I arrived at the Kona airport on Sunday at 2pm. It's a small park-like airport with an outdoor picnic-under-palm-trees feel in the arrivals area. EJ stuffed me and my bags into her car and we drove straight to a beautiful beach for a picnic and swim. Pretty nice after a bumpy plane ride. I've been at her house for a few days now, just settling in before doing any larger adventures. I've been enjoying the fruits here in magical ways. My first night a ripe mango fell onto my tent (EJ had said they were all over with, out of season). The next day I climbed the big, beautiful tree and found two more! We had a massive wind storm my second night, and some coconuts fell. I machete'd open three so far and enjoyed the green coconut juice. And then there are the mouth-watering tangerines that we stopped for on the way to a hike, at the home of a previous neighbor of EJ's: a 96 year old japanese woman who still gardens!
Yesterday was a fascinating hike down into Waipio Valley. The steeped road in Hawaii: some idiot just offered Lance Armstrong $10,000 if he could bike up the road. It's only a mile but it's a 45 degree angle (25% grade) and I don't think my knees would have made it down if I hadn't turned around and started walking backwards! I must have walked half the way backwards, and it was both surreal and amazing! Waipio Valley is a lush, beautiful paradise but we truncated our journey due to the start of a heavy rainstorm. The swimming in the multi-tiered waterfall will have to wait until next time.
Woven among the mini-adventures and fruit-projects, I am doing a lot of job-searching. I'm trying to keep it balanced between the three prongs: fun adventure/outward focus/social, rest/relaxation/meditation/inward focus, and practical necessity: work search. So far so good but it will be a challenge.
