Wednesday, August 25, 2004

More of My Goddamn Vacation

Today will be dedicated 100% to Tropical Tidbits, because I’m short on time and one of these doesn’t deserve to be relegated to second place to anything else, certainly not to my goofball stories about dogs and busses and card games and such, all of which I briefly considered putting before you here today - but no, I’m just going to toss out a few word-memories and then share more of my goddamn photos.  Hope it’s not getting too dull for you.  I find it therapeutic, myself, but then again, I was there. 

* Driving higher, steeper, and rougher than I’ve ever driven before - up the mountain, down to the valley, out to the green beach - three separate drives, three separate experiences that continue to stretch my notions of automotive travel.

* Mule nuzzle!  A wild mule walked up to me on an isolated valley road; I stopped in my tracks but it came right over anyway and gently rubbed its head on my chest, brushed its neck along my shoulder.  It was very soft and didn’t seem to have ever been owned by anybody.  I felt warmly accepted, even though it was just looking for a handout of an apple or powerbar.  I’m not really a “horsy” person but that was one cool mule. 

* Roach mobile: when we turned in the rented Jeep GCLaredo for a sporty convertible Sebring (the off-roading portion of our vacation being concluded and the indolent sunsoaking portion just beginning), we knew right away that the new car wasn’t as nice as the first one.  I called in once we got to the lagoon-side house where we’d be for our last week on the island to let them know that I hadn’t burned that hole in the back seat, hadn’t dented the driver’s door, and there seemed to be some little roaches running around inside it.  That night, though, the big boys came out to play.  As we got to the car to drive the short distance from Andy’s house to our own, I opened the door and a big roach (about an inch?) ran up the inside of the driver’s window and down the outside.  Kel picked up a map that was on the passenger seat - roaches scattered from beneath it.  She screamed and dropped the map but I tried to be firm - “we have to drive home, just get in the car and it’ll be over soon.” She picked up the map again. The roaches had already returned, scattered again in the light of the port-cochere.  What ensued was a very dark, poorly marked, excruciating drive - five minutes that felt like half an hour.  The next morning Kelly checked again, and when she lifted the floormats dozens of tiny roaches scattered everywhere.  And we know that, when you see babies, the parents are not far away.  Kel called and explained the problem to the rental company in terms so evocative and persuasive that they actually towed another car to us within two hours - no one wanted to drive it to us because they’d have to drive the roach mobile back.  The new Sebring, a stylish red, had almost no miles on it and, more importantly, no roaches in it whatsoever.  I know.  I checked.  Carefully.

And now, as the man says, a bit of fun:

This is a view of Kiholo Bay on the Kona-Kohala Coast.  It’s one of the most utterly serene and lovely tropical paradises I’ve ever seen, and this isn’t even a picture of the nice part of it, where a black-sand island shyly peeks up from a turquoise lagoon surrounded by palms and rugged lava formations.  Turtle ponds punctuate the landscape, but this guy just happened to be hanging out on the beach where we had stopped so Kel could get the rocks out of her sandals: “Ouch, I need to sit down and deal with my sandals.  Hey, check out that turtle!” Thus went our trip to Kiholo, where I also swam to that small black island to return a vial of purloined black sand and some lava rock for some friends. 

So, from the scene of the turtle picture, turn 180 degrees and walk about 200 yards down the beach.  The lavarock forms a thick sheet that comes to within a few dozen yards of the ocean.  Hot lava develops tubes where gasses form cylindrical tunnels in the molten magma; these cool first and remain open when the rest of the rock solidifies around them.  There is an opening into a small portion of tube here that has formed a chamber called Queen’s Bath - the opening is about fifteen feet by twenty, with a wooden ladder leading down into it.  The chamber has filled with rainwater that filtered down from the adjacent mountain through the earth - water more pure and clear than anything man can produce.  It’s about four feet deep at the shallowest, and about ten at the deepest.  At one end is a narrow gap that leads into a length of tube about 15 feet or so, filled with water.  The level varies with the tides, though the water is totally pure and fresh - at the time of our visit there was only a few inches of clearance, just enough for me to breathe while doing a frog-kick backstroke.  It was dark but I had a waterproof flashlight and was headed to a second chamber, pictured here, about ten by fifteen feet in size, with an opening about six by eight that peeked up to the dusk-tinged sky.  I floated in this pool for a few minutes, just a few feet from the kids splashing and playing in the main pool but it felt like it was miles from the planet earth.  At the end of this chamber was another opening into a longer tube tunnel with the same minimal clearance, and I swam through it to a final chamber, the largest of all, one that had no window to the sky, almost filled to the top with the world’s purest water, so that I felt I was floating in the womb of the planet - the coldness that had shocked me at first now felt like my natural body temperature.  I was utterly cleansed, body and soul.

This was taken at the bottom of the Waipio Valley, where moss grows on everything that isn’t rubber or river.  The scenery was breathtaking, with massive falls tumbling through carved ampitheaters two thousand feet to the valley floor.  People live on the valley floor - weird, reclusive people, but people nonetheless.  This is the signpost for one of their houses, on a road that ducks under four rivers where dogs outnumber even the tourists. 

This is also on the floor of Waipio Valley.  It was once, I suppose, a house.  The valley was devastated in the 60’s by a tidal wave.  I wonder if this is a remnant of that incident, or if it’s just another, more recent example of the fleeting nature of human enterprise. 

It’s a nice sunny day and I get to leave work on time today to have a beer with a bloggy friend.  Hope you have something as valid to look forward to.  Take good care, and let a little moss grow on your boots!