Honaunau, HI
January 7 - February 19, 2015
The beach has gotten the best of us and we have
fallen into "Hawaiian time". We just realized we have been here over a
month, and really haven't checked in. Sorry about that. We are
absolutely loving it and feeling right at home... here's the scoop.
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| Place of Refuge at Pu'uhonu o Honaunau Park |
We
live in a two bedroom house on a five acre farm in the Honaunau
neighborhood of Captain Cook on the big island of Hawaii. The farm
overlooks the "place of refuge" so we have beautiful views of the water
from our living room and our bedroom. The farm is mostly macadamia nut
trees and coffee, but there are also banana plants, papaya, a couple
avocado trees, mango, lilikoi (Hawaiian passion fruit), dragon fruit,
and my friends the chickens. Lori and Cameron, our hosts, sell their Mac nuts to Hawaiian
Host... so you've probably eaten one.
Our first
roommates were a Polish couple who were kicked off the farm after only a
couple days. Cameron has as strict non-smoking policy which goes beyond
not smoking on the farm and extends to not smoking at all...Richard
(the polish man) was a smoker. Our next roommates, who just left
yesterday were a fun Slovenian couple, Nic and Natasha. We got along
great and had fun Uno and puzzle nights to complement our beach days and
island adventures. We go down to Cameron and Lori's house a couple
times a week for dinner and campfires, and the company is always great
fun!
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| Lori teaching Katie how to roll pizza dough |
We are typically required to work 4 days
per week, and the work is varied... which is nice. When we do farm work
we typically work from 7:30-12:30 which gives us the rest of the day to
go to the beach or do whatever. When we work farmer's markets at their
mobile pizza kitchen the day is a bit longer, so sometimes we only work 3
days. Some of the other farmers on the island require their
work-exchange helpers to work 30-35 hours a week picking Mac nuts/coffee
only... I would die. Mac nut picking is awful. It's not really that
hard...but the nuts are all on the ground so you are either squatting or
bending over the whole time, and it's BORING. When we pick nuts I put
my audio book on and I'm good for about 3 hours. The fourth hour is
rough and the fifth is almost unbearable. On the flip side, I love
everything about working at Pizza Rovers in the farmer's markets!
Lori
and Cameron left corporate jobs in California about 5 years ago, and
without any prior knowledge to farming bought this place and moved over.
Cameron bought the oven a few years later from a pizza restaurant that
was upgrading so they could have pizza nights on the farm... later they
thought it might be a good way to make some supplemental income, and
without any experience making pizzas, Pizza Rovers was born. Our
experience working with them and with Pizza Rovers has inspired us to
start our own mobile food business in Bend. We are working on our
business plan and recipes with the intent on being ready to operate
during the upcoming farmers market season serving up gourmet grilled
cheese. I have already started learning how to bake artisan bread, and
we had a grilled cheese night at the farm on Wednesday where everyone
created a sandwich and we invited guest judges who rated them on
appearance, taste, and originality... and mine won! Woot Woot! It was a
delicious combination of brie, Granny Smith apples, arugula, and honey
mustard on my own bread. If you have any company name ideas or sandwich
ideas, please send them our way! We are nervous about this endeavor, but
also extremely excited! I knew opening and running that gym was getting
me ready for something... I just didn't know what!
Aside
from working on the farm, we have also done a lot of exploring on the
island (this part will be more interesting when I publish the blog and
there are pictures...).
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| The Mongoose |
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| Mauna Kea Beach |
We realized right away that the bus system is
awful and hitchhiking is annoying. We wanted the freedom to explore
everything on our own timeline... so we bought The Mongoose, a 98 Subaru
Outback. Hopefully it will continue to run smoothly, and we will be
able to sell it when we leave and make our money back. So far, it's been
a great purchase! We've explored a lot of beaches, and
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| Manini Beach Park at Kealakekua Bay |
done some
snorkeling and boogie boarding. The other morning we were on our way out
for a run, and got a text that the dolphins were at Two Step beach. So
we abandoned our run, and went to exercise with the dolphins...it was
surreal!
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| Getting ready for entry at 2-Step |
You could hear them talking under water, then all of a sudden
they would be swimming under you, then jumping out of the water and
spinning in the air! At one point, there was a dolphin swimming circles
around Kevin and me! They are extremely curious, and as long as you don't
chase them and are not aggressive, they will come to check you out!
They often come to rest in the bay here, so hopefully this will not be
our last dolphin encounter. We've seen quite a few sunbathing sea
turtles, but none in the water yet...that's on my list!
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| Turtle at Kaloko-Honokohau |
We took a road
trip to the Hilo side of the island to check out the waterfalls, but
there hasn't been much rain (we are in the dry season), so they were
less than impressive... we'll have to venture
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| Waipio Valley overlook |
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| Rainbow Falls |
that way again once the
rains come.
We drove up to the visitors center at Mona Loa to watch the
sunset and stayed to start gaze through their big telescopes.
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| View of Hualalai Volcano from Mauna Loa |
We visited
Kilauea and watched the glow from the crater.
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| Waiting for Kiluea with roomies Nic and Natasha |
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| Beginning to see the glow at dusk |
And we jumped off the
cliff at South Point, the southern must point in the United States. As it turns out, jumping off is the easy part ... it's climbing back up that horrible moving ladder that's the real challenge!
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| Locals on the road south... his friends were buffaloes and a zebra! |
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| Sunbathing turtles at Black Sand Beach |
The
most impressive thing is just the landscape in general. It is so
varied! Vast lava fields that look like they could be on mars... cliffs
falling into the blue blue ocean, jungle scapes, beaches of every color,
and the black lava rock right up to the edge of the blue and aqua
water... love it! So far that wraps up our adventures... many more to
come!
