DAY 88 - Killing Me Softly

It’d been raining on and off all night and in the morning the design flaws in our tent-set-up method could definitely be felt, in that, while at least we weren’t soaked, there was a sense of omnipresent dripping and a rather large puddle forming at the bottom where the unfortunate Thiago was sleeping. I was wide awake soon and fought my way out of the soggy door to see what was going on outside, where I was promptly invited to join Koa and his friends in someone’s tent – not much else could really be done because it was still raining steadily and their tent proved to be not much better than ours in its inability to not drip constant cold water down the back of my neck. I stayed with them for a while, staring out the door at the rainy ocean while trying to comfort poor Lono who was lying around quite pathetically with a huge blue cast on his leg that seemed to confuse him a great deal. 

Bleak times.

When the rain eased up just a little bit I went back to our tent to propose just packing up and leaving now to Sarah – it took a while to get her and Thiago to wake up in the first place but she agreed and we got going on collecting all our stuff from the various folds of the deflated tent that it had disappeared into, and spent absolute hours trying to wring all the water from our blankets before finally folding up our sandy and wet tent. We wanted to have a last look at  the kitchen to see what was going on there but it started pouring it down again so that after a while of standing huddled under the two tarps there with loads of people we didn’t know most of, we realized that now that we packed together our tent, all our stuff was just sitting out in the open and ran back to save it, deciding to brave the rain and go now rather than wait until it eased up. It was quite an appropriate setting for our dark moods, spending our last morning in Hawaii miserably dragging ourselves along through the cold downpour with our various bin bags full of soggy blankets. When we reached Satori’s teepee I begged Sarah to take a break so we stood under their little tarpaulin-roof for a while – at some point a girl that neither of us had spoken to before gave us a heartfelt speech about our leaving and presented us with a ring each, which was weird but of course an incredibly nice gesture. 

After a while we felt energized enough to keep going, and through a complete God-send ran into a guy called Sean who’d given us a lift yesterday and who was leaving just then with his car, meaning that we didn’t have to hitchhike in our dripping clothes with multiple bin bags under our arms – a huge relief. At home it wasn’t raining quite so much and so we immediately got to work hosing the tent off and putting the blankets into the washing machine, before returning to our room to do the last amount of packing. That’s at least what we said we did, in reality it was more like dejectedly slumping on the floor and talking about how much we didn’t want to leave – I believe I actually burst into tears at the sight of the little bag-closer-thingy off my last bag of raisins.

 For the afternoon Stephen had arranged to have some goodbye-pizzas with all of the gang, which was really nice despite the fact that Sarah and I could not shake the feeling of utter dread and despair at the prospect of leaving while everyone else didn’t take it quite so seriously and had to audacity to actually speak of other topics, while we were slumped over the table feeling our hearts splintering in our chests. Finally the time had come to say our goodbyes to everyone, cause for more tears and snivelling, before loading our suitcases into the car and going on our way to the airport with Stephen. That rascal had packed a bottle of vino for the road and generously passed it around so that we were soon quite merry. He knew that we hadn’t yet seen the Lava Tree State Park and so we made a stop there, jogged around for a bit, posed for some photos and went on our way again. We’d requested to go to Walmart one last time to get some last-minute souvenirs so that was the next stop – Sarah’s sense of fashion seemed to have been impaired by the vino quite dramatically. When weighing in our suitcases by the airport it transpired that Sarah’s one was non-surprisingly overweight and so we had to embark on quite a complicated mission of transferring some of her stuff into my suitcase (but not too much since mine was on the verge) and heartbrokenly getting rid of a bunch of clothes and shoes. After that, Stephen took us to ANOTHER park, which meant that when we did finally get back to the airport we were quite late already, resulting in us panickedly running across the airport with ‘Final Call - Could Sarah Jaban and Kirstin Eggers please make their way to Gate 18..’ coming through the speakers – it felt like we were in a movie. Of course we made it though and were soon on our way to LA, leaving behind this wonderful island. I'm sure we'll return!

DAY 87 - The last day

Since I now had my contact lens solution at our tent at Rainbow Gathering but obviously hadn’t brought it with me to Cinderland I had resorted to substituting it with eye drops during the night, but somehow must have in the process lost one of them – which meant that now my right eye is red and irritated and seeing everything quite fuzzily while the left one tries to keep up, which is just not ideal. Sarah woke me up quite early to hitchhike out to Pahoa so we could get some breakfast there and possibly some new contact lenses for me. Unfortunately it transpired soon, after quite a long time of waiting in line at the ‘Tin Shack Bakery’ and a quite tedious ordering process, that Sarah only had the wrong credit card and I hadn’t even brought my entire wallet so we had absolute no money and had to return home before anything else could be done. After showering, lunch and having a long nap (sleeping next to a groom is apparently not very good resting place) we went to hitchhike back to Rainbow Gathering to get our money for further activities, and were promptly picked up by none other than white-haired John who again was transporting two girls he’d found somewhere in the blue canoe to Rainbow Gathering as well.

And this was a random dude playing a weird instrument while sitting on a palm tree.

I was quite on edge because of my contact lens and couldn’t really relax, asking everyone I saw about whether they knew if contacts were sold over the counter here and if so, where - but no-one seemed to know. When trying to find Koa, my reliable contact lens buddy, we found out that he’d left because his dog Lono had been brutally attacked by another dog around, which didn’t make the day any better and worried me quite a bit. Sarah had along the way acquired the information from someone that Satori had arrived here and so we went on a quest to find him by asking everyone we saw, as well as just shouting ‘Satoriii!’ into the jungle. Eventually we found him wearing bunny ears and a butterfly necklace by a tepee and we talked to him for a while until we spotted John strolling by and asked to get a lift into Pahoa because I wanted to at least TRY to find some contacts. 

Unfortunately the Longs Drugs didn’t have any and said the nearest place where I could even consider getting some was in Hilo so I resignedly accepted that I would have to spend a half-blind last day here and so we got some drinks for Uncle Roberts later and went back to the car, where we miraculously saw a car pull up right next to us with Koa and Lono, who had a huge cast on his leg but seemed ok otherwise. After establishing that everything was alright with them, John wanted to go to the Kava bar so we agreed to meet him there after having some pizza and shortly after we went to Uncle Roberts again – for the very last time now, which made us quite quiet and sad. Again we saw a lot of people that we knew including Stephen (who’d had a lot of vino again and could again not stop insisting how much he was going to miss us), as well as Cedar, Shawn, blonde David and Keahi. To our extreme delight the band played ‘Rua Kenana’ again and actually stayed on for much longer than last week which meant that our plan to return to Rainbow Gathering for the evening got quite delayed. Eventually however, since all good things do come to an end, we got our stuff together to leave and Shawn kindly offered to drive us there again. Once again, really not much was going on there – a few people including Thiago, Koa and Husamuddin were gathered around the campfire nearest to our tent so we hung out with them for a while until Thiago started hinting that he wanted to go to sleep and didn’t have a tent here, and since I quite owed him one for last night, offered to share ours with him tonight. 

Campfire guys.

Sarah was feeling quite sleepy too and so joined him soon while I bumbled around the area for a while to find someone to hang out with (at some point I was sung a goodbye-song to by a breast-feeding woman who insisted that she was Marie Antoinette in a past life) and ended up sitting with Shawn for a while until it started raining too much to enjoy being outdoors and he went back to his car, leaving me to return to our (at this point very deflated) tent.

DAY 86 - 'Mister Thiago' or 'Are we Tom?' or 'What the hell did we just drink out of Billy's cup'

I was in quite a pickle today because I had somehow left my contact lens solution at home, and after having already slept in my contacts last night, my right eye was definitely starting to get irritated and red so we decided to go home and get the solution at some point soon. We hung out by the main fire area where a so-called ‘Trade Circle’ had sprung up – various people presenting a selection of knick-knacks (most often some kinds of crystals) on cloths in front of them and trading them with other hippies. We started playing dice but before the game could really get started, the breakfast ‘circle’ was called into action and after doing all the required little songs and rituals we had some breakfast, a mysterious mix of oats and eggs and bananas it seemed like. 

The queue to get breakfast - literally 95% of people here are wearing tie-dye.

Richie, in his trademark straw hat and turquoise T-shirt.

Magpie, eating breakfast out of an 'American Spirit' tobacco can.

We went home to shower, sort out my eye and have some lunch before returning and taking the beautiful weather as an encouragement to lie by the breathtaking ocean scenery on some flat lava rocks – topless at first but that was over soon when Koa and Richie (himself completely butt-naked) came over. After we nearly got hit by a huge wave that claimed my newest lighter we relocated and rocked Sarah in one of the hammocks for a while but when it was my turn to go in the hammock she decided that we should go to Cinderland tonight and disappeared to go find us a ride – it was our last Taco Tuesday of course as well as Thiago’s wedding. She couldn’t find anyone so we went to hitchhike again but ended up walking for quite a while before a guy called Raphael picked us up and delivered us straight there. We’d never really arrived to Taco Tuesday so early that it was so light and so it was a bit weird at first, especially when we were then asked by some guys at the entrance to sign some paperwork in case we appeared on film on the show they’re filming here. 

We could hear raucous laughter and jubilation a bit further away and after being led by Jessica through some path through a field came across the wedding party there, a true spectacle on the eyes, with the bride and groom looking beautiful together in their all-white outfits, as well as a woman looking like a mermaid, a dreadlocked man in a loincloth, a man in a flowery dress and a clown-hat, Jezus Cinderland strutting around in his little vest and a bunch of people like Billy and Five just walking about topless blowing soap bubbles and clearly already quite inebriated from the generously proffered champagne and who knows what else. 

The beautiful (and strangely clean-shaven) groom.

They also served a delicious appetizer in the form of thinly sliced raw beef (it has a fancy Italian name that I can’t really remember right now) that I took an immediate liking to. Especially when seeing that loads had been brought out and no-one was really paying attention to it, I grabbed myself quite a big bit and attempted to chew it all in one go, which is really not how you behave at a wedding and was duly punished in that I suddenly found that I was choking. Not wanting to cause any embarrassment despite not being able to breathe anymore I quietly tapped Sarah on the shoulder trying to remain all suave but thankfully managed to swallow the meat properly just after, so that no lasting damage was done apart from enveloping poor Sarah in quite a cloud of mustardy breath that I kept coughing up for a few minutes afterwards.

I definitely had a new-found appreciation for life after that, which I’m sure was only helped by all the champagne and Sarah and I were soon at the so-called zen den with a bunch of guys having a rambunctious time of drinking and laughing a lot, looking at Thiago and Moran’s fake wedding photos, listening to Five’s crazy ramblings about archangels and auras while he was biting my hand, and being introduced to a guy named Tom whom everyone was treating like some sort of celebrity.

Also, THIS GUY existed.

We didn’t really feel hungry and decided to forego the tacos but did have a great time dancing by the fire with the drum circle. At some point it was suggested that everyone should bring their mattresses to the yoga room and everybody sleep there with the newlyweds on their wedding night, which made us obviously decide to stay at Cinderland for the night but somehow that never came together and we just stayed in the zen den for a long while listening to a guy who looked like pirate say some extremely profound stuff. At some point we got tired though (especially after Billy handed round a cup of a mysterious brown substance) and went to the yoga room to sleep.

DAY 85 - Another early night

We woke up from a rather restless night – Koa didn’t have any mats or similar devices to lie on and only some weird thin table-cloth kind of things to cover ourselves with and sand is surprisingly hard to sleep on. We had kind of forgotten that even though we didn’t have to work today, we were required to attend the 8 o’clock weekly staff meeting, especially since I had been assigned the ‘inspirational’ segment for this week so we stumbled out to hitchhike at about ten to 8 and ended up not even being that late. Luckily I got away with some heartfelt but not very well-said ramblings about my gratitude about my time here as the inspirational moment since I obviously hadn’t planned anything, and soon we were free to go again. A bit of a lady problem had gotten hold of Sarah again so after having our not-so-hippie daily shower and warm lunch we headed to Pahoa again to sort that out. It became a bit of a low point when we ended up sat on the parking lot bench next to the Malama market again and got talking about some of the ‘real life’ issues that we will soon have to face as well as panic welling up at how little time we have left. We got a lift home with a skinny black guy called Inergi who told us a lot about some sort of world-changing project that he’s doing, which was quite interesting.

It's been a while since we hitchhiked with someone worth drawing.

At home we gathered our stuff for Rainbow Gathering and even managed to, with the help of the legendary Cedar, miraculously find a rolled up bit of tarpaulin-like material in the ‘Man Cave’ that we sincerely hoped would turn out to be a tent, as well as some blankets and pillows. (Stephen had, in the rush of vino, promised to provide us with a tent but as it turned out later had nothing to offer but massive full-room kind of tents) After trudging through the forest again and finding a semi-suitable spot to set up near the Kona boys we unfolded our mystery tent-sack that did indeed turn out to contain a tent, but no poles of any kind. Figuring that it must be a kind of string kind of deal, because of the lack of pole-loops, but not really knowing how to set that up (as well as the tent being MASSIVE) we ended up getting some twine from a group of boys nearby that we set up going from one palm tree to another one and hooked the tent’s conveniently-located roof-hooks along a line to it. With the door facing the ocean and a strong breeze blowing, this worked perfectly and we sat in wonderment for a while inside enjoying the tent's bubble-like form and its ever-changing shape.

When we left to check out the kitchen area we ran into someone in the darkness that turned out to be Inergi with his young white friend who proclaimed that he had come here with the intention of ‘kidnapping’ us to invite us to some sort of probiotic bread-making event that he had planned for this evening. It took some convincing but eventually we agreed to go with them and went to tell Koa and get our shoes, at which point it transpired that I had lost one of my flip flops – item No 453 that I’ve lost during my time here.  Koa seemed sceptical of Inergi’s intentions and so suddenly Sarah changed her mind entirely about the endeavour, taking the missing flip flop as a sign not to go and arguing that we’d only just gotten here, so we had to tell a very disappointed Inergi about our change of plans and I made my peace with just having to walk barefoot for the next few days. We walked around a bit between the various camps but once again not much seemed to be happening, leading to us going to sleep pretty early again in our very own tent this time.

DAY 84 - Rainbow Beginnings

Today was our last official day of work – we’d arranged to take the next two days off to be able to go to Rainbow Gathering then. Uncharacteristically however, because we’d gotten up quite late, we decided to go to the Maku’u market with Cedar and the gang first and finish the work after that. The main impetus behind going in the first place was of course that Jon was going to be there selling his necklaces and would be leaving in the afternoon, but it was also a great chance to get some gifts for friends and family back home. We strolled around for a bit and met up with Jon, who very kindly gave Sarah and me one of his glass-crystal necklaces each, which will be a wonderful personal souvenir from our time on the island. After we’d gotten all we needed we went into Pahoa and then got a ride back with Cedar, Shakti, Phoenix and Jeremy who we’d randomly run into again at the Kava bar. Stephen kindly didn’t give us much work for the day at all which suited us fine since we still had to pack and clean our room and then wanted to go to Kehena beach a last time before possibly heading for Rainbow Gathering for the night. (Rainbow Gathering, just to clarify, is a kind of hippie meet-up that's practised throughout the world and is happening on the Big Island in Mackenzie State Park this year - basically a bunch of hippies camping out and having a good time for a week)

Of course it ended up being quite late again when we were finally ready to leave and we suddenly realized that we had no alcohol, resulting in another trip to Pahoa’s 7Eleven before then getting a ride to Kehena at about 6 – we didn’t have high hopes for meeting anyone there at late hour but did luckily come across the perfect person right away – Thiago was sat right by the drum circle in his little sarong-pants and informed us that he intended to go Rainbow Gathering within the next ten minutes and could ask his friend Vadim to give us a lift there as well. So very quickly we were on the way which was ideal because it was getting dark and we actually had no idea where exactly we were going. We picked up two more guys and their puppy on the way and arrived at Mackenzie Park quite squashed, making our way from there along the coastline through a forest of ironwood and coconut trees following the two guys we’d picked up through the darkness (and despite their leadership I embarrassingly got lost for a bit anyway).

The vegetation in the entire area was beautiful though.

A few tents and fires were shining through the darkness but we didn’t really meet anyone we knew until we’d walked to the very last campfire where someone was sat hunched over by the fire playing the ukulele while a dog was barking nearby – Koa, as it turned out, who’d come over from Kona a few days ago with his dog Lono, his cousin Andrew and a few other guys, such as the silent Paulie who sat by a palm tree wrapped in a blanket the entire night. We stayed with them for a while, having some intensely interesting conversations such as on the topic of yawning, until a few more people we’d met in Kona emerged like blonde Austin or that guy who looks like Paul McCartney. Not much seemed to be going on in the rest of the camp so we ended up going to sleep pretty early in Koa’s tent (despite both his and Andrew’s insistence that the tent was too small for three people and that one of us should go and sleep in Andrew’s) and settled there for the night (Thanks again Koa!)

DAY 83 - Intermission

Eli left very early in the morning but Jon stayed a bit later, leading Sarah to start her works shift much later but still finding the time to tell me her adventures from last night in the bathroom while I ate my cereal. My own duty today was to clean out all of the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen with Shakti, which took a long time but left the entire place re-organized and cockroach-free. Tonight was the famed ‘Petting Zoo’ festival at South Point that we’d been told about for ages now and I was well up for going but Sarah voted against going out again for the umpteenth time in a row, as well as wanting to be around tomorrow morning since Jon was leaving the island then. We had a pretty relaxed day then, the only plan being a small photo shoot Sarah had envisioned with Shakti and me posing in the nude on the beautiful Pohoiki Road. Unfortunately both Shakti and the designated photographer, Stephen, had run into some kind of trouble with the car in Pahoa which meant that they came back much later than planned and we only had about 20 minutes of light left to take some photos once we’d found a suitable spot and gotten into position. The evening was not any more exciting, we contemplated watching a movie but couldn’t really agree on anything and ended up going to bed early which was quite needed I think.

DAY 82 - Fire-Dancing Water-Loving

After completing our work, which consisted mainly of cleaning the kitchen with Shakti today (it was weird being the authority on kitchen-cleaning) we decided to go into Pahoa again and to once and for all do our groceries finally before deciding what to do for the evening – we’d heard of some kind of ‘dance party’ happening today in Hilo but also of a house party that Satori had mentioned, so we wanted to gather some info before making up our minds. We completed the shopping without much problem (but had to give up the healthy plan because it just seemed impossible to afford, so we went back to tinned beans) and spotted corn dogs being sold there which (as we agreed on) we would have to try while in America. So our lunch consisted of those and bits of chicken that we consumed on a bench in the parking lot – I actually very much enjoyed my corn dog; ten points to America. We ran into Daniel (hitchhiking buddy from ages ago) and Devon, and tried to inquire about the happenings of tonight but they both didn’t seem to know what was going on either. 

At home we decided to finally put our plan to be mermaids into action (who needs Joy when we’ve got some perfectly fine warm ponds right down the street), gathered up a bunch of dresses and scarves, grabbed the cling film and walked down to the small warm ponds. (To explain a bit further - we recently had the idea of dressing up as mermaids when going to the mermaid ponds and filming ourselves under water with Sarah's GoPro camera - Why, you ask? Why not?) Unfortunately there were people there and we didn't feel quite comfortable with this silly endeavour being witnessed by people on such close quarters, so we packed up again and made our way along the coast towards the bigger warm pond where we soon got picked up by a lovely Canadian couple. Arrived there we started with the mission of wrapping our entire bottom halves in fabric and then tightening it with cling-film, all without leaving any gaps, falling over or attracting too much attention from the other people there who were definitely eyeing us suspiciously from afar. When we felt sufficiently equipped we then proceeded to stupidly hobble over to the stairs and tried to fall in as gracefully as possible, only to find that the cling-film did not hold up its end of the bargain very well under water and soon started unravelling. We tried fixing it but soon had to admit defeat and started filming with only the fabric, which actually looked pretty suave in itself. As we were splashing around doing that we were approached by a young guy called Eli who engaged Sarah in deep conversation while I continued the splashing, thoroughly enjoying being able to dive properly for once because I’d taken my contact lenses out. Eli was also talking about going to this thing in Hilo and offered to drive us there if we let him have a shower at ours, so with that deal set into place we soon started packing our stuff together and went home to get ready. On the way to Hilo we stopped at a supermarket to get some drinks - our decision fell on the legendary Fireball again.

With its dashing mascot.

Arrived in Hilo, shortly after nightfall, we now had to find out where the hell we were actually going. Luckily we ran into Sarit the artist soon who told us to go to some sort of Cultural Art Centre – and bingo, we went there and walked straight into a crowd that was saturated with all the hippies we knew, all gathered around a short catwalk on which various people covered in tattoos or body-paint or wearing weird costumes were strutting about, which was not quite what we had expected but entertaining nonetheless. That bit ended pretty soon after we got there and two belly dancers started performing, which is when we headed out because the heat inside the room was stifling. We were told of some kind of afterparty that everyone would be going to now and soon managed to locate ‘our’ hippies by the incessant wolf-howling they frequently emitted – Thiago, Five, Lee the snake man were al there just to name a few. We stood with them in the car park for a while and met a bunch of cool new people like a guy called Drew who told us about his plans to conquer the island by bicycle or a Jamaican musician called Magpie. The dance itself took place in some sort of warehouse but was pretty empty when we got there, leading to a lot of flitting in and out and the eventual sudden decision by Sarah to leave this place and check out a venue nearby called 'Coqui’s' where some sort of reggae event was happening. We sneakily managed to get the entry-armbands from some people who were leaving and attach them to our own wrists with the help of gum and got in for free, which was nice because we’d already paid a ten dollar entry fee to the other place. A lot of other people we knew were here, such as Shawn, Austin and his girlfriend and, to Sarah’s delight, Jon. We danced until the place shut down and were driven back by Eli – Jon and Sarah however had gotten the idea of going to the warm ponds into their heads again. Eli and I felt quite tired so we dropped them off and went home, and because Eli didn't have a place to stay for the night I offered him the bottom bunk that had only recently been evacuated by Jason, and soon after Sarah and Jon re-emerged as well.

They'd had a GREAT time at the warm ponds.