Grass skirts, ukuleles and surfboards. - Ken

Can you believe that I woke up this morning listening to the cock crow? However, unlike yesterday, rather than listen to them for over an hour I simply closed the window. Yes, I should have done that yesterday. Live and learn. I also woke up with a sore throat. Perfect! 


We have decided that after breakfast we will go to explore the mysteries of the Waimea Valley. I stopped at a grocery store for cough drops to soothe  my throat. What kind of a backward, third world country doesn’t sell cough drops in a grocery store? Oh, they have one and a half aisles of beer, wine and assorted liquors, but not one little slot near the checkouts for a cough drop. I guess they don’t get sick.


Well, never let it be said that I can’t power through adversity!


Back to the Chrysler 300 and power up the highway for a trip back in time. In the parking lot there is a reminder to respect the Hawaiian culture and heritage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grass skirts, ukuleles and surfboards. 

Luckily we had a half off coupon so I didn’t have to suffer too much going in. The valley is really quite beautiful! Filled with trees and flowers of all shapes and sizes. My favourite is the cannonball tree that grows gourd shaped like…well, canonballs. I can’t help but think it had a different name before my ancestors paid them a visit.

We ran into a lovely older woman working in the hibiscus area who although originally from BC is now a Hawaiian. She has studied Hawaiian healing and culture and feels that it is the time of the world for grandmothers to have some influence in the world. I nodded at the appropriate times and pretended to pay attention to her, but I was really looking over her shoulder and haven’t a clue. NO, she was a pretty interesting lady. Louise is going to be pissed at this, but I don’t think that she is reading it anyway.


We continued on to the advertised waterfalls where a few years ago they had divers that would regularly dive off a cliff into the pool. This has been discontinued due to insurance reasons. Who would have thought that jumping off of a cliff into a shallow pool was dangerous and not just stupid? You can swim in the pool and we thought about it but it didn’t look to be the clear blue water I had hoped for. We did get our picture taken there though. We retraced our steps and went back to the apartment. 

The only other thing of note today is that we went to the beach and watched the sunset. It might have been ho-hum to Hawaii standards, but we just loved it. One thing I noted, was that there were a number of people that were doing the same as we were and they appeared to be locals. Pretty romantic! Thinking back on it, the others might have been homeless people and they were waiting for us to go so they could go to sleep.

Well, aloha from paradise.