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.