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.