Today was our last official day of work – we’d arranged to
take the next two days off to be able to go to Rainbow Gathering then.
Uncharacteristically however, because we’d gotten up quite late, we decided to go
to the Maku’u market with Cedar and the gang first and finish the work after
that. The main impetus behind going in the first place was of course that Jon
was going to be there selling his necklaces and would be leaving in the
afternoon, but it was also a great chance to get some gifts for friends and
family back home. We strolled around for a bit and met up with Jon, who very kindly
gave Sarah and me one of his glass-crystal necklaces each, which will be a wonderful personal souvenir
from our time on the island. After we’d gotten all we needed we went into Pahoa
and then got a ride back with Cedar, Shakti, Phoenix and Jeremy who we’d randomly
run into again at the Kava bar. Stephen kindly didn’t give us much work for the
day at all which suited us fine since we still had to pack and clean our room
and then wanted to go to Kehena beach a last time before possibly heading for
Rainbow Gathering for the night. (Rainbow Gathering, just to clarify, is a kind of hippie meet-up that's practised throughout the world and is happening on the Big Island in Mackenzie State Park this year - basically a bunch of hippies camping out and having a good time for a week)
Of course it ended up being quite late again
when we were finally ready to leave and we suddenly realized that we had no alcohol,
resulting in another trip to Pahoa’s 7Eleven before then getting a ride to
Kehena at about 6 – we didn’t have high hopes for meeting anyone there at late hour but did luckily come across the perfect person right away – Thiago was sat
right by the drum circle in his little sarong-pants and informed us that he
intended to go Rainbow Gathering within the next ten minutes and could ask his
friend Vadim to give us a lift there as well. So very quickly we were on the
way which was ideal because it was getting dark and we actually had no idea
where exactly we were going. We picked up two more guys and their puppy on the
way and arrived at Mackenzie Park quite squashed, making our way from there
along the coastline through a forest of ironwood and coconut trees following
the two guys we’d picked up through the darkness (and despite their leadership I embarrassingly got lost for a bit anyway).
A few tents and fires were shining through the darkness but we didn’t really
meet anyone we knew until we’d walked to the very last campfire where someone
was sat hunched over by the fire playing the ukulele while a dog was barking
nearby – Koa, as it turned out, who’d come over from Kona a few days ago with his dog Lono, his cousin Andrew and a few other guys, such as the silent Paulie who sat by a
palm tree wrapped in a blanket the entire night. We stayed with them for a
while, having some intensely interesting conversations such as on the topic of
yawning, until a few more people we’d met in Kona emerged like blonde Austin
or that guy who looks like Paul McCartney. Not much seemed to be going on in the
rest of the camp so we ended up going to sleep pretty early in Koa’s tent
(despite both his and Andrew’s insistence that the tent was too small for three
people and that one of us should go and sleep in Andrew’s) and settled there
for the night (Thanks again Koa!)
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| The vegetation in the entire area was beautiful though. |
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