The Wandering Tattler

Greetings to all of our friends. We've been away from Keene for two weeks now, and a few of your emails suggests that winter has arrived late but with a vengeance in New Hampshire. You have our deepest sympathy.

A quiet day here in the Sandwich Islands. Overcast, mild temperatures, with occasional light showers. This morning Lynn and I drove north to the Kohala Coast, into the same resort area (Mauna Lani) we visited yesterday afternoon. Based on verbal recommendations, we walked to a different beach and spent the day productively snorkeling, dozing, and reading. Our own resort has a beach area, but the wave action is rough and the beach doesn’t have much of a reef for snorkeling.

The Mauna Lani beach we visited today was clean and had been raked that morning. It was surrounded by well manicured lawns, tasteful concession huts, a cafe, and artfully slanted palm trees, and it was supplied with chaise lounges. We shared the beach with fewer than 50 other people, none of whom had boom boxes or cigars. This was a public beach, but it was surrounded by a posh golf resort, and the signs for beach access were small and inconspicuous. From the small parking lot we had to walk about a quarter of a mile on a paved path through a field of lava rubble and then on a narrow pathway on the wall of an old Hawaiian fish pond, brimming with large mullet, puffer fish, and other fish that had entered from the sea and could no longer escape.

Over the last few days, we’ve learned that although Hawaiian resort developers often seem to face few obstacles in developing the coastline, they are required to preserve archaeological sites, old Hawaiian fish ponds, anchialine ponds, and public beach access. They don’t do much to publicize shore access, but if you turn into almost any resort complex, you’ll find signs leading to small public parking lots with clean restrooms and paved walkways to the beach, often the same beach used by the resort residents. Since the residents are usually indoors napping or out playing golf, the beaches are seldom crowded, and they’re watched over by pleasant and helpful employees, many native Hawaiians, who provide information and security. We met a young employee today when a green sea turtle crawled out of the water in the early afternoon and took a nap just above the lapping waves. He came down from a concession stand with an armful of red traffic cones which he set up just above the turtle. This individual animal came there every day for its nap, and since it belongs to a federally listed endangered species, his employer was required to post these barriers to protect the animal.

The reef here was very extensive and very healthy, and again we found that the sea floor dropped off steeply very close to to the shore, providing many vertical coral walls to scan for fish (not that we had to scan very hard: fish were very abundant). The only problems we encountered were some silty turbulence and several areas of poor visibility due to fresh water springs; the mixing of moving fresh and salt water created a shimmering effect like that of heat waves over a desert.

Before leaving the resort, we visited a Hawaiian petroglyph site. We marched along a torturous path through a dry forest of short, crooked, densely entangled trees to a clearing where ancient Hawaiians had carved hundreds of human stick-figures on the surface of a smooth, red weathered lava field. The figures were almost all variations on the same theme: we saw only a few other types of images. Were these talismans or merely graffiti?

Not much else to report, except that a Norwegian cruise liner called “Pride of America” spent all day in Kona. It was just leaving when we drove back into town. It’s a large boat, with a crew of 900 and almost 900 guest rooms, and its white sides are decorated with a large American flag. Don’t imagine this ship goes cruising in the eastern Mediterranean or even in Europe.

Tomorrow we fly to Honolulu and then on to Lihue, on the southeast corner of Kauai. Atypical windflow has been bringing wet, warm air from the south onto the normally dry southern coasts of Oahu and Kauai, producing heavy rains and flash flooding. We’ll probably arrive during a downpour, but more normal jet-stream dominated weather patterns should prevail by Friday, producing clear skies and dry air (j’espere).