Island Tuner

I've been driving around a lot during the last few weeks. According to that odometer thing, the total is in the ballpark of 500 miles. That's a lot. In the time it took to drive this distance, I've been listening to the radio the entire time. Since Hawaiian NPR broadcasts from Honolulu and isn't always in range, I've had to settle for second choice. The only good station I could find was Native FM, which always has some kind of Polynesian funk playing or any song by Bob Marley. This also seems to be the station favored by many shops for ambient music as well, so not only do I hear it on the road but also when I make a stop. Take this song for example:

Much of the music here seems to be either about eating wild animals or not giving a shit about civilization. I just have to look around me for this to make sense to me. Music like this accurately describes many of the people I've seen milling around on the streets. The local ones, anyway. How about this one:

I just like the line in this song about having a house on the moon. That would be so awesome. I live on the moon, bitch. Next?

Who the hell sings a song about being too shy? How can you be too shy and be singing about it, that is a paradox. But wait -what if you threw in an acoustic guitar and sang it yourself- my god, it's just too perfect. Teen Idol Rockstar Status is suddenly a reality!

Can't think of any others at the moment.

Day 27/28: Nights on the Pier

I've been night fishing off the docking area where they launch boats on the Kona shore. Lots of local characters gather here to fish, many of whom seem to sleep on the pier as well. Casting here is great fun because open access to deep water makes the sport very easy and you can see the fish illuminated by the lights on the dock. The fish that come up at night are very different than the ones you see during the day. They are pigmented red and have huge eyes for adaptation to low-light conditions, such as that Squirrelfish pictured above. Around 2AM, I pulled up a Spotted Puffer, which caused it to partially inflate, so I excitedly threw it back in the water. It floated on the surface, slowly deflating until it was back to normal shape and then swam off into the darkness.

Question: What country's flag is this??

Answer: wtf why would that be the Hawaiian state flag? What is this some kind of pseudo British colony? I'm sure if I grew up here that I would know the history of this design, probably having to do with Captain James Cook, but as an outsider it just doesn't make sense.

I love this show Man Vs Wild because the guy is so dramatic about everything. Fake callers are all over him, ruining his squeaky clean survivalist image with a barrage of FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE.
This video is fakers gold. They filmed him walking over a supposedly dangerous lava field just a few feet away from a Hawaii Volcano National Park scenic point on Crater Rim Drive. It's a faaaake!

Despite that little gaffe, I still use this show as a reference for climbing coconut trees.

Day 22

Build me an army worthy of Mordor
Worthy of Mordor
Worthy of Mordor

Build me an army

Worthy of Mordor

Worthy of Mordor
Worthy of Mordor -dor -or
That is a secret crater.

Day 22: Volcano Town

As I left the Southern end and approached the Volcano area, a sullen grey fog began to roll in around my car. A partially obscured roadsign read "Welcome to Silent Hill" or something like that, which made me increase my driving speed a little. No really, it said that. I swear it.
This is the current state of the island's active volcano, Mount Kilauea, which has recently been spewing all this heavy gas into the air, hazing up the entire island with Vog. The air was particularly thick as I approached Volcano National Park, which overlooks a barren crater of charred black rock and vents of skulking steam here and there. A thick column of white smoke was streaming out of one of the craters to the South, an area of the park that had been closed off and considered too dangerous for the public. I spent 2 days kicking it in the park. No matter where I went, a faint sulferous smell was drifting.

Day 20: Giant Avocado

Despite my best effort, I couldn't finish eating it. It's like a eating 2 bowls of raw egg yolk. Tropical avocados are freakin huge. I'd say one of these is about equivalent to 4 of the hass variety.

Day 20: The Deep South

I'm entering the South end of the island. This is an area that has been hit hard in the last decade. Both the macadamia nut industry and the sugar cane farms in this area lost to South American farms, putting everyone out of work. In parts of the southern tip, locals tough guys are known to be hostile to outsiders. Some of the land here has been under contention for decades and still is today. One of the funny things about this area is a cluster of houses called HOVE, which you can see on the map as the matrix sliced into the rainforest.

Day 19: What you Need

The spiteful gravestone of a local candy store.
The contracting US economy has hit the State of Hawaii especially hard. The Big Island industry is built mostly on tourism and thus relies heavily on the "trickle down effect" to run an effective market. As non-Republicans well know, this type of economic system has some glaring flaws.

For ordinary Hawaiians, it has exacerbated the downturn and made them more vulnerable to the instability of boom/bust. It has made a proportion of the population exit the market and switch to self reliant "live off the land" hippie lifestyles, burdening the provision of public services. Generally, native residents here are undereducated, in need of medical services, and alarmingly poor. Although dubbed "paradise", this place is considered by many to be a dead zone.

Day 19: Pride of Hawaii

Hawaiians love Obama. Why not? He is considered one of their own, despite being on the Senate for Illinois. One of perks widely expected to be passed with Obama in office is the Akaka Bill, a provision for native Polynesians in Hawaii to receive the same benefits as Native Americans. It's not as simple as it sounds. The terms of the Akaka Bill touch on controversial issues of questionable linage, racial discrimination, and some kind of "native only" trust fund creeping around here.

Week 3: Hotelu

I've moved into a hotel room as a change of pace. I'm staying at the Manago, a famous historic inn run by several generations of the Manago family who are prominent Japanese Americans here. This place is popular among travelers on the move, as the accommodations are spartan, without the exorbitant spendthrift of resort style hotels.

This got me thinking: what happened to the Japanese here during WW2 Japanese internment? Japanese people have been living here for centuries as work hands in tropical agriculture. Were they interned here or sent to the lower 48?
What about after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Was there an anti-Japanese race riot here? What happened to all that rampant 50's Jap racism? God damnit conventional history sure is half assed.

Day 13: Scooore

Walking out of the local McDonald's today with my "Taro Pie" I had a stroke of luck. Outside was a macadamia nut tree that I'd never noticed before and on the ground were hundreds of fallen nuts. Holy shit! Free mac nuts! Picking them off the ground, I filled a plastic bag full, which was the equivalent of about $30. Awesome. I will have to be more watchful for them from now on.

Day 12: Market of Farmers

Hawaiian marketplaces are very lush. Unlike drab California Farmers Markets on tired Saturday mornings, the Hawaiian market is open 6 days a week and features brilliant tropical fruits and wares, a bounty of the tropical yearlong harvest and a strong tourist bent. Hawaiian merchants also happen to be very effective salesmen, frequently taking the time to converse, freely giving out fresh samples, and playing the "things in common" card to make things more hospitable for the buyer. However, visitors to the marketplace should be aware of rampant price discrimination between the higher tourist price, and the lower resident price.

This affects me because I'm trying to buy food but I want to evade the tourist price, which isn't always easy. I'm after prominent local food: papayas, starfruit, macadamia nuts, coconuts, pineapples, mangoes, and tangerines. I have found that the best way to go about this is to put up a certain amount of money (say five dollars) and ask how much of "X good" you can get for it. Pictured above is "ranbutan", a fruit similar to lychee that's great on the road. I put up a dollar and got a "handful". The stated price was $5/lb.

Day 14:

Damnit! I touched a spiky urchin and now I've got barbs embedded in my foot. Online medical treatment guides said to take a piss on it, which I did, but it didn't seem to help. On the other hand I caught this "Stocky Hawkfish" today. After taking the hook, it proceeded to tangle the line in some coral, so I had to dive in and retrieve it by hand. I find it pretty weird that even though I'm always using the same bait (shore crabs), something different always comes up.

Day 13:

I've got a great fishing system going here. First, I go to the shoreline and start turning over rocks, which yields shore crabs. I crush the crabs and use them as bait by affixing one to a hook and line. Then I swim out into the water with this contraption and look for places with clusters of fish to drop my bait off. It's the most engaging and satisfying form of fishing ever because you can watch the fish the entire time to see what they're doing. Using this method I caught this Saddle wrasse, which is considered a common bait fish. Not enough to eat.

Day 11: Vog

The Vog is really rolling in. Vog: noun. Volcanic Smog
This guy told me that it was coming from this lava dome on the South edge of the Island, and was ruining everything from perfectly blue skies to idyllic sunsets. Might even bad for your health. Whatever man, this is great. If it wasn't for this I would be sunburned all over.

Day 10: Public Anomaly

On the inter-community bus line from the airport I saw this bewildered looking guy with a backpackers hiking pack wearing winter clothes. (the temperature is 85 degrees) He was fresh off the plane and he didn't have enough money to make the bus fare, which is a freakin dollar.
I asked him what the backpack was for. He said he was a college dropout from Oregon who came here to make a new life. His speech had a bit of a noxious frat boy sort of accent. He knows a few people on the Island but that's pretty much all he seemed to know, and he bought a 1-way ticket. Crazy plan huh?
"That's what everybody says.", he said. He was a little defensive about discussing this subject and asked me if I was being "facetious", which made me draw an eyebrow. Zach was his name. I directed him to a local hostel and left to pick up a car rental. I gave him my number and invited him to a drink on the boulevard if he got his shit in order by tonight. I could use a few acquaintances around town.

Later he texted me saying that he "found his place". Whatever that means.

Day 9: Beach Bumming

I've been camping on the beach. I have a tent on a patch of dry sand. All around me is lava rock, pitch black volcanic stone that is frozen in a state of fluid turbulence. One of the fun parts about this living arrangement are the opportunities to forage for food. Fish can be pulled of speared from the shoreline 50 feet away. Palm trees provide coconuts to people than can figure out ways to scale the trunk. Coconuts are so satisfying. Once cracked open, they provide a cocktail of sweet richly tart water and succulent coconut meat. Throw the leftover coconut husk on the ground near the shore and droves of hermit crabs will come to salvage it.
I sit all day on the rocks watching ships go by, some filled with fat tourist snorkelers, others filled with what could either be the merchant marine or fucking buff local kids doing "Stand up Surfing", which is all the rage. Fishing and foraging for food takes time, and I've got a lot of it. I pass the rest of the day playing with my machettes or sharpening them.
Local hobos show up every now and again, camping a few clicks away but keeping to themselves. Yesterday I swam into 40ft of open water to see where the fish were. The ones I wanted to catch weren't around.

About once a day I drive into Kona town for some civilized food and the internet connection at one of the many Starbucks here. As I return to the shoreline, the full moon is usually sky high, lighting up the night with a florescent glow and moving the water level up and down a few feet. It's about when the moon is highest that I go to bed. The sand is lumpy and kind of tough but for some reason I never have any problems sleeping.

Day 5: Fresh Catch

After countless failures, I succeeded in catching a flagfish by using hobo fishing with a bit of bread on a hook. It took several days of trial and error to get this rather unscientific formula to work.

In California, fishing is a huge pain because of licensing and seasonal requirements, but in the State of Hawaii, fishing is 100% free so it has a ubiquitous popularity on every shoreline. Even fish harvesting with nets and spears is legal, so often you see people wandering around the reef collecting food the ancestoral way.

Hawai'i Island

I'm on the "Big Island". I'm here on a 50-day trip to hang out on the island as if I was one of the 150,000 people actually living here. I'll be on the move a lot, traversing tourist resorts, blocks of city, barren rock deserts, pockets of rainforest, slopes of the volcano, and bodies of water. I'll have to find ways to get by in an island society and think of ways to survive in isolated areas. I'll be making dealings with the people here to get what I need. I'll make little trades to get what I want. Knowing me, I'll probably do some dumpster diving too.

The Island is 4000 square miles. It contains temperate zones comprising every climate on earth from frigid permafrost to tropical jungle. As an added bonus there's "new land" or lava zones that are still in semi liquid state. Society here consists of 2 classes: euphoric tourists and hotshot locals. ...I suppose there are also stupid locals but I like to pretend those don't exist... There are pockets of affluence where the disgustingly rich reside and places that scream of ridiculous poverty, and on top of that there's a good skew in ethnic distribution to make everyone contemptuous. And there's me, the guy passing through. Hey there.