DAY 5 - Trip to Pahoa

Today it was a beautiful sunny day, meaning that our morning consisted of having to heave Sarah’s ant/flea/bedbug-infested mattress onto the roof of a car to be dried out by the sun and then washing the three dogs. Shakti, the oldest of the three, didn’t seem too bothered while the young one, Subaja, made it substantially more difficult and us more wet. Finally the Chihuahua ‘Shankhar’ (‘whom we do not speak of. Ever’ – Sarah) was easy to control but none to pleasant to touch with his sausage-like physique. Then we shovelled up the fresh cow dung to be delivered to the greenhouse and Sarah got to plant some lilikois (meaning putting them on the earth and covering them in cow poo) while I did the obligatory half-hour-cuddle session with little Diwali. We planned to go into another nearby town - Pahoa - today, so after only two hours we got ready and headed out towards the highway. With the bus not coming very often and hitchhiking apparently being very safe and common here, we had picked that as our transport of choice and were indeed soon invited into an old Asian man’s car, who offered us bananas and drove us to so-called Pahoa, which turned out to be a big parking lot with some supermarkets, fast food joints and little shops dotted around it. There we met this awesome dude riding around the place on his bike selling eggs, with a small Christmas tree in the basket and a funny fluffy white chicken sitting on top of it.

According to the tirade of chicken facts he let loose once he stopped and got talking, these kinds of chickens are called silkies and they're a very friendly breed with black bones and five toes.

We got some supplies in the supermarket but were a bit lost afterwards about what to do, since we suspected that this couldn’t be all that Pahoa had to offer. After speaking to a waitress in a nearby ‘café’ we hitched another ride to ACTUAL Pahoa, which turned out to be a small and slightly decrepit but absolutely charming town.

A bit like the Wild West, Sarah and I decided, except with more cars.

We spoke to some slightly drunk women in a boutique about where to go out around here, got some incredibly Hawaiian postcards and spent some time in a little second-hand book store, amazed again and again at the unconditional friendliness of the Hawaiian people. Sarah then got some pizza next to where some old men were performing old rock ‘n’ roll songs under the watchful eyes of their wives.

You can't really see it here but the best thing about them was
 the left guys' black and white checkered socks with sandals.

Since the sun was setting already we hitchhiked again back home, where we spent the evening as usual hanging out in our tropical kitchen with some newly-bought tea.