DAY 6 - Hilo baby!

We were given a lift into Hilo today from Jai Dev bringing his 15-year old son Nicolai to a soccer game, the entire ride spent with him alternating between furiously mumbling mantras under his breath or giving his son soccer advice. Arrived in Hilo, we first went to check out the recommended ‘Farmers Market’. The first booth we saw belonged to an old artist selling prints and T-shirts and doing portraiture, so after we got talking to him he convinced Sarah to have her picture drawn while I took the opportunity to draw him.

We bumbled around the market for a bit, seeing various more or less nice and more or less cheesy Hawaiian souvenirs, clothes, jewellery and food, and then went to explore more of the town, which was accomplished pretty quickly due to its small size. We had lunch in a lovely Middle-Eastern café and then decided to go towards the seafront. On the way there we came across the same two guys from yesterday performing and went over to say hello to one of their wives, who seemed very excited to talk to anyone and told us her entire life story (barely audible to me through the thumping bass of her husband’s band) while we ate the lilikois we’d been given by the Middle-Eastern-Café woman. The band-wife recommended seeing the ‘Rainbow Falls’, so we made that our next port of call and headed out towards the highway to hitchhike. It was a lot harder today, whether it be because of the proximity to the city or the time of the day, but finally a woman picked us up and dropped us at the Rainbow Falls, a beautiful waterfall to be looked at from a platform in the jungle.

Unfortunately, no rainbows today.

We could see some teenagers climbing about on the rocks above the waterfall making motions to jump, but when none of them did and the wind became quite strong and cold we decided to leave and seek shelter in a café across the street. The guy serving was an incredibly lovely New Yorker named Chris who made me a chai tea, gave us biscuits and oranges for free and talked to us for a long time about things to do here and what he recommended, all while two adorable Hawaiian children named ‘Ocean’ and ‘Sky’ were running about the shop. Chris had arranged with their father, Ian, to give us a lift back to Hilo so while waiting for him to be ready we sat outside reading the classifieds in the newspapers we’d been given and enjoying the tea and cookies.

Back in Hilo Sarah insisted on getting a drink, and despite both of us having forgotten our ID at home we got some cocktails in the ‘Pineapple Bar’. The next bar we went to wasn’t so lenient, so we decided to go home and headed towards the big street on the seafront. On the way there Sarah spontaneously tapped some people in front of us on the shoulder to ask for the way, and they happened to be driving out to where Judy’s farm was anyways so they offered us a lift. Their group consisted of an older but very young-spirited woman called Mardy or Joy with the most insane accent and two young worktraders she'd picked up hitchhiking, a quiet Canadian called Henry and a lanky culy-haired Californian called David who had a strange husky voice from an accident some time back and who, upon hearing that I am German, immediately recited the 'Erlkönig' to me. Joy drove us all the way back to our home and offered to pick us up tomorrow to coming swimming with them in the famed 'warm ponds' which of course was an offer we gladly took.