DAY 46 - Chapter Two

We got up early today to do some last minute packing and cleaning and then were shortly on the way to the bus station with Jai Dev who kindly agreed to drive us there. 

I found this bag tag on the road a while back and just had to use it for a pretentious Goodbye-Hilo collage.

The bus arrived just as we did and so we continued on our journey without problem, going through ever-changing but all beautiful landscapes while listening and singing along to the very well-chosen sixties music the bus’s speakers were playing. We had to transfer into another bus at a K-mart in Kailua-Kona so without suspecting much we got off and acquired some snacks in this very badly laid-out supermarket. Confused about the whole bus situation we asked a young man there with an earring for some explanation and he kindly took us under his protection, gave us the bus timetables and promised to make sure we got on the right bus as he was going in the same direction. Only that that bus didn’t come. I was sketching and didn’t mind too much but Sarah was getting quite impatient at the ‘Hawaiian time’ (meaning everything just happens as it happens and not how it is written in any timetables.) It only got worse when every time a bus DID pull up and we excitedly came towards it with our billions of bags, it turned out that it stopped here, or went into the other direction, or was subject to any other completely random predicaments. We got some incredibly processed cheese sandwiches from the K-marts ‘Pizzeria’ and managed to kill a bit of time by playing a dice game (Sarah completely owned me) while the earring guy and his dad, a rather obnoxious American tourist waited nearby.

Loudly complaining about Canadian food all the while, the old bastard.
 (This sketch also makes it look like the bus station was at the beach or something but that's just because I was too lazy to draw all the cars in the parking lot between us and the beach)

Finally of course the right bus did come and we were on our way shortly, getting told off twice by the bus driver for our unforgivable crimes of starting to listen to music on Sarah’s speakers and spraying ourselves with deodorant. The bus terminated one stop before where we had to get off (why? No-one knows) so we called Cameron on the phone of an old man also on the bus who seemed to have proclaimed himself our personal tour-guide. Cameron agreed to pick us up there and we didn’t have to wait for too long until he drove up. He turned out to be a big and slightly cynical man with long hair (we had thought he was bald) and it was soon revealed to us that our time here would be very different to that at Judy and Jai Devs, when in the first 15 minutes of knowing him he mentioned killing frogs and mongooses, expressed a deep dislike of dreadlocks and offered us three different kinds of alcohol.

We were shown our rooms which also was quite a shock to the system – our dwelling for the next few weeks will be a huge apartment to ourselves with a view onto the ocean, a clean and well-equipped kitchen and a queen size bed each (and a FULL-LENGTH mirror, something we had sorely missed at Judy’s).

The view from our living room window, ladies and gentlemen.

 Cameron invited us to have dinner with him and his wife and the other helpers – a young couple from Germany called Jan and Leila with accents that were something else but who were very nice otherwise. Lori, the wife, turned out to be a very warm short Asian woman who was busy making salmon cakes while we settled on their balcony that had a breathtaking view onto the jungle and ocean behind it. The dinner was delicious and the conversation, helped along greatly by the generously offered wine, was great fun and really helped to get to know our hosts and future co-workers. We were also told their system of working, which will be quite different to our other place as well since we have a strict schedule here: Monday until Thursday from 7:30 til 12:30, which will kick some much-needed discipline into us but also meant that we will have the next few days off.