As if the day of our arrival wasn’t excellent enough, we were invited to the home of another former cruiser and his wife on Saturday. It was May 1st, or May Day Lei Day as many Hawaiians celebrate, and our hosts were having a low country crab boil. The Dungeness crabs had flown in from the Pacific Northwest, and the feed included a mélange of corn on the cob, sausage, other veggies, too many deserts, and of course libations. We hadn’t gotten ourselves together enough to bring a side dish, so simply brought some of that fine Hinano lager purchased at vast expense in Hao.
John and Hauoli opened their lovely home in the Puna district to a lovely group of folks, Mike and Nancy were kind enough to fetch us yet again and return us to our dinghy, and we had a great evening. There was another former cruiser couple among the guests along with Scott and Emily, a young couple who had relocated from Southern California due to the lower cost of living on the Big Island. WTF? - that got my attention. Scott and Emily had purchased a 3-acre parcel of land for $40,000 and found a couple of new yurts on Craigslist which they erected with permanent foundations with an adjoining porch in between. This we had to see!
On Sunday we toured the bay in our dinghy, poking our nose into Radio Bay, the former favorite destination for visiting yachties. Rumor has it that the locals have wanted the cruisers out of there for years and when during a covid lockdown some cruisers got caught having a group cookout ashore the die was cast. Now there’s a big sign at the entrance to the small bay informing all comers that the bay is permanently closed. Being the good doobies we are, we didn’t trespass long enough to get caught, and were soon on our way to the river entrance where there’s a small marina adjacent to Suisan Fish Market. It’s just a concrete side tie affair on the street side, and there we happened upon a lovely old wooden boat being worked on by owners Seth and Ellen. Turns out Seth is in the IT business and Ellen is a journalist, writing pieces for Classic Boat and other pleasure yachting publications. They invited us to secure our dinghy their boat, Celeste, anytime we wished to go ashore. Might enhance security to have folks around each day. With parking across the street and only a mile walk to the famed Hilo Farmers Market, that sounded good to us!
Darned if John didn’t offer us his spare transportation appliance, a 2007 Nissan Versa “island car” that he and Hauoli just hang on to for visitors. Mike came in on the Monday morning for his canoe workout and ran us back out there on his way home. From there we drove down to Pahoa, considered the “Wild West” of the big island, where we found an interesting little village and a pretty darn good Thai restaurant. After a lovely meal we continued on, driving the “red road”, a coastal tour through rain forest and along rugged shores then stopping in for a visit with Scott and Emily along an introduction to yurt living. Amazing!
When we arrived at Hilo we had been at sea for two weeks so no coronavirus quarantine was required. We wanted to get the Pfizer vaccine and happened upon Safeway just after sorting out new cell phone plans at T-Mobile (Magenta Max +, babee, the geezer plan with pretty much unlimited LTE data)! The Safeway pharmacy staff were very friendly, noting that they had a full roster for the week but would put us on their wait list. Darned if they didn’t call us in the following day.
By our fourth day in Hilo, we’d made a bunch of new friends, sorted out a better cell phone plan, and gotten sorted out on our first Pfizer jab. We’d discovered great craft beer, had that cheeseburger in paradise, Dungeness crab, and some great Thai food. I reckon we were exceeding expectations!
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