Diaries of a Twenty-Something Go Go Dancer: Hawaii

This is my last day in Hawaii...sigh. It went by so fast. We had a relaxing breakfast at the inn. I loved this hotel because it was so laid back. Of course I liked the big resort hotel, but this felt cozier. We met a couple people in the breakfast / dining room. We had a chance to talk to a Canadian construction consultant and a hedge fund manager from Greenwich village who was training for the iron man. They were both so interesting and smart. However, I was starving because all the food was attack-of the-glutens food. I soon found really delicious food in the town: black Angus burger, coffee & vanilla gelato and then banana cream pie at a real bakery. That was the last good food I had in Hawaii. We tried poi, some strange salmon concoction and Hawaiian style pork but I thought it was the most repulsive thing ever. Poi is purple. I still am very cautious when it comes to purple food, aside from grapes. And I don't eat pork. There must be a good reason for it not being kosher. And the salmon tasted like a fish monger's shoes. But this is ok. Almost all the food in Hawaii was amazing with only a couple disappointments. I just hated to end on a sour note. My culinary honorable mentions: the coffee in Kona, the fusion sushi, fresh papaya, Portuguese sausage, chocolate covered espresso beans at the coffee farm, barbecued Hebe fish, gelato in Hawi, the best omelet I've had in months and the water from the Waipio River.

There were several interesting shops in Hawi. I walked into "Star Light - crystals and other rare treasures" on a whim. The colorful orbs brought me in.

I was immediately drawn to a small collection of green amethyst, or prasiolite. This is rare. Amethyst is almost always purple, which I don't especially like. But these were green. I did some research. It is either heat-treated purple amethyst or prasiolite. I prefer to call it green amethyst.

The Hawaiian language and culture is everywhere on the island. I thought it would be restricted to tourist activities, but the indigenous culture really is alive there. This sign is cute "mahalo for not smoking."

This is Ishmael the flute maker. We are outside a natural foods store in Waimea.

I liked Ishmael and his bamboo flutes. I have been wanting to get a wooden flute for awhile. I bought a simple alto flute. It has a open organic sound. He made it just the week before on 2/24/08 and it's signed Ishmael : )

On the way back to Hilo and to the volcano park we stopped at an orchid nursery.

Kilauea hasn't erupted since 1924. And I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting it to any time soon. We just missed the explosion by a mere two weeks. It would have been to exciting to see the explosion last week. It happened somewhere out in the black of this relatively inactive looking crater.

I am standing by the sleeping volcano crater. I do remember wondering if it would ever erupt again and feeling a strong energy there...or maybe it just was the smell of sulfur in the air. Well, it did erupt. I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't gone to the creative recovery / therapy for blocked creatives group tonight. Renee mentioned that kilauea recently erupted after Jorella painted a volcanic composition. I was just there. : ) Learning about it at this point in time was perfect as I am retro-blogging. I just happened to be right at the place in my blogs where I'd be talking about visiting the volcano. Before, I didn't have anything terribly interesting to talk about. So clearly, my presence at the volcano caused some sort of seismic activity and awakened a volcano that had been sleeping for 80 years. (just kidding) At least Kilauea made a breakthrough. She was blocked for 80 years and finally had a chance to blow off some steam. [I must mention that the last time I took a trip somewhere another catastrophic event occured. The Minneapolis bridge collapsed a couple weeks after I drove over it. I love near misses with catastrophic events.]

I am learning about synchronicity. I've been hearing about it from random, unexpected sources for the past couple weeks. It's my new favorite thing. Maybe it has always been my favorite thing, but I didn't know it. But one must be careful. Not all synchronous events have meaning. Though, I am not sure I believe that coincidences have no significance at all. Synchronous events just remind me of God's perfect timing for everything.

This is kilauea after Pele, the volcano goddess, blew off some steam.

This picture was taken inside a lava tube. It's a sort of cave created by lava flows. Steph was extra adventurous and climbed into a tunnel without lighting. She followed a group who had head lamps on, but she didn't have anything to guide her. She was down in some scary cave for 20 minutes or so without any light. Yeah, I didn't go down there.