Emergency Post

Ok so I am WAY behind in blogging but this post couldn't wait.  For two Saturdays in a row, Matt and I tried out two bar/restaurant combos to find our local place...our go-to for a drink and some good food.  The first place we tried was Murphy's:

It's an Irish Pub with shuffleboard (win) and good food.  Downside?  Kinda pricey, kinda far from our place, and the beer selection was only ok. 

We sat at the bar and had dinner and a couple of drinks as expected, and were soon joined a stool or two over by a couple clearly on their first date.  The woman talked the whole time.  She covered her love of art, her schooling, her love of animals, her hobbies, her dislikes - you name it, she discussed it...in great detail...with great snobbery. 

She was pretty unbearable and her poor date was not hiding his distaste, but could barely express it.  His end of the conversation was "Uh huh" and "Mmm" and [sips beer pitifully].  After dinner, Matt and I left for our apartment, feeling sorry for the poor bastard stuck on a crappy date.

The next Saturday, Matt and I tried The Side Street Inn:




Don't let the trash cans out front fool you...this place is awesome.

 It's about a 1/2 a block from our place and, yes, you guessed it, down a side streeet.  It makes so much sense.  The food?  FANTASTIC.  It's served family style and each entree should reasonably feed four people.  Matt and I ordered two entrees (fried pork chops and spicy garlic fried chicken) and a side of kim chee fried rice.  Needless to say, this meal fed us for two days, but it probably should have lasted four - the food was that good. 

The beer selection is ok, Rogue brews a specialty beer for the restaurant (which is pretty cool) and they have very good drink specials.  That night they had "bombs" on special - Jager Bombs, Irish Car Bombs, if it's a shot in bomb-form, it's on special.  We tried a couple of Irish Car Bombs (Guinness, Jameson, and Bailys):

Yummmm

Matt and I were pigs in heaven and couldn't imagine our night getting any better until we overheard the conversation to our left.  It was oddly familiar...art...dogs...life goals...snobbery...

IT WAS THE SAME WOMAN ON ANOTHER FIRST DATE!!!!!!

Same woman, same conversation, new place, new man (who was faring much better than the other guy).  After much giggling and another drink, Matt sneakily snapped this picture:

I'm pretty sure she didn't notice...

(This one's for Mariann: 

It's better to love a short girl than not a tall...)

Big Island Adventures Part IV: The Final Chapter

Two epic-spill disasters in one vacation?  It could only be me.  Sigh.

Before I continue, notice that in the upper right hand corner of the blog, there is a new little gadget.  It says "follow by email" and there's a box for you to type in your e-mail and hit submit.  This way, you'll get e-mail updates letting you know when I've added a new post.  Woo hoo!

Anyway, the next day, Matt and I woke up bright and early.  We went downstairs for some coffee, fresh fruit and pastries, and some advice from the awesome folks at the Dolphin Bay Hotel.  Part of the appeal of the hotel is that some of the property owned by the hotel is an expanse of jungle.  You can pick your own fruit if you'd like and they have a variety growing in the jungle - bananas, starfruit, breadfruit, papaya, you-name-it.  I was very excited to explore this jungle so I made a coffee and dragged Matt along with me.


Down some stairs..

 

And into the jungle! (With convenient walkway)

I had planned to spend some time taking pictures and finding fresh starfruit, but after all of 2 minutes, Matt and I (but mostly Matt) were covered in bug bites and spiderwebs.  So that was that.

"Evidence"

The coffee, however, was delicious and there was some fruit that had already been picked so breakfast was still a success.  The part of the morning that was most successful, was asking the guy at the front desk what, in his opinion, he would see given 6 hours in the Hilo area before having to catch a flight.  This guy (I'm sorry, I forget his name) was so unbelievably helpful! He pretty much planned out our entire day, complete with map and lunch. 

Out of Hilo, we drove South and followed the red arrows, doing a nice little loop and stopping at the tip of the triangle for lunch.

Our first stop: Snorkeling the Kapoho Tide Pools.

These are a series of tide pools that can range between 5 and 10 feet deep. 

It looks pretty desolate, but as soon as you jump in the water, it's a completely different world.  We've done a lot of snorkeling and have seen some really wonderful plants and animals, but I think this was the best snorkeling I've ever done.  The fish were no different from what we've seen, but the coral was amazing: neon blue, bright pink, lilac, brilliant yellow.  Imagine, if you could dip your head into the pool in the above picture, you'd be looking into the inside of a rainbow-painted fishbowl.  No picture could ever do it justice.

I want to go back!

We explored about 3 or 4, then had to get moving.  We were on a tight time schedule.  Our next stop: Ahalanui Park Hot Springs

The water was about as warm as bathwater because of an underground lava tube.  I couldn't help but think I was about to be a part of some tropical version of Dante's Peak.  So because of that, and these many warnings, I only took a quick dip:

The sign says, "Enter at own risk.
This natural ocean thermal pond is not disinfected.
Do not enter if you have open wounds due to risk of bacterial infection.
Do not feed marine life.
Fish and eels may become aggressive"

 ...and Matt couldn't go in because of his poor feet :(

It's like paradise!  ...but with potentially aggressive eels



A more jovial warning?



though legitimate...

Stop three was to Kehena Beach, a black sand beach.  We parked the car by an old hippie, locked it up tightly, and made our way down a cliff:

It only took about 5 minutes to get from the car to the beach and the view was stunning:

Oh, I'm sorry.  Did I forget to mention this was a clothing-optional beach?  Take a closer look:

"...or don't"
-Matt

Yeah, I'm sorry again.  That's not very clear.  You can't see all the old guys coming in from snorkeling in just their snorkel gear.  (Enjoy that image)  Try this one:

I laugh every time I look at this picture.

Here's a nice image of the amazingly blue water to wash away what I just did to you.  I'm sorry.

We didn't have time to go swimming (and we weren't sure we wanted to anyway) so we made our way to: Lunch! At Kaleo's!  It was some of the best food we've had in Hawaii so far.  If you feel like getting hungry, check it out: http://kaleoshawaii.com/sub_men_lunch.php 

I enjoyed a martini with lunch.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  I'm pretty sure it was lilikoi-something.

Mmmmmmmm...

and after.

Matt enjoyed a Kona Longboard and Coconut Porter.  Also delicious.

Oh! There was some amazing artwork on display by a local artist (some of it pictured - ha - behind Matt).  Unfortunately, the smallest piece was beyond what we were interested in spending.

After lunch, the original plan was to jet back to Hilo to make our flight.  At this point, though, we found that we had time to make a quick trip North of Hilo to see Akaka Falls - the one item left on our "to-see" list.  Perfect!

We got to the park and started the loop trail.  We were a little wary of more jungle/bug experiences, but it turned out to be a non-issue.

Start of the trail

Beautiful flowers everywhere, all along the sides of the trail and in the trees

Bamboo

TIME WARP!  I don't know how I made this picture happen, but I had to include it.

We stopped first at Kahuna Falls, the smaller of the two waterfalls

Kahuna Falls

Intricate root systems, unfortunately, the picture is a bit blurry

Akaka Falls!

More warnings.

This display is describing a type of fish that migrates UP THE FALLS.  Yes.  A tiny fish swims up that huge waterfall.  Go take another look.

We made our way back...

...and saw more beautiful waterfalls...



...and more warnings.



After this little hike, we got to the airport with perfect timing.  The check-in, etc, went well.  Then, we were delayed about 2 hours because President Obama was leaving Oahu, and the airspace had to be clear.  Boo.

I still felt like a champion for accomplishing everything that we did in one day.

Before I sign off, don't forget that Follow button at the top of the page.  I am way behind in blogging so...there will be posts.

During his air test a young pilot flew through a rainbow. He passed with flying colors

Get it?  'Cause Hawaii is the Rainbow State?!

Chris-tastrophe II

Dear Reader,

I write this post to you just a little over a month after the subject incident took place. It has taken this long to come to grips with some of the events that took place on that dreaded day/evening. I know Christina already wrote about some of the events, so I will simply recap a few of them from my perspective.

First, I will take a moment to say that when we went on this trip, Christina was a champ in some ways. She did quite a bit of research to figure out "the places" to go on the Big Island. That being said, because she did most of the research, I felt I had no place nay-saying a good idea. So when Christina told me that we absolutely had to go to the Volcano and do a 12 mile hike to see lava - I thought "Definitely," figuring she had done her diligence and read a lot into it. She had not. I knew I was in trouble when the nice women at our bed and breakfast insisted that we take the following: AT LEAST 1.5 Liters of water each, walking sticks, Long pants, flashlights, spare batteries, some "power" snack food (they were insistent on the snacks - OK I had eaten a big dinner the day before, I got the hint), legitimate hiking shoes... essentially a list of things you would need for a post-apocalyptic trek across the Mid-West U.S. The nice ladies also mentioned that it was "quite the hike" - I assumed they meant it would be quite the hike if they tried to do it... They meant for us.

So as you know, the hike was no picnic. Especially for me, as my new hiking shoes (or feet torture devices as I like to call them) literally tried to chew my feet off. I wish I could tell you that I didn't have chunks of my feet missing, but I cant.

After the hike we were both starving and dead tired. We decided all we wanted was a very appropriate volcano burrito from taco bell and a few glasses of wine.

I wish I could explain in words how much I was looking forward to sleeping that night. I absolutely needed a comfortable bed to sleep in for somewhere around 30 hours. So after dinner, Christina simply passed out. So I pounded my glass of wine, and woke her up so we could brush our teeth. Little did I know that was the misstep of the day. Isn't there a saying "let sleeping clowns lie"? Something like that. Tragedy struck like lightning. I stepped into the bathroom and as soon as my foot hit tile I heard "Oh NO!" I turned around to this:  

Well, not really that. Try to imagine that but ALL of the wine in the glass in this picture was generously spread out ALL OVER our queen sized bed. Did I say all over the bed? Let me rephrase - ALL OVER the white sheets, white pillows, white mattress cover and down to the mattress itself. Apparently Christina had picked up her glass of wine to finish it and then instantaneously fell back asleep throwing her wine everywhere... At this point my soul literally shattered. I didn't even know what to do. For a few seconds Christina just sat there with the "I know I just did something bad - I'm going to wait and frame my reaction on how Matt reacts" look. I didn't even have the energy to be upset. I went straight into triage mode (again) and started ripping sheets off the bed and running them to the bathroom. I wont bore you with the full details - but we spent the next 90 minutes (well after midnight at this point) cleaning our sheets, pillow cases, mattress, etc. Let's just say not where I thought I was headed. Somehow we managed to get all of the wine out - but at what cost? We no longer had bedding... it was after midnight at a B&B. I was starting to lose it. At this point you need to have seen the movie Dumb and Dumber to understand what happens next. I am fairly irate at this point. I'm tired past the point of exhaustion, in pretty severe pain, and rather frustrated at the situation... and then Christina turns it around and "TOTALLY REDEEMS HERSELF." She somehow managed to find a spare sheet, blanket, and pillows in a closet in our room. This was an oasis in the desert moment for me. If I wasn't so dehydrated from a 12 mile and 6+ hour hike through hell, I might have shed a tear. (By the way did either of us mention we didn't bring enough water??)

So I crashed hard from exhaustion, and then we woke up early to continue our trip that I'm sure Christina will further explain. The most awkward part about this was checking out of the B&B in the morning and hoping that the nice women at the front desk didn't make the connection between our empty bottle of wine and the ton of freshly cleaned, but still soaked, bed linen in our bathroom...

Until next time,

The Other Narrator

P.S. Instead of trying to finish her glass of wine, Christina should have locked it up in a Cabernet...