Aloha part 3

We're here for one more week. We've been to a bunch of beaches: Hapuna, Disappearing Sands, Punalu'u the black sand beach, Pahoa, Boiling Pot, Wawaloli, Papakolea the green sand beach, and probably others like the one down the street.  Noah's been boogie boarding at a bunch of them. We've seen waterfalls, caves, steam vents, empty calderas, and farmers markets. We've tried different shave ice. 

We went to Volcanoes National Park last weekend which was a couple hours' drive. We've been listening to different podcasts in the car, particularly Mars Patel, Origin Unknown, and Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. We hiked and drove around the park and we got to go in a cave that has just opened up. When we walked around the steam vents, which were very cool, I mean hot, we walked through a sort of fern forest which lots of cool plants and fiddleheads. 

 these are fronds of a fern

 Can you see the steam? This is a steam vent

 These are ferns - when they're rolled up like this, 

                              they're called fiddleheads

We stayed the night in a campsite with cabins, and made friends with a Hawaiian scout troupe while we cooked our hotdogs. After leaving, we drove to Papakolea, the green beach. We turned down a $20 per person shuttle and decided to drive a short ways and then walk there ourselves, up above the beach. The ground was reddish clay and it was a rocky trail so we were looking at our feet a lot. Then when looking up, the ocean looked extra blue. The green beach was more greenish than green. There was a cliff we had to go down, with ladders and stairs, and a steep hill of sand which Noah climbed. 

The kids are hungry for social interaction other than each other. They annoy each other and Aviva is particularly good at this. If there's a question, she gives the same answer as Noah, who will then change his answer. So then she'll change hers and then he'll change his....They get along a lot of the time and then they fight a lot of the time. And there's a lot of time. They have potty humor which cracks them up and that includes burps, which always impress each other. It is very unfortunate and rather unpleasant for the adults present. They've been told they can do it when no adults are around, but they are constantly forgetting or maybe "forgetting." There are tantrums and fits and we've gotten some noise complaints from our neighbors.... This covid time is hard for the kids and it's hard for parents and apparently it's hard for the neighbors also, unfortunately, thanks to us.

Noah has been really wanting to make a fire. A bunch of the beaches don't allow fires but there's one near us that does, so Noah and I brought some collected wood and some hotdogs to the beach last night. 

Honey mochi is freshing - jinx!

The last few days have had a little too much fun and excitement. Which is tiring. We left Kona yesterday for a weekend trip to Hilo, on the other side of the island. We drove for an hour and a half, past the snowy peak of Mauna Kea, to the rainy side of the island where it rains hard just about every day. 15 inches per month. And yesterday and today. We are staying in an airbnb house that is very spacious and the kids are happy to each have their own rooms and there's a backyard with a bunny hutch and coconut trees. 

This morning we went to the farmers' market and saw a lot of interesting fruit. I regret not taking pictures. We asked the names of a lot of them, which I had never seen before. We tried some sweets that were really yummy. Don't know what they were or what was in them except one had rice and one was wrapped in a banana leaf. One was called honey mochi. 

Then we went to Pahoa, a nearby town, to a coffee shop called the Tin Shack, where it could have been mistaken for Berkeley. Things on the menu said if they were gluten-free or dairy-free and plant-based and they served kombucha. Some patrons were barefoot and others wore tie dye and looked hippy-ish. Then we drove to the beach and stopped along the way, in a little forest. Aviva collected little baby coconuts and made a fairy house in a tree trunk and Noah played on the lava and looked at the water. It was a really really beautiful place. Then we drove to Isaac Hale Beach Park where all the rocks and "sand" is black, the beach waves are super-rough and crashy-y onto rocks and not sand, and inland 100 feet or so there are pools of warm water. The sand is really course and rough. The warm water was even hot in places. It's heated by magma under the surface. The beachside had tons of black rocks and they've been made into little statues and mazes. Noah loved working on a little palace thing, making the walls and passageways and also a rock toilet. See how practical he is?

 Black sand and rocks on a beach

Where we're generally staying, in Kona, we can walk along the beach to a little collection of bars and restaurants and there is also a shaved ice place. The kids LOVE shaved ice. Aviva says it's "so freshing!" She means refreshing but that's how she says it. Something else that is freshing is our pool, which we can see over our porch balcony. Something else that is NOT freshing is the kids' conversations lately which include a lot of saying jinx. They try to say words at the same time and then they quickly say "jinx!" and then according to their game, they can't talk again until someone says their names. They're constantly doing it and then they signal to us that we should say their names (which we do eventually but also really enjoy the silence) but sometimes they call "time out!" and start talking about something unrelated.

Noah's taking a chess class once a week online and also a math class that goes with a math game he plays online. Both kids like to play chess and Noah is getting really good.

We toured a coffee plantation which also had avocado trees and pepper vines and citrus.

 Waterfalls in the background

 Aviva w/state flower - hibiscus

 Caves which were actually lava tubes

 Aviva making fairy house #67

 Some cool fruit/flower thing

 Going down into the lava tube

 Monkey pod trees have these aerial roots that reach the ground and take root. There were also chickens all over the place

 Love that shaved ice (Abuelita - do 

you recognize the tshirt?)

 This is a peppercorn plant

 Avocado tree

 This is a mangosteen

 

Aloha from The Garden Paradise, says Aviva

 3/10/2021 Wednesday

We're in Hawaii - yesterday we went to 4 different beaches, and today Noah spent more than 3 hours in the water (the pool right outside, the beach down the street where he boogie boarded from 3-6:00, and then a bath that he didn't want to leave. He hasn't taken a bath in about 9 months; it's only been showers because he's been holding a grudge against our bathtub. But here in our apartment, we have a nice -and different- bathtub). 

We walked to a beach down the street, which was filled with black lava rocks, and drove 5 or 10 minutes to an are-you-kidding-me-beach. It's actually called Disappearing Sands beach and we went there again today. Perfect sand and perfect water in the perfect shade of turquoise. So we have a new name for it. The are-you-kidding-me beach.

Today we also went to a national historic park called Pu-uhonua o Honaunau, which was the old royal grounds. There was a little temple that was the place to go to to get yourself redeemed and forgiven after you sinned. There were huge wooden totems and woven grass tents and coconuts everywhere. There were other fruits and plants also that we couldn't identify. I like seeing fruits and plants I can't identify. 

On the drive there, we stopped at a fruit stand on the side of the road. We bought a pineapple, some weird-looking persimmons, some little, fresh bananas, a lime that was orange and some other things. We also had a fresh coconut cut for us so we could drink it and then we ate it. We saw geckos (like the Geico one) all over the place.