Hi again

Hello everyone,

Last time we posted for real we were about to embark on a long weekend vacation from our longer Hawaiian experience. First off, it took over an hour to get the rental truck. I wasn't sure if my credit card had insurance built in to cover rentals, so I called the company to find out. I spoke to someone who said that I was covered for rental cars. What about rental trucks, I asked. Yes, I was covered for those too. Great! So I signed the papers and we headed out. After a mile or so my mother called to say that she had talked to the same credit card company and they told her trucks were NOT covered. So, we had to go back to the place and buy insurance, an extra $39 a day. Thanks a lot, credit card company.

Anyway, we drove back to Honoka'a to get our bags from the tea garden. We didn't arrive until about 4, and then it took us a while to get our things together. We dragged our feet a little, having tea with the Inos, packing up slowly. After just 3 months living there it had come to feel like home, so it was hard to leave. Finally we got back on the road, trying to make it to Volcano National Park to camp there for the night. We didn't get there until 11pm or so. The gates to the park are always open but they don't bother to staff the place after dark, so we drove right in and stopped at the empty visitors' center to look for camping spots. There were notices up that much of the park was closed to traffic due to high levels of sulfur dioxide, and we didn't want to drive around late at night looking for a campsite that might be closed, so we left the park and camped in a stand of tall eucalyptus and koa trees a few miles down the road.

In the morning we went back to the park, this time paying $10 to get in. I'm glad we had a car to see the park; it stretches over many miles, with old lava flows and lava tunnels spaced out at random intervals. We'll post pictures of the park soon. After a morning of playing on old pahoehoe (the wavy rock created by cooling lava flows) we made the long drive around the south of the island to Captain Cook.

Captain Cook is possibly the nicest place on the island. It's got almost everything Hawaii has to offer in a small area, great vistas, tropical forest, crystal blue waters (Sus said it was like kayaking in Listerine). The town is set on the steep sides of Kealakekua Bay, and the bed and breakfast we stayed at had an amazing view of the bay from 1500 feet up. The place we stayed would make movie stars jealous. It was a beautiful house owned by Kurt and Kana Weigel and their 4-year-old daughter Jenna, whose hospitality was really wonderful. We had a giant bed and bathroom to ourselves, and access to a kayak and other fun stuff. Kurt grows his own coffee and fruit and nuts on his property, so we had the freshest of breakfasts each morning! Talk about keeping food miles down, we were dealing in food inches. It's funny that we are used to being on Hawaii by now, so our vacation wasn't seeing the sights but having a bed and flushing toilet!

We reluctantly left Sunday morning to start our new adventure on our new farm, and in the process I threw my back out, but that's another story. We'll post again soon with pictures and a description of the beautiful jungle farm we live on now.