DAY 20 - Waipio Valley

We had to wake up with the help of an alarm clock for the first time in ages today, and it was not pleasant. Jai Dev was driving Nikolai to some sort of test near Waipio Valley, the famed most beautiful valley of the Big Island, so we’d arranged to get a ride with him and explore this part of Hawaii. The drive was rather long and spent mostly by dozing off and letting the beautiful jungle landscape pass us by. We were dropped off at a breathtaking viewpoint onto the ocean and the valley from which a steep road descended. After talking to a security guard named Rocky about where exactly to go once we were down there, we decided to walk the entire way down, which, even though it sounds quite easy, was actually a real workout that left us panting and wobbly-kneed after we’d completed the entire descent in a kind of stupid shuffle-walk. Coming upon a crossroads we decided to go left first, a route that Rocky had told us would bring us to a point from which we could see an amazing waterfall, and then come back and go to the right (the beach) later. The walk was absolutely beautiful, with exotic trees and flowers lining the streets and horses just walking casually about all by themselves. At some point we came across this little hut, looking like the Hawaiian version of the enchanted witches’ house in ‘Hansel & Gretel’:

 We soon saw a patch in the mountain wall that looked like it could very well house a waterfall, only that there was absolutely no water coming down. Thinking there must be a better, bigger waterfall we kept on going, having at some point to hop from stone to stone in the middle of the road because it was so flooded, but when we asked some people that came past us we were told that there wasn’t anything else of value to see up here, so we decided to go to the beach instead, abandoning the whole waterfall quest. The beach was found behind a beautiful forest of tall grey trees and mangroves, with dark grey sand and rounded lava rocks everywhere. After wading through a little river feeding into the ocean, I made myself a little seating place out of rocks to sit and read by the forest edge, while Sarah settled down a bit closer to the ocean to sunbathe.

We stayed there for a long while until we decided to go a bit further along the shore to find some ancient burial ruins that Jai Dev and Rocky had mentioned, and, after not too much walking, came upon this:

If this isn't exactly how you'd pictured ancient Hawaiian burial ruins then I can't help you.

Look at all those sweet voodoo remnants.

We’d been told that Jai Dev would be in the nearest town, Honokaa, at 3pm if we wanted to get a ride home with him, so we wandered back to the road to hitchhike (there was no WAY we could walk up that mountain). We were immediately picked up by a very friendly man called Joe who looked a bit like an older and more Southern Ben Stiller, and his three kids - teenage Anna, 10-year old Nkai and 8-year old Kahea. They were having lunch in ‘the Theatre’ in Honokaa and invited us to come along with them, an offer that we gladly accepted since we hadn’t eaten anything but some oranges and nuts all day. The Theatre turned out to be a lovely little vegetarian restaurant where the meals had film names such as ‘The Breakfast Club’ or ‘The Clint Eastwood’. Little Kahea fancied herself quite an artist as well so I let her draw these into my sketchbook:

Giving me quite a run for my money, that kid.

They left shortly after we’d eaten our (incredibly delicious) meals so we wandered around the shops of Honokaa a bit until Jai Dev found us and we were on or way back. At home, the cows were for some reason roaming free on the property instead of on their patch behind the greenhouse, so at some point when I came out of our room, I witnessed this adorable scene right in front of our door:

To be fair though, Subaja licking anything but people's crotches is quite a welcome change.