DAY 44 - New Years!

The power situation was a little better in the morning since the solar panels could secure a tiny bit of electricity, but we had to be super careful with it all day. I finished Kali’s mural and since the washing machine could obviously not be used anymore, we decided to go to Pahoa and do all our laundry today before travelling on to Kona in two days. As we were about to leave, an older woman came over to buy milk from Jai Dev so we asked her whether she could give us a ride there and she agreed even though she requested two dollars payment for her services, which is behaviour we have not come across before. As we were on the road just before Pahoa, Sarah suddenly whispered to me ‘She’s falling asleep!’ and sure enough just as I turned to look at her, the woman’s head flopped to one side and only through Sarah’s immediate reaction in grabbing her head and slapping her lightly did she come to her senses again and shrugged the entire thing off very casually, but we were for sure very happy to get out of her car very immediately afterwards. Sarah left me in charge of the laundry to go and get her eyebrows done (a terrible mistake since I immediately screwed this simple task up by completely forgetting to wash one of the loads of clothes). I met a cool old guy called Tony and was given some free Chinese food from a woman also waiting for her laundry, which led to my shameful failure as a vegetarian because I could not bear to see all the (free!) pork bits go to waste and MAAAY have had some. Sarah returned shortly with a pizza and after we sorted out the forgotten bag of clothes and squeezed another wash in just before closing time, we went home. For New Years Eve we had decided to go to Uncle Roberts again but had been spontaneously invited by Quanah Christ (or as Sarah calls him, 'that Christ guy') to come to a party in the neighbourhood and go to Uncle Roberts afterwards. He picked us up with two of his friends, a white-haired man called John and a slightly full-on girl called Ally and we went on our way to the party at someone called Leslie’s house. Not much was going on there when we arrived and despite Leslie’s constant efforts to bring some life to the party by bedecking everyone with glow sticks and flickering glitter hats, we got bored very quickly and when every new arriving guest turned out to be older than the last we persuaded John and Quanah to drive us to Uncle Roberts. They happily obliged (John spent a very long while whining to us about his lack of a female travel companion, and when asked why he couldn’t just go with one of his mates he replied with the fail-safe argument that he didn’t like dancing with men) and so soon we were at Uncle Roberts once again, where a bunch of small children were setting off fire works in a manner that the Health & Safety department back in England would not have approved of. We didn’t see as many of our friends there as we normally do because there was some sort of DJ night going on at the same time (20 dollars entry though!) but we did run into Dreadlock-Alex from our night at Jeffrey’s and Keahi the fire-fighter. We were also introduced to ‘Big Joe’, a local celebrity here because of some sort of boar-hunting TV show that he is in, a well as his completely unintelligible co-star Mike. We were dancing and watching the fire works all night, Sarah had a great time with Keahi while I tried to keep to myself and escape the advances of some Brazilian guy who insisted that he could show me the lava flow really close by if I just followed him out into the darkness, something that did not sound like a good idea. Keahi arranged for us to get a lift back with  a friend of his, Isaac, and so we got home safe and sound. Happy New Year!

'Don't be a retard' used to be on the list, but apparently that's offensive.

DAY 43 - Fairies on the wall

We woke up quite early with sore bones and sleepily greeted the various hippies that strolled in and out of the kitchen.

Hanging out, eating coconuts, sewing up some silk trousers, pretty normal day.

Daniel seemed to have gone so we had to try to find another ride home, but after nothing happened for a long while we decided to walk to the highway and hitchhike. The weather had thankfully eased up and we also didn’t get lost on the meandering street through various farms, and were soon picked up by an old Asian man. He happened to go to the post office which suited us very well, as we could finally finally sent off all our post cards (written in our first week here). After that we felt rather hungry and decided to have breakfast in a little café – egg sandwiches seemed to be the best vegetarian thing on the menu but they were rather yellow in colour and not too pleasant. We hitchhiked home after that, where we had to start working pretty immediately – grass for the cow was gotten, poo was shovelled and I got started on a big fairy mural in Kali’s room which occupied me for most of the day.

Just as I was packing up all my stuff and left to go to our room, Jai Dev panickedly came running through the rain, saying that there was an thunderstorm-related emergency with the generator, meaning we had no power and had to take all plugs out of the plug sockets and were not even allowed to flush the toilet. We spent the evening sitting in our dark room by candlelight and started watching ‘The Calcium Kid’ with the remaining battery life on Sarah’s laptop, finding constant hilarity in Orlando Bloom’s terrible terrible acting, but at some point the DVD started glitching and we decided to call it a night.

DAY 42 - The day that never ended

Today we took a day off again after the last couple of boring days to go to the Maku’u market, Kahena beach and possibly find an ecstatic dance afterwards. We’d arranged to meet up with our online friend Josh for the third time now (second was a few days ago when he was meant to pick us up and couldn’t make it) at the market at 9am, and actually got there in time for once, despite the slight delay caused by Subaja escaping the constraints of the fence twice and running after us. When Josh had not turned up after half an hour's waiting, we started to suspect that he was in fact not a real person and Ashton Kutcher was about to pop out from somewhere and show us all the hidden cameras. We left Josh a slightly bitchy note and went off to actually check out the market as well as sharing an amazing vegetarian burrito.

None of these people was Josh.

While walking about in the light rain just getting ready to hitchhike to Pahoa to send off our long-written postcards, we bumped into none other than our favourite midlife-crisis buddy Glenn. He offered to give us a ride there but had to stop by his house on the way to pick something up, so we had the pleasure of a full tour of the Casa del Glenn, which included viewing his extremely cringy family photos everywhere, a close look at the ‘scrapbooking room’ and seeing this beast on the wall:

Glenn killed him himself, of course. He's manly like that.

He delayed our onward journey for a while by telling us all about the three times he got kicked out of church (even though he has, in his own words. ‘a four-year degree in Bible’) as well as showing us a terrifying photograph of himself in a colourful priest outfit printed in some kind of Japanese magazine. When we then finally got to Pahoa all of us suddenly realized that of course it was Sunday and the post office was closed. So we said goodbye to Glenn, got some raisins and Red Bull and then set off to hitchhike towards the beach. On the side of the road we met a fellow hitchhiker going to Kahena, a young guy called Daniel with the molecular structure of DMT tattooed on his arm. Joining forces with him we had to hitchhike with a few people to get there but made it in the end and descended upon the familiar black beach. The weather had gotten a lot better and we felt quite inspired by all the naked people and decided to do a bit of topless tanning as well. We did go to the lengths however to find ourselves a little private patch within the rocks by the ocean a bit off to the side, so not too many people were treated to the sights.

After a while it started drizzling again so we sought shelter under the huge rocks at the cliff face for a bit.

From which everything looked like this.

The rain eased up soon enough again and we walked about the beach for a while to greet all our old friends that all seemed to be there as well, like Keahi, Billy, Natasha, Scott and the scatty old black man whose name we both forgot again, as well as the inevitable characters that unfortunately were also present – Daniel from the other night being the main candidate. We also sat by the drum circle for a while, where the absolute best people can be found:

Look at them go.

This rock 'n' roll legend was just boogeying about like nothing else mattered.

This little girl Nefertari asked me to draw her and then wished to colour herself in, which turned out to be quite a challenge with the limited colour palette I had with me. (She didn't actually have a violet fringe and eyes.)

As everyone seemed to be leaving the beach towards the evening we were suddenly invited to about four different parties that apparently ‘everyone was going to’, and for reasons that I will not ever understand, we opted for going to a place with Daniel and Pete and a couple of other people. (In our defence, one of the other options was going to a naked pool party with Satori and his two extremely camp and possibly transsexual friends so I guess we did make some kind of good decision at least)

While Daniel was enjoying being all gentlemanly at the beginning, letting us sit up front in his truck, making creepy quips about us being ‘cow girls’ and finding himself hilarious when saying ‘Party’ in a stupid British accent, he soon got very annoyed at the hippies in the back of the truck not giving him clear directions to the place and it being much further than he thought it was. We arrived after all in a bit of an awkward mood (not helped by the fact that the hippies were quite poignantly ignoring his passive-aggressive pleas for gas money) at a place that turned out to belong to Jeffrey, a funky old man we met about two weeks ago, and was a complete hippie paradise with a huge carpeted but wall-less room that had spiritual wall-hangings, Christmas lights and two fabric-hanging-swing things hanging from the high ceiling that everyone insisted on madly swinging about upside down on. Our lot and a few other people there were the only living beings to be found, as well as Jeffrey who soon emerged from the shadows and started singing stupid made-up songs while playing the guitar:

Daniel was once again getting intensely clingy and at some point had to be quite bluntly told to back off, after which we had less trouble with him except for his constant sad little face in the corner looking longingly over to Sarah. Not many more people had turned up so it was decided to leave the ‘activation room’ and go to some sort of different building a bit further where there was also some sort of gathering. This turned out to take place on a kind of small veranda where some old men were singing and playing the ukulele and everyone else was just hanging out and listening. It was raining quite strongly again and thunder and lightning frequently alternated, and for unknown reasons whenever there was a particularly bright flash everyone started spontaneously howling like wolves which was slightly unsettling. We stayed there for most of the night, with Pete, a guy named Alex who got very into light photography with Sarah, a guy called Devon with a blonde afro and turquoise tie-dye shirt who was utterly hilarious, and this guy ‘Five’ who just looked exactly like someone who would live in a place like this:

What an absolute dude, EXCEPT for the flip-flops and socks combo,
which is, as Sarah and I discussed, NEVER allowed

After hours of hanging out and trying out various substances such as powdered green coffee (nasally ingested) we decided to go to sleep in the activation room and Pete came to join us. It was quite spooky to have the huge empty room to ourselves with thunder and lightning still going off every ten seconds, especially after we spotted a guy in the kitchen who seemed to roam around there for multiple hours and most definitely was a ghost. (At some point I went to get some water from there and ended up drinking a New Years toast with him out of a huge jug of water, which was less spooky and more generally surreal). Devon could also be found there, furiously repairing his seahorse necklace in the light of his headlamp while rambling on about diverse topics.

Other people were coming and going while we settled to sleep in the middle of the floor, like a completely loony old man with a white beard who could not be stopped from playing a lone drum right next to us for AGES (as Sarah pointed out, this guy was the exact replica of ‘Shrek’s interpretation of Merlin) and a girl who brought round her puppy that was sweet at first but became very very annoying very soon. Finally it was quite quiet, with the exception of Merlin wandering about talking to himself and finally coming over to us to give us some herbal drops to try and giving Sarah a spiritually cleansing massage to activate her angelic DNA or something like that. When he was gone it was finally quiet except for the still streaming rain outside that lasted for the whole night.

DAY 41 - The shortest blog post ever

We really didn't do much today, it rained a lot and we watched another spiritual movie.

DAY 40 - Rain and saints

Today was another rainy day - the constant downpour is starting to turn the road into a big mud fest making flip flops virtually unwearable and work just that much harder to do. We started working pretty late again but ended up having quite a nice time at least when getting the grass, cruising through the streets of Hawaiian Paradise Park in our truck with 'Sweet Child O' Mine' on full blast. After cleaning out the barn as well it was getting dark already and even though we kind of played with the idea of going to Uncle Roberts again for the night, coordinating all our various acquaintances to figure out how to get there and whom to meet proved to be just too complicated and so we dropped this plan and opted for a spiritual-movie night in with Jai Dev instead.

Milk/cheese still-life in the vast emptiness of their kitchen.

He showed us some documentaries about his biggest idol, the Indian saint Amma, and of course could not be discouraged from talking for ages and ages again afterwards about all his favourite spiritual topics.

 Disclaimer: Our host isn't actually a twelve-limbed black monster.
I started sketching him but he gestures around so much that I felt like I needed to capture all of his positions. Be thankful I didn't try to draw all of his facial expressions at the same time as well.

DAY 39 - Advanced pitchfork coordination

As was expected, after Judy left this morning we completely slacked off immediately - lounging around in bed until the early afternoon, knowing full well that Jai Dev is not the one who wears the pants in this household and was probably off chanting somewhere not caring what we were doing. Once we finally scraped together the motivation to get up and start working we decided that the first task would have to be loading the huge amount of mulch from the back of the big truck onto a pile by the swimming pool, which was definitely what we call a 'man-job' (we had the hugest pitchforks. And also managed not to knock each other out with them). The mulch seemed to have catnip-like effects on Subaja who had to be forcefully persuaded not to build herself a nest in the pile and be buried there while blissfully rolling about. We got grass and I painted the bathroom doors until nightfall, at which point we had another intense spiritual kitchen floor lecture with Jai Dev, being taught all kinds of things about religion, reincarnation and Krishna consciousness.

This is completely unrelated but I wanted to upload this picture that I finished recently as a Christmas present for my favourite person ever:

It's Gus from Breaking Bad, for anyone who doesn't know.
(Why don't you know. Why aren't you watching Breaking Bad.)

DAY 38 - Merry Krishmas

Due to the uncomfortable nature of the couch and other disturbing factors like our proximity to Daniel’s constant leery grin we got up quite early and after some tea and grapefruit were gladly on our way home. Even though we were very tired and up for a lazy Christmas day, we had to soon go to get grass and trees for the animals again. While busy with that, a mysterious guy wearing flip flops with socks appeared out of nowhere, gave us a gift of the so-called Pakalolo plant and disappeared as quickly as he had come (he might have been an angel). After we got home we decided that enough work had been done for today, barricaded ourselves into our darkened room and only managed to watch half an episode of Friends and eat a few cookies before falling asleep. We were awoken by Judy wanting to talk to us about the remaining tasks around the house as she will be leaving to California tomorrow. She also asked again about whether we still wanted to go to the Hare Krishna Christmas celebration she had told us about, and even though we were hesitant at first because Daniel had mentioned going to that as well, we decided to go. Judy arranged for us to be brought there with some neighbours, an old couple with the names of Mathura and George. Once again we didn’t quite know what to expect when we got to the place, a beautiful wooden house with huge windows overlooking a valley and gorgeous Indian paintings everywhere. We were taken to the chanting room in which everyone was sitting on the floor facing an altar with a picture of Krishna and chanting the Maha Mantra.

I found the chanting surprisingly soothing and calming (our sleep-deprivation and the constant swaying made for quite a good meditation-base) and even though it went on forever, happily launched into each repetition again not quite wanting it to end. It did, of course, and after a short sermon held by the leader woman, Maha, we went downstairs to join the promised vegetarian feast. The food was amazing and Daniel was not too bothersome and left soon, so we were quite happy with the outcome of this day and went to sleep immediately after getting home.

DAY 37 - The cherry on top of everything that is wrong with my life

Christmas eve morning started with the sad news that Diwali had not made it through the night and had, as our reincarnation-loving host put it, ‘left her body’ in the morning. Comforting a teary-eyed Judy as well as finding a dead mouse on our kitchen floor did not make for a happy start to the day.

Shine on, you beautiful soul.

I had a Skype conversation with my family in distant Geneva who were having a lovely homely Christmas eve with fireplace and Christmas tree and I got a bit homesick and depressed, desperately trying to obtain the slightest bit of German Christmas atmosphere by playing a Thomanerchor playlist on Youtube, even though songs like ‘Leise rieselt der Schnee’ were not in the least bit appropriate to the Hawaiian weather. We were busy for a while with the usual stuff, as well as having to help loading our baby’s body onto the truck to be disposed of properly, which was quite an emotional challenge. After Judy and Jai Dev came back we became aware of the fact that the glass door to Kali's room had cracked into a million pieces for no apparent reason, the glass still all contained in the frame but the continuous audible splintering noise did not sound good and we decided that we needed to get away from the farm for today because everything was a bit ominous and horrible. Despite my slight protest that this really wasn’t Christmas-Eve-like in the slightest we decided to go to Cinderland’s Taco Tuesday again and left to hitchhike shortly before nightfall. We were picked up by a guy called Bobby Black who drove us first to a supermarket and then all the way to Cinderland which was very much appreciated. Since Taco Tuesdays are an alcohol-free event we started drinking just outside the property on a little bench where we also stashed the rest and kept coming back to during the night. We also had the pleasure of using Cinderland's very own toilet tower, which was an outhouse built far too high for anyone intoxicated in any way, resulting in Sarah accidentally squishing a slug on the way up. Venturing near the kitchen we were unfortunately spotted by Satori, who was grooving around most spiritually by the fire and started drawing multiple sideways mushrooms on his shirt in an attempt to help us identify magic mushrooms before engaging us and a few nearby people into a crazy group-hand-dance-thing (words fail me when it comes to Satori). We sat by the fire to enjoy our taco, where at some point a guy came by who was spoon-feeding everyone around the fire with a mysterious mushroom-chocolate-mousse. We did not have to think twice about sampling some as well and sure enough, started having a pretty great time soon after.

Christmas in Hawaii, people.

As we were sitting on a nearby bench around the time the drum circle started winding down, we got talking to Daniel, a bald guy with a weird cloth tied over his head, about how to get home, and he sort of planted the idea in our heads not to go home at all but to sleep over at Cinderland in ‘the yoooga rooooommm….’ (he spoke at bit funnily). We were up for that but for some reason it was suggested shortly after to instead join a friend of Daniel’s named Pete, who until this point had been only broodily lurking in the shadows nearby, and to go sleep at his house, the selling point being that he had a Jacuzzi. So true to tradition we found ourselves on the back of their truck going God knows where again, with the hallucinogenic effects of the mushroom-paste kicking into full gear now. After a short drive and trudging through some bush landscape we were then introduced into the place that Pete was house-sitting, and settled in the white pristine living room. It turned out soon that the Jacuzzi had recently been cleaned somehow and the remaining chemicals were preventing us from using it, which I think at this point neither Sarah or I were very sad about. (Pete was pretty great. Daniel, who was paired up with the unfortunate Sarah by default, was not.) We hung out for a long while and experienced quite a range of happenings, like sitting outside on a huge swing with Chihuahuas running between our feet or engaging in a four-way ‘back-rub train’ (as Daniel called it). At some point though we were all tired and Sarah and I settled on the living room couch to sleep, with Daniel not letting our clear disapproval stop him from joining us there and spooning Sarah to the point that she had to flee to a different couch in the morning. Merry Christmas!

DAY 36 - Karma?

If I thought that yesterday was unlucky, today just kicked its ass. First of all Diwali's condition still hasn't improved and seeing her lie on her side in the barn plagued by flies already just broke my heart. We got some more grass and trees for the animals, resulting in a fire ant attack again so bad that I had to strip all my clothes off the second I got home and scrub my back vigorously with the bath brush before being able to continue doing any more work. Our main job for today was to clean out the cow barn again where for some inexplicable reason, fresh grass was strewn everywhere on the ground and therefore rejected by the mamma cow. The wheelbarrow with the cow manure was also so full today that it took me about half an hour and multiple breaks to get it down to the greenhouse, where it was too heavy to even go across the threshold and I therefore had to carefully balance each shovel full of poo from the wheelbarrow at the entrance all the way to the furthest row of kale beds without dropping too much and without cursing too loudly. When we then went to clear the grass from the barn I started getting the dreaded signs of a migraine approaching, and sure enough, soon after we (on top of everything else) found a mutilated Bratz doll in the pile of grass we were disposing of, the headache fully kicked in and I had to flee to our room. Even though I'd secretly welcomed it at first, thinking it'd be a good excuse not to work much more, I soon felt victim to the old 'Be careful what you wish for' since I then had to spend a couple of hours lying in bed, wide awake but unable to keep my eyes open, feeling like my skull was about to spontaneously combust. It was getting dark already by the time I felt good enough to venture outside again where Sarah (you absolute diamond) had finished the barn, helped giving Diwali her medicine and washed up most of the disgusting items in our kitchen. The evening was quite quiet after we heard about Diwali's still worsening condition and we just need to hope that tomorrow will be better.

DAY 35 - A series of unfortunate events

We had planned a day off today to meet our new online-dating acquaintance, Josh, at Richardson’s beach and then go to the party we’d been told about yesterday. Little did we know that on this day, luck was not in our favour. After doing a bit of work (Diwali has become very ill suddenly, we’re all worried at the moment) we got ready and went out to hitchhike just as the weather decided not to cooperate at the slightest and a true flood of rain descended upon us. We got to the top of Maku’u Drive easily enough but from there on our driver went into the wrong direction, which left us standing by the main highway in torrential rain for so long that out thumb-arms actually started aching. After a long while it finally stopped raining so that we could take off our raincoats --- and voila, we were immediately picked up. The next guy also didn’t go all the way so we hitchhiked again, this time with a guy who insisted on bringing us to a different (‘better’) beach than Richardson’s, not understanding that we had to meet someone there. Finally we got there, an hour and a half late, and of course Josh was nowhere to be seen. After scouring about for a while we decided to just sit down and told ourselves that ‘if it’s meant to be, he’ll find us’. We sat on the rocks by a little pool fed by the ocean, and while frolicking about in the shallow waters suddenly Sarah screamed and pointed at something literally two metres away from us – a ginormous turtle just chilling near the waters edge (and I MEAN ginormous – he must’ve been about a metre and a half long).

Such a gorgeous creature.

We marvelled for a long while at his sheer size and proximity and the indescribable elegance he exuded when swimming. Sarah must’ve recorded about an hour’s footage on her GoPro camera while I got out of the water pretty soon to sketch as the turtle swam about, getting further away sometimes but always coming back to us. The only thing ruining this pristine moment was that a group of teenage American girls had set up camp far too close to us and were discussing the most unsavoury topics in their shrill little voices.

Sarah just meditated in the water anyway.

None too surprisingly, in the late afternoon Josh still hadn’t turned up and we decided to give up all hope of that and to get something to eat instead. While standing around in the parking lot giggling uncontrollably at just the idea of hitchhiking, a white Zimbabwean woman saw us and offered us a ride to a restaurant she recommended and so we got into her immaculate car with her three children, being offered biscuits and feeling rather uncomfortable with the entire situation. The restaurant she dropped us off at was called ‘Ken’s’ and had a largely egg-based menu (which amused me greatly at the moment). We got a vegetarian-bacon sandwich and chips and a great time was had by all, interrupted only by the restaurants puzzling tradition of a waiter hitting a gong, ringing a little bell and shouting something like ‘Hoy!’ in seemingly random combinations every twenty minutes or so. (Also the gong was situated right behind the most horrific statue I have ever seen, of a kind of squatting Buddha-child adorned with a big straw hat and a necklace. I started drawing it but it was just too horrific).

When we finished our meal (consisting of the sandwich, a second order of chips and a huge chocolate cake each) we set out to hitchhike towards the party, which proved to be near-impossible once again. We seemed to be right in the ghetto area of Hilo and were told to keep walking towards the mall since apparently no-one would pick us up here, so we trudged along the darkened streets, getting creeped out by Christmas decorations of varying degrees of sinister that we saw along the way. Finally, finally we were picked up by two piratey-looking guys (called Sky (again!) and Frank) who were going fishing in Kalapana and who offered to drop us at our party. Unfortunately we knew nothing about the location of this party apart from a hastily scribbled map Ann had given us as, well as a vague memory that the guy whose party is was was called Lee, and so we drove around the dark streets for ages, feebly saying stuff like ‘They said there would be balloons nearby…can…anyone see any…balloons….?’ until we decided to officially give up. They guys were nice enough to drive all the way back to Maku’u because they didn’t want us hitchhiking again at this time of the night and so we accepted our fate and, especially after the toilet got clogged AGAIN, just went to bed early.

DAY 34 - Reggae Love

The main event for today was a big reggae night at Uncle Roberts so after completing the day’s work we got ready and set out to hitchhike, getting picked up after the record time of only about 10 seconds. The guy driving was a friendly Hawaiian slash every-other-nationality-ever called Ravyn with a hilarious giggle, who drove us all the way to Uncle Roberts and accidentally broke the door handle off his car in trying to aid us in getting out. Pretty amused again at this point we walked around the empty venue for a bit (we got there way too early) and decided to wait for more people in a nearby café.

Along with this old man furiously eating his chips.

It filled up pretty quickly and we decided to actually sit near the stage soon after, where we met some interesting people again:

This legend of a little child was seen intensely headbanging later.

And we met this guy,  referred to ever after only as 'that scatty old black man'

While sitting by the entrance and talking we met a young guy called Keahi who was soon revealed to be Sarah’s dream boy (a photographer? AND firefighter? With a TRAGIC PAST??) and who could not contain his excitement about our accents, needing to communicate his approval of it every two minutes.

Also, bass players are the BEST.

The reggae band was really amazing (I decided then that reggae is, like, my FAVOURITE music) and we were dancing the entire time until they stopped playing and everyone started to leave. We sat by the entrance for a while, Sarah engaged in deep conversation with Keahi, while I feebly tried to locate people going in the same direction as our home and met a cool guy called Sean. He finally arranged for us to get a lift as far as Pahoa at least on the back of someone’s truck, with a foreign woman called Ann and a girl called Sam who happened to have a sister called Sarah, which we all found very cool (Our Sarah has a twin brother called Sam, for anyone who doesn’t know. That’s why it’s cool). They all insisted on inviting us to some party tomorrow night and wrote down directions and everything but of course we should have listened more carefully (Tune in tomorrow for how that turned out). We got out in Pahoa and hitched the rest of the way with an old guy called David who had the tiniest car imaginable, resulting in Sarah having to spend the entire ride uncomfortably suspended half on my lap and half floating in midair, but we finally got home safely.

DAY 33 - Greenhouse wisdom

Today was another day spent largely working and nothing of great importance happened. I was occupied inside the greenhouse for most of the day with preparing the empty flowerbeds for new kale seeds – for that purpose I had to quite forcefully shovel soil from a designated little area of the garden, then add cinder from a big pile nearby and mix the two together like some sort of grotesque garden witch stirring a potion in my wheelbarrow, before shovelling the entire affair on top of the cow manure in the plant beds. Jai Dev was busy in the greenhouse as well and told me a few more of his spiritual stories, including the time he was checked out by Tupac Shakur or the time he had a vision in the greenhouse of the kale plants talking to him. All that shovelling left me quite exhausted and we had spent the evening just hanging out in our kitchen.

DAY 32 - Rain.

We got up ridiculously late again and had the pleasure of having a chocolate-based breakfast in bed and then of meeting our new goat tenant, a beautiful little fluffy white guy who apparently was being bullied by our goats quite a bit.

We agreed that this was the only possible name for him. JUST LOOK at his little forehead curls.

We had to go to cut trees for the goats during which I was afflicted with a terrible case of fire ants into the bra, and then do another trip to get grass for the cow. It was raining on and off the entire day – of course immediately used as an excuse to sit around in the truck for extended rain breaks.

Or lunch breaks.

Once we got home it started really pissing it down, so I was watering the plants in the greenhouse WHILE it was raining outside, which is just one of the many funny things about greenhouses. The dogs were rather scared of the thunder and lightning - Subaja had already repeatedly confused Sarah with Kyle and tried to sit on her lap while we had our lunch break – and when she came into the greenhouse at nightfall and shakily sat right on top of where I was weeding I decided to call it a day.

DAY 31 - Horny goats

For a couple of days now the small goat Lakshmi has been making a lot of noise and while we secretly suspected that we had accidentally poisoned her with all the new kinds of trees that we’d been getting, it was revealed to us this morning that she was in fact in heat and was to be introduced to a young male goat that would arrive today and stay with us for a while. Sarah and I wanted to go into Hilo today to get some items and go to the cinema, and after being spontaneously asked to build a new fence for the goat pen before leaving (so the new goat couldn’t escape) Judy thankfully realized that that was not a project fit for the time frame we had or indeed the clothes we were wearing and we left with her for Hilo soon, being taught all kinds of facts about goat mating behaviour on the way. She dropped us at the Walmart we’d been to on our first day here so we made that our first port of call and stocked up on cookies, Christmas paraphernalia and more mosquito repellent (We were flabbergasted to realize that Americans don’t have chocolate santas EVERYWHERE in every supermarket, and NOR do they have pesto. AT ALL. PESTO.) We escaped from the Walmart entrance area pretty quickly due to the nerve-deafening annoyance of some sort of bell-ringing charity people stood right by it, and walked around for a bit deciding to just stay in the area and not even bother with downtown Hilo. After getting some sushi from the rudest food vendor ever we returned to Walmart to buy some alcohol which we then consumed on a little grass patch in the parking lot like the truly classy people we are. We went to see the second ‘The Hobbit’ movie which was quite an experience, alternating between giggling madly at Orlando Bloom’s incredibly unfortunately aged face with his stupid goth contact lenses, and just not knowing what in the world was going on anymore. The appearance of a different attractive actor cheered us up a bit (Sarah: ‘He looks more like Orlando Bloom than the other one’) but nothing could excuse the vision of the formerly respected dwarf king riding in a wheelbarrow on a river of molten gold. We realized shortly after the movie was over that this was of course Wednesday, and decided spontaneously to go to Uncle Roberts again. We had to hitchhike with quite a few people to get there but were successful in the end and ran straight into Mick the banana pie guy, who, true to his name, gave us some pretty delicious baked goods again.

And this image is Uncle Roberts in a nutshell, by the way.

We sat around by the entrance for a while where we met a guy called Quanah Christ (nothing about him matters but that name) and saw the chicken man from Pahoa strolling around in a santa hat and a lei and eating crisps. He talked to us for a bit and then put his chicken on Sarah’s shoulder and wordlessly floated away again so we had to look after it for a while.

I'm sure everyone will be happy to know that it DIDN'T poo on her back.

A bit later two guys asked us to dance and we happily obliged at this point. The guys were called Max (a young and slightly cocky character) and Mike (40+ and ginger) and even though I repeatedly mouthed our secret codeword for ‘Can we leave please’ to Sarah, it was decided to walk out towards the ocean on the lava flow with them (Clarification: There wasn’t ACTUALLY lava. Only hardened lava. Rocks, in other words.) Sarah seemed to be getting on with Max reeeally well (we never refer to them by name. It was ‘Your guy’ and ‘my guy’ only from that point) while I trudged along with my guy wishing I was anywhere else. We sat by the ocean for a while, talking about German poetry, aliens and whether it’s better to have kids or to have trees, while in the distance a considerable storm was brewing, providing us with occasional dramatic lighting. Sarah’s guy pinpointed with scary accuracy when it was going to start to rain and when it did we had to find our way back to where we came from, across the treacherous ground in complete darkness staring desperately at a will-o’-the-wisp-like light in the distance that just didn’t seem to come any closer (To his credit, my guy did prevent me multiple times from wandering off the path into my sure death). They agreed to take us home and, to my slight surprise, ACTUALLY did, which is not quite what we’re used to but welcome nonetheless.

DAY 30 - Another boring day

This morning was the first time I noticed that I had a little subtenant living inside my duvet (an old sleeping bag), since upon my awakening I could see something of the vague size of a big cockroach or small lizard happily roaming around between the layers of quilting. I don’t quite know what to do about that. Not much else happened during the day besides the usual. We planned to go to Cinderland again for Taco Tuesday but because it was rainy and we were quite tired and had plans to get up early tomorrow to go into Hilo, we decided to leave it for tonight and used the evening to explore the possibilities of online dating sites, if only to find any people to hang out with here that weren’t born during the sixties like all our friends so far seem to have been.

DAY 29 - Christmas Spirit does not come easily here

After a small toilet clogging incident in the morning we had to get to work to make up our last work hours for this week even though we both did not feel up for that. We were allowed to drive the big truck about five streets down to cut grass for the animals, which is quite the next level from just down the road, and I promptly drove on the wrong side of the road (realized quickly enough though, thank God). We got a bunch of trees from the place Judy had directed us towards and then also miraculously came across a lot of palm tree branches freshly cut just lying in a pile on the ground so that cheered us up a bit. At home I continued to follow my ambition to make cookies at least one time before Christmas, a task that continued to prove quite impossible. First of all, when I got the ingredients, I firmly trusted in Judy having stuff like flour and honey and so didn’t get any of that, but she didn’t, and so I spent a very long time trying to manually make flour out of the oat flakes we’d been given for breakfast by very painstakingly crumbling the flakes between my fingers. I also didn’t of course have an electric mixer, and the honey that Judy gave me was completely saturated with ant corpses so I ended up freestyling it quite a bit, not having much faith in the result. The final obstacle came in the fact that we don’t actually have an oven here, only hobs, and even though I’d read that it is possible to deep-fry cookies in a pan, my attempt to do just that was shamefully thwarted and we decided to just eat the remaining dough as kind of a dessert (it was pretty delicious). We also managed to construct a very lovely fresh-green albeit slightly bendy Christmas tree with the help of two of the palm tree branches we found, chopsticks and rubber bands:

I always thought the day I put an American flag on the top of my Christmas tree is the day that I need to die.

DAY 28 - Life

We had arranged with Glenn, our middle-aged hitchhiking friend, to pick us up today and come with us to the Maku’u market, which apparently is a big deal on Sundays. After trying some of his home-grown salad we strolled around the market for a bit, where we shortly ran into none other than Husamuddin. He was also going to Kahena beach (which is ALSO a big deal on Sundays that we hadn’t been to yet) so we arranged to get a lift with him and Megan a bit later. (Glenn left to go to work by that point). Then, following a kind of enchanted trance that must’ve been caused by chocolate withdrawal we suddenly found ourselves in a music tent with chocolate all over our faces, listening to the singer with the worst stage presence in the world and teeth that were unlike anything we'd ever seen. There we were found by Megan, who was ready to go now so we were introduced to another friend of theirs, Jasper, who would be coming with us, and then Sarah, Husamuddin and I got on the back of the truck heading for the beach.

 They stopped on the way at a beautiful little church, which was painted all over with angels and saints with simple but colourful windows and a pretty cool history – the church had sat somewhere completely different and when the lava came had been moved and just kind of been left there, which is where it is to this day.

This must be the Church of Wow.

The ride continued after that to the actual beach and we said goodbye to Megan and Jasper (who didn’t want to come for some reason) and started on the steep decline on lava rocks down to the beach that was nestled between huge cliffs. We had been told that it was a nudist beach but were somewhat relieved to see that most people were still wearing clothes with only the occasional willy flapping into our field of vision (the most notable incidence being an old man doing some kind of yoga right by the water... granting us insight into parts of the male anatomy that should never be seen by anyone from those angles). Husamuddin was magically immediately drawn to the drum circle but Sarah and I went to find a spot for ourselves to sit and read, which is what we did for the next few hours.

I wanted to draw every single person on this beach.

Noticing that I was drawing people, a guy called Jason came up to me and asked whether he could draw me which I obviously encouraged:

'SHE'S SO BEAUTIFUL!! ISN'T SHE BEAUTIFUL!?!"

We’d met a bunch of people that we knew, like Mick the banana pie guy, Scott the hitchhiking helper from two days ago and the inevitable Satori, but after a while felt that we should get a bit more sociable and went to purchase some beers from the top of the hill. We sat around drinking for a while then and I just kept seeing people that needed to be drawn:

Just look at this fabulous man with his little belly-dancing scarf looking ever so picturesque.

Or this dashing flute player and his cool old-lady friend.

Soon we noticed another familiar face and waved the guy over (all we remembered was that he was extremely Russian) and he (Alex, his name turned out to be) said that he was about to go to some sort of beach park with his friends and whether we wanted to come. They were in quite a hurry to leave so from one minute to the next we suddenly were squished in the boot of a car between an assortment of rubble along with a young skater guy called James who seemed to take an immediate liking to me. When we arrived at this place, not much seemed to be going on so we sat around talking for a while until it seemed like everyone had disappeared, including the person who’d driven us there in the first place. We’d heard of another ‘Ecstatic Dance’ event that was going on tonight but decided not to go and to hitchhike instead. James, upon hearing that we lived in Maku’u, gave up trying to persuade us to sleep over at his sisters house (‘just up the road’) and decided to come with us, since that happens to be where he lives too. So we said goodbye to Alex and his friend Lisa and hitchhiked – but the person who picked us up was going to the ecstatic dance event too and so we took that as a sign and went there with her. The venue was a lot smaller than at the other place, it was in the middle of a forest and the music was a lot more electronic but the vibe was very much the same. We danced for a good long while again and met a lot of our friends – Natasha, Billy, Remy, Husamuddin – and met a bunch of new people such as the very similar-looking Joe and Austin. (Joe was Australian. I don’t know much about Austin since I thought they were the same person for the longest time) When the dance was over we had to get a ride back, which seemed like a problem again since there were three of us but Remy and his friend agreed to take us as far as Pahoa at least. From there we got a ride to the top of Maku’u Drive, and guess whose car was the first to come down that way? None other than Austin's. He invited us to come see a movie at his house (further along Maku'u) with a bunch of his friends, so we went for it and soon found ourselves at the house that he and his girlfriend inhabit, which looked like a space-age version of the Weasley abode from the outside and like a squat from the inside. After hanging out in their 'living room' for a while talking to the other people there, watching people play Super Mario and trying to coax the kitten over (creatively named 'Kitten') the movie was finally set up in Austin’s room with a huge projector. We watched ‘The Boat That Rocked’ (called ‘Pirate Radio’ in American, I guess they are literally incapable of understanding the pun in ‘rocked’) which I very much enjoyed, the only thing dampening my spirits being James' constant advances (interrupted only when he fell asleep and started snoring, which was no less annoying). Austin dropped us back off at ours after the movie was over and we could finally shake James off.

DAY 27 - Fruit flies and more work

I got up early today for a Skype date that didn't end up happening so I had a lot of time to sit around in the kitchen with my tea to contemplate and illustrate this very fitting quote I remembered: (Groucho Marx, I believe?)

(It's fitting because we've been here for nearly four weeks already (say WHAAAT???) and also due to our recent laziness in washing up as well as leaving fruit lying around outside, fruit flies have become quite the permanent fixture in our kitchen)

Because of our slackness yesterday and already having plans for tomorrow we had to catch up with a lot of hours today, ranging from grass-cutting to basket-weaving with Kali, which took up most of our day. In the evening we had the pleasure of trying jackfruit for the first time (I really liked it but it did take multiple washings with a variety of bathroom products to get the residue off my hands) and ended the day by watching a wonderfully British Derren Brown episode. (Turns out he's gay, by the way, ladies. Disappointingly)