degrees when we got back to the condo.
I don't find the scenery on the Big Island very interesting or the beaches as nice compared to Kauai, but I love the ocean here. When you can get to it. I'm glad we came home the way we did. It was much quicker than the Belt Road we took Friday.
In summation, We spent nine hours in the car, ninety minutes on two beaches and twenty minutes in the water. Not what I had in mind for today but still, not a bad day.
That's all I got.
Till next time
Peace out Y'all
©2014 Dave Squatch Ward
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