DAY 55 - Rehab day

We woke up in the blistering sun, covered in dirt and feeling pretty rough, and urged the guys to bring us back home soon because the new French couple was going to arrive around noon and we still had to clean up the kitchen for them (I guess I haven’t mentioned this before but we will be sharing our little apartment with two more helpers from France for the rest of the time here). We got home, grudgingly cleaned everything and had a much-needed shower; Sarah fell asleep shortly after while I dazedly worked on some drawings while skyping my beloved sister. The French arrived in the early afternoon - a quiet muscular guy called Loïc (the pronunciation of his name proved to be quite a task for everyone, just as mine did for him) and his very sweet little girlfriend Marina. Lori had prepared a delicious welcome-meal for them again (preceded by Cameron’s homemade dip and chips) and we once again had a lovely dinner that was only slightly dimmed by our tiredness and hangover, as well as a little tension caused by my rather ill-advised insistence that American spelling is stupid, which Cameron did NOT appreciate. We went to bed pretty soon afterwards to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

DAY 54 - Mushroom magic

I had arranged with the people who have my bag for them to drop it off here at 1pm, which meant that we couldn’t really leave the house until then. We used the time to cook our dinner so that we would only have to warm it up later on - not too big of a task with a rice cooker and readymade curry-sauce. At 1 I nervously waited outside the street entrance and finally finally the old man from the other day pulled up and handed me my beloved bag with everything still in it, that absolute legend. We’d arranged with Brayton from the other day (the ginger-dreadlocked guy) to go and hang out with him and his friend Luke at the beach, so shortly after he picked us up and we went to a little bay area with not many people around and set up camp at a little picnic table by the water. Brayton had, in true hippy manner, quite the strong opinions about politics, the Illuminati and the New World Order and I was soon engaged in a heated debate about various topics such as Mandela, 'the Amero', subconscious programming and the like, thinking that while he obviously had some good points, saying stuff like that relationships will in the future only work in threesomes is just a bit far-fetched. After a while he had enough of it and whisked Sarah (whom he immediately had taken a fancy to) away to sit by the water for a bit, while Luke and I remained and talked about less intense topics.

He invited us to join him and a few friends in the evening to hang out and have some mushrooms, and even though we of course had our dinner to get through, we thought that sounded like quite a fun plan. On the way home we stopped at the Choicemart again to get some ingredients for dessert, but when everything was either too expensive or non-existent we gave up on that idea and bought doughnuts for everyone instead. We served our curry at the main house and everyone said that they very much enjoyed it (whether that’s true is quite another story) and I talked to Cameron for a long time about the afterlife and such, which was quite entertaining. After our very cheeky dessert we excused ourselves and were picked up by one of Luke’s friends Matthew, a tall skinny guy, his younger brother Shane (who didn’t say a word during the entire night) and Luke himself. They brought us to a little black-sand beach that we had to trudge over a lot of rocks to get to, where there was already a campfire burning, the dark ocean rolling in the darkness and the stars glowing above. We had some mushrooms there and the rest of the night will be left undiscussed apart from these few diamonds:

a.k.a a lot of illegible inside jokes

Sarah and the dog 'Selecter' - this drawing is quite improvised since the actual sketch from that time turned out to be rather abstract when viewed the next day in daylight.

Finally after some of the boys left, the various bottles of alcohol were emptied and the fire started dying down, we fell asleep right where we were under the stars.

DAY 53 - No drawings for lack of sketchbook

The project for today was picking macadamia nuts, so the entire crew assembled at the bottom of the property in the morning, were all given a bucket, told how to identify the good, the bad and the ugly of the nuts and then set free under the hundreds of nut trees to collect the little spheres that were lying everywhere there. It was quite a pleasantly mindless task; I listened to my ‘A Clash of Kings’ audiobook and would’ve actually really enjoyed myself if I wasn’t still silently panicking about my bag. After our shift was complete I went inside to quickly check my emails and to my immense relief found an e-mail in my inbox with the subject line ‘We have your purse’ – big shout-out to Sarah again for telling me a while back that I should put an ‘If found, please return to…’ note into my sketchbook, which is where they found my contact details. I was exchanging e-mails with the woman (the old man’s wife) for the rest of the day trying to arrange a time for them to drop it off or for me to pick it up but because they were mysteriously apparently only able to drive when it was sunny, it was found that it wouldn’t happen today but that they would drop it off tomorrow. Just another example of the incredible kindness and helpfulness we’ve experienced from so many people since being in Hawaii. 

After these amazing news we decided to go to a supermarket and buy some ingredients for the dinner that we will be cooking tomorrow – Cameron and Lori have a tradition that all helpers at some point cook a meal from their home country for the hosts, and we, creatively, had decided to make the ‘British’ national dish of curry. We hitchhiked with a Swiss couple and quite spontaneously got out of the car when we spotted a small Asian-looking supermarket from the road in a little town that we hadn’t been to before. We got most of our ingredients and other groceries here, apart from the obviously most important ones of curry sauce and meat/shrimps that they didn't sell. So after checking out another nearby store that was selling the most incredible funky fetish wear we hitchhiked grudgingly back to the Choicemart. There we were distracted by a Chinese restaurant and decided to share a shrimp plate for dinner, which was very nice. After that we actually went to Choicemart (after getting embarrassingly lost), and curry sauce was gotten without a problem but the meat prices were extortionate and since I thought we should stick to our vegetarian principles just a BIT more it was decided to replace the meat in the sauce with potatoes. Back at home we decided to keep up our tradition of musical movie nights and put on ‘Moulin Rouge’ but once again technology got in the way and it stopped working halfway through so we decided to save the rest for another night.

DAY 52 - Queen Facts

As Cameron had shown us yesterday, our main task for today was to ‘re-claim the border’ meaning that we had to go along the entire northern side of the coffee area and rid the area of weeds and the like. At Judy’s, ‘weeds’ had meant little bushes of grass and other vegetation growing in the greenhouse whereas here, ‘weeds’ were in most cases fully developed trees that had to be sawn off and thrown over the border which was marked by some pipes running down it on the ground (what the neighbour thought of that I do not know) We started from opposite ends of the fence and worked our way towards the middle, where I suddenly noticed that Sarah was in the process of mutilating a tree that most definitely wasn’t a weed but one of the prized coffee plants, as well as seeing an ominously large number of similarly treated stumps in her wake. We’d done our day’s work anyway and went up to our room, where we soon enough noticed Cameron walking through the coffee and looking most displeased at our work (even his rounded eyebrows could not mask his disapproval). Sarah got a bit worried and so we went to explain the mistake to him – he was luckily very nonchalant about it which was a huge relief.

We’d been told that on Wednesdays there was an event down at Ho’okena beach that Cameron and Lori slightly disapprove of (‘It’s more like a gathering for homeless people’) and so we told ourselves that it must be good. We hitchhiked down and soon realized that these were EXACTLY our kinds of people that we’d been missing on this side of the island so far. Free food was being cooked, dogs were running about, dreads and long hair and tattoos could be seen everywhere and a bunch of people were gathered under a tree jamming with their various instruments.

Almost as good as Kahena.

We quickly got talking to a couple of guys, like freckly Adam or ginger-dreadlocked Brayton, but the main character we saw here was an old Polynesian man called Koa (or something) with an insane tan, tattoos everywhere and an incredibly tacky shell/gold necklace, who was constantly spouting some utterly hilarious stuff in an insane accent while accompanying it with eyebrow gymnastics that Emma Watson would be proud of.

You can't really see it here but at moments I was convinced that he was Robin Williams in a stupid disguise doing an absolutely over-the-top impression.

As we were trying to talk to him someone suddenly spotted a whale not too far from the coast and it remained there for quite a while, waving its tail at us and blowing out water while the Polynesian guy provided us with a constant stream of utterly nonsensical commentary.

 We talked to the people there for a bit longer (Brayton was regaling us for a long while with facts about Queen Elizabeth) and I drew this lovely guy:

But soon the sun was setting and we decided to try to find a ride before it was dark. We said goodbye to everyone, which provided some old man with the opportunity to very creepily smell and feel up Sarah, and Koa suddenly revealed that he had taken quite an unsettling liking to me (‘Did you know that I am a lion?’ [eyebrow wiggle] ‘Yeeees I am a lion…. I’m gonna eat you!’)

We were soon picked up by an old guy in a small truck. Remembering our predicament from last night we asked him to stop by at the store and bought a huge variety of chocolate-based food even though we’d eaten quite a lot at the potluck. The old guy dropped us off, and I, complete noob that I am, clutching the bag of chocolate to my chest and not caring about anything else, did not realize that I left my bag that holds everything that is dear to me in the back of his truck until it was too late. Hoping to God he’d find it and find my sketchbook with my email address inside it I decided not to let it get to me too early and we decided to distract ourselves with a movie and all the snack foods we’d gotten. We put on ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (after discovering that we seem to be the only people in our Maidstone friendship group who actually like musicals) and it was a pretty funny night.

DAY 51 - My kingdom for some chocolate

Our work for today wasn’t too exciting – basically we had to do the same as yesterday but on the other side of the driveway, all the way to the back of our house. After work we decided to go to the beach Cameron had shown us on our first day here, called ‘Two-Step’ (named so because to get into the water you go over two natural steps in the rocks). We ran into Cameron on our way out and he kindly offered to lend us two of his snorkel sets and drove us all the way there as well. As we were approaching the beach we saw lots of people staring out towards the water where we soon also saw a few dolphins jumping about. When we got into the water they seemed to have left but we weren’t too bothered since dolphins seem to be quite a common occurrence here and I’m sure we’ll have our chance to see them soon. We snorkelled about for a while across the bright green molten-looking corals and I somehow managed to get washed up somewhere completely different from the two steps I’d gotten in at, getting rather scratched up in the process.

 Sarah was in the water for a long time while I chilled on a lava rock by the beach and read a bit of ‘Shark Dialogues’ (I realized I have not read a single page of this book while not at a beach, maybe I should make a tradition out of that). Finally the sun was setting and we headed to the street to hitchhike, where we were soon picked up by a friendly young girl with a car full of random clutter who drove us all the way to our house. We dedicated the evening to our usual activities but suddenly both Sarah and I were gripped with a mad appetite for chocolate that took over our minds so much that we decided to go out into the darkness and hitchhike to the closest store, the one we’d been to yesterday that had no screw-top wines. We stood at the road for a long while with no-one picking us up and finally we remembered as well that the guy from the shop had mentioned it closing quite early yesterday, so we returned home empty-handed and dejected. Remembering similar situations from university life we spent a long while then trying to find chocolate delivery services in Hawaii but even our trusted friends Pizza Hut and Dominoes did not deliver to places this far out so we finally gave up and made beans on toast instead, while watching some episodes of ‘An Idiot Abroad’, which were quite entertaining despite the titular idiot being quite an ungrateful bastard most of the time.

DAY 50 - Moose meat on the beach

Today all the lazing around of the previous days was over and we had to present ourselves at 7:30 sharp to Cameron to hear our first instructions. Today’s task was to go around the massive coffee plantation and free the coffee plants’ stems from the vines that curled themselves around them, as well as cruelly ripping off all the new green branches they were sprouting, something that is quite contrary to anything we’ve done at Judy’s. (Apparently the new branches ‘zap the energy’ from the old chosen ones and therefore have to be pruned constantly, but still. Just doesn’t feel right). We got to work happily enough but were soon thwarted by the many spider webs everywhere between the branches, which we could only combat by waving sticks about in the air to clear them away and also had the added benefit of making us feel like wizards. We were busy with that for the compulsory five hours and shortly after were invited to join the hosts and the Germans at a barbecue at the beach a bit later. The beach we went to was called Ho’okena and was very beautiful, despite the very many tourists and this little creature roaming about under the barbecue tables:

Possibly it wasn't even a dog.

The Germans and Cameron wanted to go snorkelling, and since Cameron had a spare set of equipment and Sarah didn’t want to go, I decided to join them despite (quite retardedly) not having brought my swim stuff. The view under water was (once again) nothing on Kenya, but I did see some very peculiar and colourful fish and we even spotted a big sea turtle, even though it wasn’t quite as big as our friend at Richardson’s beach.

My four favourites, and their Hawaiian names.

After we got out again, the boys got down to work with the barbecue and the girls started drinking and talking about deep stuff so Sarah and I decided to take a walk further along the beach, which also helped greatly in drying my underclothes. Shortly after leaving the others we found ourselves in a weird kind of beach-ghetto area where shady men were lurking around an illegal cock-fighting place where a bunch of roosters were displayed on little triangular huts, which was quite a bizarre sight right next to the azure ocean and palm trees. Further along we found a beautiful ruined church that had no roof and rubble everywhere in and around it but still had little offerings like shells and necklaces accumulated on a little altar in the front of it.

When we got back the food was ready, and since we have a new clause to our pact of vegetarianism that dictates that we will eat meat whenever it is offered to us by Cameron and Lori, we were quite happy to get in on the presented ‘chili dogs’. It turned out that half of the grilled sausages they'd made were actually consisting of moose meat, which is certainly something new but tasted quite standard. The Germans had made grilled vegetable sticks and we had a nice chilli sauce as well so it was a very lovely meal while watching the sunset and listening to Sarah’s sixties playlist.

We had arranged with our online friend Josh (the one whom we’ve never met and who never shows up – don’t ask why we still bother with him) to be picked up at our house at 6 to go hang out with him and some of his friends for the evening, so we packed together our stuff and headed back with Cameron and Lori just before sunset. Josh seemed to have a bit of trouble finding us but lo and behold, we did finally meet him and can now confirm that he is indeed a real person and not a prank and/or catfish. Ironically, the beach he and his friends were at was Ho’okena, the place we had JUST left. On the way we stopped at a dingy little corner shop to get some drinks, but after discovering that they only sold ‘proper’ wine with ‘proper’ corks and no-one had a bottle-opener, we had to get some kind of ale that we deeply regretted afterwards (even the high alcohol content could NOT excuse that taste). We met Josh’s friends who were a rather dopey lot, and hung out with them for a while until suddenly Sarah came back from the bathroom rather pale-faced with quite an emergency ‘girl problem’ that she very skilfully hid from the boys by pretending to have been sick and insisting that we had to go home. So we made poor Josh drive us all the way back AGAIN after only this short while, but he was nice enough about it and we were soon in our own domain to sort out the situation. Sarah’s condition seemed to be quite alarming so after panickedly googling ‘lots of blood’ and, unsurprisingly, being unsuccessful in finding a solution, I went down to the main house to ask Lori for advice on the matter. Cameron could not be stopped from getting involved despite my efforts to keep this problem in female-only circles (both our hosts were rather drunk after their traditional bonfire drink that we’d missed out on today), and Lori and I were sent to fetch Sarah and then possibly call an emergency hotline if it got worse. Sarah, despite feeling better already, was brought back to the main house as well where we then both sat in their living room with outlandish Christmas decorations all around us, and Cameron talking to us non-stop about things such as various dog attacks on the farm, wanting to found a cult, or having to pluck his eyebrows into a rounder shape so people would like him more - all of which was incredibly hilarious at the time. All the while Lori was researching the effects of some medicine that Sarah had been taking and concluded that it must’ve been that, and since Sarah felt ok again it was decided to just leave it at that for tonight.

DAY 49 - Eddie would go

We sort of decided to go to the beach Cameron had shown us, but after a lot of sneezing, phlegm complaints and long naps it transpired that Sarah was getting a cold, and we decided to not exert ourselves today and stay home, especially since the weather was not looking too great again. I was able to catch up with the blog and some freelance work while we watched a cool documentary about Hawaiian surfer Eddie Aikau, so it was a productive but not really exciting day. In the evening we were invited to join our hosts and The Germans at a little bonfire they regularly have at the bottom of the garden, to drink, socialize and roast marshmallows. We had quite spent our budget on alcohol the previous night and the hosts weren’t as generous with theirs as they had been on our welcome-meal so we stayed largely sober (something that cannot be said of Lori in particular). The conversation rather annoyingly mostly circled around stuff such as celebrity culture, movies I hadn’t seen or lots of exclamations of disgust at all my favourite experiences in Hawaii, like the warm ponds (‘Euurgh! Flesh-eating virus! Bacteria!’), the sweat lodge (‘Ewww! And you have to hug everyone afterwards??’) or hitchhiking (‘When I wanna go somewhere, I wanna go RIGHT NOW’) so I wasn’t enjoying myself too much and through all the recent waking-up-early felt quite tired and went to bed soon. (The marshmallows were good though.)