Day 1 - I landed at Honolulu International Airport at 6:30am. Past the customs dude who gave props to the 山手線, and after a quick ride on the wiki-wiki tram, I pulled up to the inter-island ticket counter. Turns out my connecting flight was almost 4 hours away. I need a drink!
Shit. Airport booze is overpriced by American standards, but under-priced by Japanese. Anyways, it's probably for the best, as I was perpetually drunk for the last 4 days, except for the 8 hours I went on a charity motorcycle toy run. More on that later, as I still have to blur all the children's faces in Photoshop, Japanese style.
What to do... get my BK on? Maybe another bar?
Nope. But I ran across this.
Fuck, I just felt nostalgia from a damn coupon magazine. You see, it's been 13 years since I've been to the Hawaiian islands, but during childhood I went almost every year with my family on some sort of home swap deal with family friends. Well I'm back.
Reading a copy of "101 Things to Do" gave me an idea of exactly what I do NOT want to do.
- A luau. I got busted for sneaking some mai tais back when I was 18 at a luau and hate them now. Fuck you! I'm not a part of your system.
- Anything with the word "adventure" in the description
- Holy Shit, an ATV tour company. Whatever, but check out the website name - www.ridetherim.com.
- I'm anti-dolphin tourism, because I watched the Cove last week. Now bring on the burgers and Kalua Pork.
Now this I could handle. With limes picked from the tree outside.
A bit of a misnomer,
as deep fried, covered in sickly sweet sauce fish isn't really home style out in Japan. Maybe down in Kyushu, the one place I haven't been.
Homemade ahi poke (too much salt though, my bad).
Coconut crust on fish is crazy good.
Kalua pork is also crazy good.
Kona coffee from the source.
On my last day I had fresh sea turtle. It was good, but I could only eat like 2 bites and had to toss out the rest. もったいない！
Day 3 - Green beach!
Black beach!
Lava!
Day 4 - Hilo has a lot of rain, so there is a perpetual flow of water and some pretty rad waterfalls. But mostly it's just an overlook.
Pee Pee falls is a bit harder to get to. Climb over some rocks for 15 minutes. Try not to drop your big heavy SLR camera. Then chill with some local reggae. These are the guys from Soul Redemption.
Dude can sing. Hopefully they'll come through Tokyo someday, though Japan has a fairly whack (though popular) reggae music scene.
Check em on myspace.
Day 5 - Hit up the other side of the island, the dry side. My dad was talking about one of his favorite beaches. White sand with plenty of shady trees. Minus the shady trees. I guess there was a fire.
Day 6 - I really wanted to see the lava up close. Access from the East is monitored, but the West is totally free. For real, the West side is much better than the East side. The sun may rise in the East, but it sets in the mutha fuckin West.
If you want to walk for 2-3 hours each way.
Over a hardened lava field.
The lava flow changes often. I got about an hour in and figured I'd give up. Good hike though, as I was all alone on the rocks.
Day 7 - 10 - Other random photos from my trip.
People love Hawaii sooo much! Love is a scar on a native tree.
My dad's place is.... いなか.
But inaka means hella wild fruits growing wildly.
This little spider was humping my beer for like 10 minutes.
What up dood?
Your friend has the right idea.
See ya Hawaii!
1 comment:
Wow, that brings back some memories. Jen and I went a couple of summers ago to the Big Island, and some of your pictures look really familiar. We went to that green sand beach, and hiked several hours to see the lava close up. =)
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