Day 4 - Captain Cook, Hawaii

The last 24 hours have been an adventure. I'm so proud of Mother.

Night in the barn was very different from day in the barn. When the sun sets everything that lives in the woods starts making a noise. It sounds like and aliens trying to communicate with various sonar devices -- lots of high pitched beeps. Mother and I laughed so hard when we were trying to go to bed and the sounds of the forest filled our little barn. The nice thing about our new home is the view of the stars at night. Just as I was about to go to sleep I told mother, "There's something out there that sounds like a monkey." Then I closed my eyes and drifted off. What I didn't know was that Mother's brain was going, "Monkey? Are there monkeys out there?" She didn't sleep a wink. At some point in the night it started to rain and she woke me up to tell me about it. I got up to check to see if our stuff was getting wet then later to see if the tin roof was leaking. Poor thing thought the rain pounding against our tin roof sounded like an army of drummers and the sleepless night continued whereas I was lulled into the deepest sleep I've had on our trip thus far.

We started our day on the deck of our B&B. We are probably a few hundred feet from the beach but 1,500 feet straight up. Breakfast was delicious. We ate lots of strange fruit, drank some pog (a Passion fruit, Orange and Guava juice blend) and sampled the homemade jellies from fruit grown on the property including jaboticaba and lilikoi. Afterward, our host, John Paul, took us on a tour of the property and quelled mother's concerns about our surroundings. When we were done with the tour, we sat on the lanai, cracked open macadamia nuts and planned our day. I don't know which is more labor intensive, shelling pecans or macadamia nuts. We didn't actually leave the property until after noon but we agreed that we felt like we'd already had quite the adventure.

We spent the afternoon touring around the Kailua-Kona area including lunch in Holualoa and a visit to The Painted Church. We tried to go to Puuhonua O Honaunau, or as most visitors prefer to say "Place of Refuge," but most of it was shut down due to the recent tsunami. Interestingly, while the tsunami did cause some damage, it also unearthed a previously undiscovered archeological site. Unfortunately, Kealakekua Bay sustained a lot of damage as well so we scratched it from our itinerary. While at "Place of Refuge" we walked along the shore and Mother spotted three sea turtles resting on a rock. They were so camouflaged that I would have never seen them if it wasn't for her. They were at least a foot maybe as big as a foot and a half wide and surprisingly thin.


Mother's Highlight: Waking up alive. No, really it was sitting on the porch and smelling a nearby orchid. I expected a floral scent when I sniffed the flower but I couldn't immediately identify the fragrance. Then John Paul told me it was a chocolate orchid and that was it -- chocolate! It smelled exactly like chocolate.

Julia's Highlight: While on the plantation tour with John Paul we saw a male Jackson Chameleon. He moved about as fast as a sloth so we got to see a lot of him. He was probably about... well I think nine inches long and Mother says closer to six so we'll go with 7.5 inches. He was bright green and he had three horns and big eyes. I also enjoyed sitting on the lanai behind the health food store, drinking organic Kona coffee and watching the sunset.