CHAPTER 2 ~ SETTLING IN
Winter in Hawaii
The Four Season Resort on the dry side has a cookie-cutter appearance. The houses look the same, the streets look the same, the front yards look the same.
Everything is extremely well manicured down to the carpet-like grass near the beach. Check out that corner on the lawn!
But this resort, like all on the Kohala Coast, are smack in the middle of lava fields. It's other worldly to drive into these places.
Manifesting Paradise ~ Book Photos
Click here to go to Diane's
Compared to the resort "towns" on the dry side, Honoka'a is a real town with real people. Of course, that's just my opinion.
We have no stop lights and only one four-way stop versus the fancy round-abouts in the resorts.
How's this for real and non-standard? That's the golf cart cum guest cart for the only hotel in town, the Honoka'a Club. We see the cart parked elsewhere when their business takes them other places.
Here it's sitting in front of the Honoka'a Youth Center, where kids can go after school to do homework and hang out in a safe place. I've heard good things about the work they do. I think I will support them next year.
Photo courtesy of Julia Fairchild
I'll never forget the first time I flew into the Kona Airport, January 1995. It was our belated honeymoon. I was sitting in the window seat watching our descent into what looked like hell frozen over. I could not believe my eyes - who would want to visit a place covered in moon rock? Even today arriving by air, I have the same reaction.
That first trip I learned about the two main types of lava: a'a and pahoehoe. A'a is rough. Pahoehoe is smooth and rope-like - easier to walk on. The way to remember the difference is that people who walk on a'a with bare feet say "ah-ah-ah!"
This picture shows both types of lava. The smoother pahoehoe is the older of the two. I can tell that because it already has a few tufts of grass growing on it.
What a difference a year makes! Last year in December, the girls and I visited the Big Island for their interviews with the school. See how cool I'm dressed on that trip up in the ohana? A year later, I'm a weather wimp.