November 26, 2006

Another leisure month in Paradise......

I spent two weeks housesitting my friend Sylvie's house in Seaview. It was nice to have my own place biking distance from both the beach and Kalani. Yes, it's an outdoor kitchen you see in the picture! The house is completely off the grid like many here, getting water by collecting it from the roof in a big tank and electricity from the sun. The Fridge, stove and hot water are run with propane.

Got a call from Uncle Paul that Uncle Harold and Paul Junior were in town so we all got together for dinner.

I've been keeping in touch with Kalani by stopping by for various events and ecstatic dance, but now I'm working a day a week there. I earn money on a tab that can be used for meals and yoga classes....it doensn't pay much which keeps me focused on why I'm doing it...to stay connected with all the great people. Here I am with the two people I worked for in the spring: Cyd and Barcus. They are both a pleasure to be around. For now I'm working back with Barcus doing landscaping (basically Jungle Control) because I like doing some physical work outside.

I've been wanting to go see the lava again. It's a lot closer now (an hour compared to two in the spring) and the roof of a lava tube caved in creating a "sky light" where you can see the river of lava flowing in the tube below. I had to see it...it's best to hike on a full moon but it kept raining...finally we got our break so some new friends of mine went out to see it. In the picture you can see Justin, Adrien, and Gayatri lit up by the glow of the lava in front of us. (BTW, I found out that Adrien is from SF and his mom taught at Wash...Mrs. Andrea....did any of you guys have her?)

We watched a river of Lava flow into the ocean closer than I've ever been able to safely watch it before. Sometimes lava would explode when it hit the water sending globs of glowing lava 50' into the air like fireworks. And you want to hear somehting crazy....some of the new lava floats on the ocean! You can see blobs of glowing lava crashing in the surf....crazy. We then made our way over to the "skylight" and after letting our eyes adjust were able to see a river of lava flowing at an impressive speed.

Click on image to see a movie of the lava river!

Yes, we were amazed too. We made our offerings to Pele and stared in appreciation.

For the past two weeks, I've been doing a house sit at a place that's only a 5 minute walk to Kehenna beach. It's so nice to make a pot of tea in the morning and drink it while watching the surf. One of these day's I'll make it down there for sun rise.

Yesterday, I walked to another beach called Fox's landing. It's an island of jungle in the middle of barren lava that got spared from the 1983 lava flows. Almost no one knows about it so we had it to ourselves. You can see the steam plume where the new lava hits the ocean in the background.

On the way out there, we saw some incredibly colored lava.

Another stop on the way was this lava tube with a very tiny opening shown below. Supposedly the native hawaiians used this cave as a stronghold when resisting the white man back in the day. The lava tube leads out several hundred yards to the cliffside at the ocean.

At the beach, Justin (who's great grandfather was part monkey) climbed the cocount trees to get us some delicious coconuts. He's been doing this so much that he knows the perfect age coconut to pick which gives a wonderfully sweet water and meat that melts in your mouth.

The variety of flowers here continues to amaze me. Here are a few I've caught with my camera.

Yes, these are Ti plants! Who knew they have flowers? I sure didn't....they started blooming everywhere at once, it's quite a pretty sight.