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.