Saturday, March 01, 2008

Saturday!!! Keauhou Farmers' Market!! We showed up bright and early at 9 AM, and made out very well.

Things we bought:
- Six lulos
- Small jar of lulo jam (it says "lulu jam" on the label)
- Small jar of rose petal jam (for Dean; I think it's awful) (both jams and the lulos were from Kanalani Ohana Farm)
- Two Kona limes (they are orange colored and look like tangerines!)
- Four more strawberry papayas
- Two gigantic side-of-road style papayas ($1.50 for big, $1 for medium, 50¢ for tiny)
- A pamplemousse (a real one--not a grapefruit!)
- Six yellow pitaya!!! (they were expensive--$5/lb!) (six cost $10!) (but they are my favorite) (I was so excited that they are still in season, and the guy seemed to have lots, too!)
- Small jar of meyer lemon butter from Hoku Farms (oh God, it is amazing!)
- Tiny Hoku Farms meyer lemon tart (for me) and tangelo/coconut tart (for Dean), which we ate on the spot. We each tried the other guy's but liked our own tons better! The crust part was sort of whole wheaty-tasting, in a good way, and the inside of mine was totally creamy and tart and delicious! Dean's was sweeter.
- Iced Kona Lisa coffee (the lady who sold it to me told me their coffee won the Keauhou Farmers' Market best Kona coffee contest)
- Million-juices combo drink (for Dean) (he slurped it down so fast, I only got to try one sip)

Also tried a lulo drink sample (fantastic!) (the recipe is 1/2 pulverized lulo, 1/2 water + sugar to taste) and a sample of soursop. I liked the soursop! It was similar to an atemoya or cherimoya (other than all the cool spikes on the outside), but pleasingly sour. Not overboardly sour, but a good amount.

When we got back, we ate all our side-of-the-road papayas, which were now optimally ripe. (Except I OD'ed and gave some of mine to Dean.) They were milder than the Bong ones, but still very good and flavorful in a more subtle way. We used three different varieties of limes on the papayas and had a big lime contest.

Bong ***** (all-around excellent)
South Kona Fruit Stand **** (sweeter)
Kona Lime (from Farmers' Market; orange colored) *** (didn't taste very limey)

Later we had English muffins with all our spreads and had a spreads contest.

"Lulu" (Lulo) Jam *****
Meyer Lemon Butter *****
Rose Petal Jam * (top of jar) ** bottom of jar (way too weak! sample at market was stronger; DWP rated it ****) (I rate the whole thing YUCK!)

The lulo jam and meyer lemon butter were both unbelievably good. Better than newbie jam! And I thought of the best use ever for meyer lemon butter: SHAD!

After our dive (I'll post about it separately) we stopped at the International Marketplace and I had a Captain Dano's fresh fish sandwich. It was PREMIUM!! Simple but good. Like something from Kimball Farm! A little boy sold it to me. He looked like Hunter, and his name was Hunter! (I overheard it.) He was very professional. I also got a million soaps from the Goodies Guy. Goodies Guy soap is officially tied with the Vaniglia brand as best soap ever. Dean got a taco salad from the stand near Longs, and while he was munching it, he remarked, "You're so good with your tank now. No crying at all!" :-)

Posted at 8:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Okay--yesterday's dive! (I'm suddenly being attacked by a million tirednesses right now, too, so I hope I can finish this and not get 1,000 days behind. I think the tiredness is a combo of lots of surface swimming/currents and vog symptoms. My nose feels all tickley and my eyes hurt. Evil vog!)

Yesterday's was a really good dive. We checked out Four Mile first again (still way too much swell) and then tried Old Airport. Old A looked fine! It was a little hard getting in but that was mostly because it was shallow and there were lots of rocks (only because we went in at the closer side of the cove rather than walking down to the easier entry spot with our heavy tanks) but then we swam out and it felt great--I even rejected Dean's first offer to drop down because I still had energy to go out farther! As we descended, the water was very blue and filled with trillions of tiny jellies. All you had to do was focus your eyes right, and they were everywhere! Like a soup.

We found a nice cushion star with blue markings, then went down to 130 feet (I don't think we've ever gone in the very deep part of Old A before), where there was a row of bright green wire corals growing like crazy springs. I love wire corals! Dean found a baby wire coral to show me. It was only about three inches long! (They're usually around 4 feet long.) We also saw a few garden eels, but only from a distance because they were small ones and their field was deeper than we were (130 feet is the recreational dive limit, so we couldn't descend any farther). It was colder in the very deep part--only 73° instead of 75. On the way up, I played with a big green linckia star, and we saw a large eel. Our no decompression time was ticking down, so we had to keep moving upward before the minutes ran out.

In the less deep parts of the reef, we saw two Crown-of-Thorns--a big crawly green one (it crawled really fast after I teased it) and a little one. And also, a nice big yellow-and-white snowflake moray, all the way exposed! I tugged on Dean like mad to get his attention when I saw it. It was about three feet--really long for a snowflake eel!! So pretty. I hope he got some good pictures. It was exceptionally calm and clear underwater. So easy to breathe and move. Good, good dive.

Posted at 7:25:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Friday, February 29, 2008

I failed to post about the pineapple yesterday! I wrote it in my blog notebook but when I composed the entry I left that part completely out. I guess I was too distracted by the whales. (Almost every time I write whales, I accidentally type "whaples" and have to go back and correct it.) Anyway, I slaughtered the fatted pineapple! Hack, hack, hack. It was hard work! And it was so juicy. When I gave Dean his share I kept asking him if he liked it but he only responded by making slurpy sounds while devouring it on down.

We also ate six papayas from our most recent acquisitions (three per day). So far the Bong puhs are definitely winning, but we haven't tried the side-of-the-road ones yet (they aren't quite ripe enough). I tried to convince Dean I'm allergic to papaya skin, but he won't believe me. It might be true.

I'm so sleepy tonight. I think it's because I did lots of surface-swimming and climbing around with my tank on. I was really strong and had lots of energy! But not now. Anyway, it's a good thing. You're supposed to be tired at night in Hawaii.

I will write about today's dive tomorrow, because I am too tired now. I have it all written down (sort of). Dean helped me remember at dinner, because I lost the removable part of my custom-modded wrist-mounted dive slate, and all of my notes with it. :-( I have no idea exactly when or how, but it must've been torn away when I was coming in through all the waves and shallow lava rocks at Old Airport. We sort of came in at a less-than-optimal spot, so it was a bit rough. We looked for it after I noticed it was missing (which wasn't until after we'd finished de-gearing, since it was just the top part with all the writing on it), but to no avail... it could have been anywhere in the whole big ocean by then.

I was really bummed, but Dean got me a fancy new one at Big. It's insanely fancy! It's eight feet long, uses vellum, and has 42 scrolly frames. It's also black, so it'll blend in with my arm a lot better, and has orange trim. When we were looking at it/testing it out, Dean and Dean (BID Dean / DWP) kept joking around about how we'd have to buy it if we did various things to it, and then Sara joined in with the goofing, and soon I was grinning like crazy and laughing, no longer bummed at all. When we decided to buy it, Sara drew a whole scene on it for me! So now I have a permanent first frame drawn by Sara. :-) (Sara also said, "You're my favorite customers" this morning when we stopped by to exchange our tanks!) I love Dean and Sara! And also MY Dean, of course. :-)

Posted at 8:50:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

We heard humpback whales while diving! It was very, very cool. Humpbacks winter in Hawaii (and summer in Alaska) and it's where they mate and breed, so it's also where they sing. There are lots of whale watchers around now, lined up along the northern shores, staring out over the ocean with and without binoculars, trying to glimpse the whales offshore spouting, breaching, playing, slapping the sea with their huge mermaid tails. Being a whale watcher and seeing a distant whale jumping around is cool, I guess, but it's nowhere near as cool as being a whale listener.

I knew it was possible to hear whales this time of year (and even see them underwater, if you're really lucky) from reading online about some divers' experiences at Puako, so we hoped we might encounter some there; however, once again, Puako was way too rough to dive. The waves looked good for surfers, but not for us. :-( We checked out both possible entry points and decided to drive up to Sug (aka Mahukona) rather than get pounded.

Puako is about an hour from where we're staying, and Sug's another half hour north on top of that, so it would have been a bummer to drive all that way and not be able to dive at all, but Sug looked calm enough (we've snorkeled there when it was rougher) so we followed Dean's famous words of wisdom about how all you gotta say is sug to "make lemons into lemonade." A pair of snorkelers getting out told us it was really "murky," but Dean and I both agreed an IFR dive would be better than no dive.

We descended and followed the old coral-encrusted chain all the way out; then, maybe 50 yards past the end of the chain Dean heard faint sounds and signaled to me to stop with him and listen. We sunk to the sand at 33 feet and rested holding onto a rock, staying really still, concentrating... after a few moments, we both heard it and nodded to each other, confirming. Each time we heard it we nodded to each other. It was difficult to hear because the sound of our scuba bubbles completely drowned it out, so we could only hear while inhaling or holding our breaths (which is dangerous to do while diving) or while breathing out incredibly slowly. Dean held his breath (he told me later), but I was good and didn't do it, even though it took crazy amounts of control to breathe out insaaaaaaanely slowly, one bubble at a time, and not make any noise. It was really hard to do! Every few breaths I'd have to take a deep and fast-exhaley breath just for relief. After not too long, we synchronized our noisy exhales to optimize silent listening time.

There were high sounds and deep sounds, and they came and went, with pauses in between. We swam out farther and stopped to listen again at 47 feet, and farther again at 52 feet. Each time the singing was louder and easier to hear (although we could never hear it over the sound of our bubbles). The spot at 52 feet was really good, with almost constant vocalization.

Dean wrote on my slate:
#1) Mooooooooo
#2) Woo wooo
I asked which was low and which was high, and he said "Mooooooooo" was low and "Woo wooo" high.

We couldn't tell how many whales there were, but it definitely sounded like multiple. There were lots of triggerfish (not humus, but other types) swimming around, and they looked like they were listening, too. It was nice and calm underwater, although the viz wasn't the greatest (but it wasn't that bad, at depth), so it was very easy to stay extremely still and listen raptly. Every time we heard the call or response we nodded to each other. It was cool. An ethereal yet resonant, carrying, three-dimensional sound, so distinctive. Our whales sounded happy, not spooky.

We stopped for dinner at Cafe Pesto on the way back, which was the right choice. Sometimes Cafe Pesto is just ordinary-level good, but sometimes it's amazing, and today was one of those times. I ordered a cappuccino (made from Kona espresso) and as I was walking to the ladies' room I saw the barista making it. He noticed me staring so I said, "That's my cappuccino!" and he said, "Extra foam, right?" I nodded. Him: "It's all about the foam!" Me: "That's what I think!" Then he called it a "happy cappuccino." When I came out, he followed me and hand-delivered it to our table. It was good, and totally kicked the tail of my vog headache.

Then Dean ordered the soup special, and tried to get me to sample some. L: "What kind is it?" D: "Cream of yummy." (It was cream of pepper, and I did not like it, but Dean did.)

Later, Laura: "I think this is the best pizza I've ever gotten here."
Dean: "This is the best soup I've ever gotten here."
Laura: "You've never gotten a soup here."

I ordered the pizza with sweet chili shrimp, cilantro crème fraîche, shiitake mushrooms and (bonus added by me) vine-riped tomatoes. The tomatoes were key. Each slice had one large juicy red tomato slice and with one succulent pink shrimp on top. People walking by kept commenting, "That looks so good." It was beautiful (and delicious).

I also got a Paradise Passion, natch. Not getting a Paradise Passion at Cafe Pesto would be like not ordering mac nut Tropical Dreams ice cream at the Kope place in Hawi. It was so superb, especially especially especially the li hing mui salt edge. Li hing mui and salt is a licking marriage made in heaven. I copied the drink description from the menu: "Fresh island liloko`i and citrus accented with salted li hing miu." And some kind of alcohol, but I don't know what. I guess it's a secret, like the meaning of whale song.

Posted at 9:41:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Finally managed to go diving! We had a great deep dive at Honaunau, after first checking out Ke`ei and deciding it looked too rough there. On the way to Ke`ei, there were multiple instances of little tables set up along the side of Napoopoo Road, each at the end of a driveway belonging to a person with extra fruit on his fruit trees. The tables had fruit laid out with signs written with Sharpie on cardboard, and a little cash box to leave money if you took some. Dean pulled over and I leaped out at a table that had papayas--"$1 small / $2 big." The big ones were huge and round, like really large acorn squash! (A very weird shape for papaya.) There were only three left, so I snagged them all. We stopped at another table that had citrus, but they were all out of limes, so I didn't get anything there.

We also got more papayas at South Kona Fruit Stand (they had better looking ones this time), plus limes and two loquats. (I don't think I've ever had loquats before...) Dean told me later that when he was choosing the papayas he noticed they had stickers on the bottoms that said "Diamond Head" on them!! What the heck--they had to import them from Oahu?! We stopped at Bong's to get still MORE papayas and limes, just in case. (And because we need LOTS.) Dean is such a Bong fan now. He always wants to stop there, and even got a smoothie today! The crazy Bong lady has the worst sense of customer service ever, though. She's the total opposite of Beth. It's extremely difficult to figure out how to actually buy stuff from her, and she's always ignoring you, muttering weird stuff under her breath, and generally making it seem like she wishes you weren't there. If the fruit weren't so good, I'd be too intimidated to persevere.

The dive was really nice--better than our most recent Honaunau dives. We swam out and dropped down deep, then spent much of the dive pretty deep. As we were swimming out, I was nice and warm under my new hat, but when we descended to 130 ft. I was cold. The winter ocean here is only 75°... in November it's 78° or 79°, and the difference is noticeable. I thought I was going to get all permanently chilled right away, but once we ascended to around 40 feet I wasn't too cold anymore. It was definitely colder than usual, but tolerable. My hat is good!

The big gradual hill of coral reminded me of Ke`ei. It felt great to be under water again, and all my gear felt really good. My mask didn't leak one drop! That deep part of Honaunau has tons of plate coral--just fields of it--some of the plates quite huge. I don't think we usually see plate coral elsewhere, or at least not anywhere near as much. We found a weird creature or plant at around 85 feet, and I can't figure out what it was. I couldn't find it in my creature book so I think it might be a plant. It looked sort of like an anemone, with ten long lobey arms, each one branched near the end. They all connected in the center. I took off my glove and felt it, and it wasn't sticky/grabby like most anemone--just sort of slimy. It was very cool looking, though. We saw another smaller one less deep, with much more stubby arms, and it was purplish. I think the first was probably purplish too, but the color didn't show at depth. I signed for Dean to shine his dive light on it, but it didn't work because he'd forgotten to put the batteries in!

We did lots of signing! It was really useful. It's a little bit harder wearing gloves, but not bad. Mostly we signed silly conversational stuff, like Dean jokingly asked me if I felt "wacky" at 130-ish feet, and when I didn't get it, he added "narc" and I immediately knew what he meant. (Nitrogen narcosis.) He found a nice coral ledge our pal Sharkey from 4 Mile would like to snuggle under, so he went in and pretended to be a sharkey and when he signed "hungry" I ran away!!! And we found a nice Crown-of-Thorns and talked about how big and pretty it was and that it was so green.

This morning I had a weird dream where I was involved in an airplane disaster (a big plane) and I was finger spelling in the dream! I guess I was practicing in my sleep.

Posted at 8:17:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

I forgot to mention, I wanted to see all the snow on the top of Mauna Kea, but we couldn't see Mauna on our road trip yesterday because it was too cloudy and/or voggy! Also, I failed to mention that we had a big "snowed in" all-day snowstorm at home the day before we left. It was beautiful, but I was too busy packing to post about it. It's a shock to the brain how colorful everything is here, compared to the drab bare brownness at home this time of year. So much green and zillions of shades of ocean blue, and every bright color flowers everywhere. It's very intense.

Posted at 11:20:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

On the way to get gear at Big Island Divers, we pulled over at Four Mile to check it out. Laura: "I don't think so!" A wide, white wall of froth. Dean: "Look at the curl!" We've never seen waves like that at Four Mile. It was beautiful, clear aqua blue and white.

Dean (the Dean who works at Big, not DWP), Virginia and Sara were at BID, and Virginia couldn't believe it when we told her we were last there in November; she thought it only seemed like a few weeks! Dean told us that the swells are coming from the south and that two divers had just returned gear because they waited for hours and couldn't get in at Honaunau. (!!) Honaunau was our backup idea (it's pretty protected there, so it's usually a safe bet when it's rough elsewhere), so we decided to drive up north instead and check out Puako even though we knew it was very unlikely it would be calm at Puako. If it was too rough, we'd just turn it into a Hawi road trip and wait for tomorrow to go diving.

We checked out both Puako and Sug and both were too rough, but we picked up my huge best-t-shirt-ever kanban (four mauvehound and two smoky blue) that I'd reserved over the phone from Kohala Divers (note taped to bag: "Laura Pedx, pd. for"), had Cornwell Kona and chai at the Kope place in Hawi, and made my token Persimmon visit. Persimmon is still down the well, but I did get a weird Fomato card that made me crack up and two sheets of wrapping paper. Dean ordered coconut-strawberry swirl ice cream at the Kope place and then regretted it when he tried my mac nut (how many times have I pointed out that one should always order mac nut Tropical Dreams ice cream??) but I took pity on him and fed him some. The Kope place had a Hawaii Island Journal cover hanging on the wall with a gigantic headline about "CHOKE TRAFFIC" in Kona and a paranoid handwritten comment that it's coming soon to Kohala. It's pretty impossible to picture "Choke Traffic" in Hawi if you ask me.

We checked out Queens and Kings to snail more and avoid the Kona Choke (it's perfectly fine as long as you don't hit the wrong times of day), practicing signing on the way, but the Gourmet Market still isn't finished. Lots of other new stores at Queens are, but none of them are terribly exciting. (Oshima just can't be beat!) Dinner at Dara's, which was really good, although it seemed like the staff was making bets about Dean's "three out of four" hotness-level order (which he then requested a side of chili paste for, even though he told me it was "actually hot" and that "four would be too hot"). After we finished, the manager came up and asked us how it was, and when Dean said it was perfect he slapped him on the shoulder with a canary-swallowing grin and called him a "tough guy." Dean got basil fried rice with tofu and I had pineapple rice again (it has cashews, raisins, pineapple, chicken and shrimp, and is served inside an actual pineapple). We both said we'd order it again!

I've had an endless headache and wonky, gluey-feeling, fluctuating eyes all day; I think it's from vog. That would make sense, because Sunday and Monday were nice and clear, but today looked all hazy.

Posted at 8:34:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Reusable bags are the greatest! We got a billion, at Longs and KTA. KTA even had wine bags (with dividers so the bottles don't clonk together) and insulated bags (with zippers on top!) to keep stuff cold. Even Dean was impressed by the bags' usefulness. It was super-easy to carry the groceries! The KTA bags are black with tropical fruit pictures on them, and the Longs ones are cream and say stuff about Longs. They're kind of boring looking, but since Longs is my fav I had to get them.

What we did yesterday:
- Killer taco x three (Dean kept sneaking back in and ordering more!!) (I just had my usual two fish tacos, natch)
- Kailua Candy Co. Kona coffee (with a macadamia nut honu [turtle] on the side!)... just what I wanted, very mellow and relaxed
- Locked in our Na Hale o Storage for another year! The Na is great. General Delivery is great! Even the Marts are great! We found some great gear drying stands, lava chairs, and a foldy metal laptop stand so I can use my laptop with the keyboard hooked up.
- Dinner at O's, with the O's coconut cake, slightly warm. *whimper* Best dessert in the world.

At Ghost Beach there were no people in sight, and a rainbow with all the colors intense and distinct arced across the big fluffy grey storm clouds draped around Hualalai mountain. The ocean was dark teal. It was a very pleasant temperature for being outside, and we nestled into the lava to read, me with my new Acanthaster planci book, first using my Oshima Beater as a pillow, then wearing it like a hug. Laura: "The ocean looks really full." Dean: "Full!? Full of what?" Laura: "Full of water!" We eventually got chased off by high tide, but it was sunset by then anyway, and I'd finished the introduction and two chapters. I feel so relaxed here.

Scribbled in my notebook last night:
spinning ceiling fan
earth tones, clean lines, breeze
Dennis Pavao, circling
my feet hurt but all the rest of me feels good

Posted at 11:40:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

The papaya-with-lilokoi thing is good, but not as good as papaya-with-lime. Also, Dean invented yogurt-in-a-payapabowl, like soup-in-a-breadbowl. It's quite good as long as it's haupia yogurt, not lychee (yuck).

Posted at 10:45:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.

It feels so nice to be back in Hawaii. The air is crisper than when we usually come but the sky is just as black and full of stars. We practiced our signs on the plane. I LOVE McGee. Dean agreed he's a total Boothby and would "definitely" wear zipper boots. Hee. I was grinning like a goof watching. We have a yellow Jeep this time, and Dean said, "I would be jumping up and down if it wasn't so late."

The first thing we did on Sunday was visit the South Kona Fruit Stand. Beth told us South Kona had a huge flood on November 28th and big rocks were washed down the hill, filling the entire place... refrigerators and stuff were washed all the way down to the road! The whole road (highway) was closed because of the flood. It was a giant mess and the whole place was a shambles. We were here then--that was the day we were picking out our Na Hale o Storage in Kona--but we were staying in Kohala so we didn't know it was that bad. They also had three additional floods, in December and January! They didn't have flood insurance or anything (it was a weird record amount of rainfall, and hadn't rained that much in 100 years), but the South Kona community came together and helped out cleaning/fixing it up each time! The place looked great, and we never would have guessed it was messed up. They built a wall that would help divert the water somewhat if it happens again. Poor Beth!! She was really happy to see us, as always, and gave us both hugs. :-)

We got lots of fruit, including apple bananas, oranges and tangerines, a pineapple and a Mexican bar lime, which is supposed to taste like a combo between a lemon and a lime. It's yellow like a lemon. The papayas were kind of scrawny, unripe, and pathetic (Beth said it was from a lack of rainfall lately), but we bought a bunch anyway because we need our daily papaya + lime breakfast! (Beth suggested we also try papaya + lilokoi, so we bought a lilokoi for that purpose.) However, we stopped at Bong Brothers (yes, we really did, and it was DEAN'S IDEA) afterwards and they had boxes of nice fat papayas, so we got a bunch more.

We also got two smoothies at South Kona Fruit Stand (a new lilokoi one and pineapple party--both were superb) and ate sandwiches up at the cafe area that looks over the road. It was very pleasant, although I was almost-but-not-quite chilly at the higher elevation, even with my sweater on (with shorts). I commented to Dean, "I predict I'm going to be crying about being cold and I'll end up buying some sort of snuggly sweatshirt thing at Oshima Surf or somewhere." Dean said, "Nope, I predict we'll go to Oshima Surf right now and you'll get one immediately." Dean is very proactive when it comes to "the path of least crying." Of course I was all incredulous, "What the heck?? Right now? I'm just going to walk into Oshima Surf with you and instantly find the perfect thing?" But he was right. We stopped at Oshima Surf on the way back and Dean found the best-ever zippy hooded O'Neill beater sweatshirt for me. It fits perfectly and feels snug as a bug in a rug. (The best part is the thumb holes.) There was only one instance of it, too. I am 100% in love with it and have been using it tons. It's been warm and sunny during the day, but crisper in the evenings and mornings. The feel reminds me of staying at the cottage, for some reason. It's nice having the windows open and feeling the cool air, hearing the birds. Our condo unit is really nice--the decor is minimalist and relaxing... very "us." I like it here.

Posted at 9:07:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.