The Hawaii Trip Retrospective, Part 1
Dec. 9th, 2010 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantemberUPDATE: I fixed the picture links so we're no longer dependent on Fickl Flickr.
Wow. Fucking Hawaii.
Here's my massive gaggle of pictures. I'm really happy with how they came out, considering photography was a secondary concern for me on this trip.
Here are Scott Frey's, which are Way Better.
I'd never been to Hawaii before this trip. Seven variously involved poly people decided that it would be huge fun to have Thanksgiving in Hawaii. One part of the pod was from Austin, the other from Portland. We stayed at these fabulous digs, The House of Love by the Sea. It has 5 bedrooms and is on the coast between Pahoa and Hilo about 40 feet from these breathtaking volcanic fjords. Here are some screamingly fantastic views shot by the most photographically inclined of our little troupe. You could hear the waves crashing on the coast from any room in the house all day and all night.
I had some recorded audio to remind me of the order of events, but the sea ate it before I had a chance to download everything. Salt water is evidently hard on electronics. Who knew?
In Hawai'i, everything is outside.
Being in a building with air conditioning is weird. You are directly connected with an awesome, breathtaking oceanic environment at all times. Most of the Hilo airport, for instance, is open air. The weather is always between 70-80 in the daytime, and in the mid sixties at night. If someone surreptitiously teleported all your clothes off, you probably wouldn't really notice until you encountered some kind of reflective surface.
It rains every day, but rarely when you actually want to *do* something, and not for very long, despite being the rainiest place on Earth. Our choice to stay on the Hilo (or East) side of the Big Island was a good one, as most of the tourists, hotels, and associated craptasticism is on the Kona (or West) side. I was expected to get treated more like a honky tourist, but surprisingly most of the native and adapted people were enormously friendly and laid back. This is one of the most fundamentally different things about Hawaii. Everything except tourists is slow and laid back, and the entire culture embodies this spirit of warm generosity, acceptance, and knee-jerk good will. There were a few more hostile-seeming natives, but mainly in areas where the intrusion of American culture had a more destructive impact on Hawaiian culture, like Weimea. I think the fact that our group has a greater appreciation of nature and likely greater-than-average social skills also helped a lot. Personally, I just sort of got it. I slowed down, friendlied out, made odd hand gestures, and didn't take anything personally. That vibe is hugely healing, and I can well imagine going back just to get more of it.
But that's not the only reason to go back. Not by a long shot.
I went reef snorkeling, which was probably the biggest attraction in my mind going into this trip, at least five or six times over the course of our ten day stay. We hit a variety of different submarine areas. I hesitate to say "beaches" because, surprisingly, beaches are actually fairly rare in Hawaii, at least where we were. One important thing to understand about Hawaii is that it's *all* volcanic rock. This means that a huge portion of it is really...SHARP, including much of the coast. Foot protection of some kind was mandatory at about 80% of the places we went to snorkel. Without it, one's feet would be carved to ribbons in three or four steps. This was actually a problem once when we were snorkeling in tide pools with the tide going out. We got pretty far out, and the tide was slowly ebbing, and we found we couldn't float across the shallow, narrow channels between the pools anymore. There was a land route to back where we started, but it was a land route made out of slippery, razor-sharp black lava rock. It turned out that painfully scraping or finger-walking our way through the shallow parts was preferable to walking. In future visits, I will bring some aggressive pool shoes or similar protective, non-floating footwear and carry it with me in my belt.
There were fish. There were turtles. And urchins. And *all* *kinds* of other shit.
The Water: Where Shit's At.
On some level all of these pictures were brought to you by the person who took the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle Pictures above, because he let me borrow his diving condom thing for my Fujifilm IS-1. I've never had a chance to use a real camera with full manual control under water before, much less in such an ideal environment. Shooting underwater, especially with non-professional gear, is kind of a huge pain in the ass. You can't really see the screen on the camera, you can't hold it up to your mask, so you just have to kind of chase shit around while frantically pushing the Go Button and hope something comes out. I was really excited to be able to do it, and I'm very happy with how my shots came out, despite the zillions of problems. For a first time, it rocked! Thanks to Scott for letting me borrow the gear.
Despite my own lack of pictures of sea turtles, they were everywhere, and truly awesome creatures. They average over 200 lbs, and you're supposed to stay at least 10 feet away from them so they don't get annoyed at all the tourists. That didn't help when I was fondled by one unexpectedly. Something touched my hand, and when I looked down, fully prepared for one of the 6 or so annual shark attacks in Hawaii to be underway on my tender digits, I was delighted and still slightly scared shitless as one of these behemoths sailed underneath me. I took it as a sign of good luck, and thanked the turtle for the privilege of retaining all my fingers.
We went to four well-known spots to snorkel. First was Richardson Ocean Park, more of an actual beach with some rocks and reefs and deeper water, next was the Waiopae Kapoho tide pools, which are actually just in someone's neighborhood. They are connected by a network of shallow channels at high tide, but many are isolated a low tide, making their fauna a bit different than Richardson.
This is a good time to mention something else about Hawaii. Beach access is held in common, so no one is allowed to deny you beach access simply because they own the land along it. Hawaii didn't even have private property at all until the early 1800s, and that spirit of everyone owning and being part of the land pervades the entire island. Except maybe for Kona and Weimea. Despite this, or maybe because of it, there were countless "Private, Keep Out" signs along the beach on the property owner's side, letting people know that "community beach access" doesn't mean "let's borrow the lawnmower."
Another great snorkeling spot was Two Step, which is in the more southish area of Puna. The water was a huge variety of depths, but fairly deep right off the beach, and probably had the biggest variety of fabulous fish, including this fab octopus.
The octopi were totally def. They change color to match their background almost perfectly, so you have to either catch them moving or notice that that rock has a suspiciously large number of suckers. Once discovered and disturbed, they'll suck down into a hidey-hole and turn super-dark to blend in with the shadows! I never actually saw the one in this picture as well as the camera saw it. I'm guessing I was probably bobbing toward the surface when I hit the shutter, and it may have already been on it's way out.
Finally, we went to a completely idyllic white-and beach on the Kona (touristy) side. A huge, ugly resort hotel with security mangled the beach with its presence, but if you turned your back on it and its $14 mai tais, the beach was roaringly perfect, and accommodated casual surf play, minor boogie boarding, and snorkeling on the edges. This location actually had some of the biggest variety of fish, but it also had murky water from all the disturbed sand. I braved it anyway and enjoyed the awesomely 3-d underwater environment with it's caves and valleys, largely because it was my last snorkel of the trip. I later found out that one of the best ways to avoid being bitten by sharks is to avoid murky water.
Oops.
More later on non-snorkeling Hawaii!
Wow. Fucking Hawaii.
Here's my massive gaggle of pictures. I'm really happy with how they came out, considering photography was a secondary concern for me on this trip.
Here are Scott Frey's, which are Way Better.
I'd never been to Hawaii before this trip. Seven variously involved poly people decided that it would be huge fun to have Thanksgiving in Hawaii. One part of the pod was from Austin, the other from Portland. We stayed at these fabulous digs, The House of Love by the Sea. It has 5 bedrooms and is on the coast between Pahoa and Hilo about 40 feet from these breathtaking volcanic fjords. Here are some screamingly fantastic views shot by the most photographically inclined of our little troupe. You could hear the waves crashing on the coast from any room in the house all day and all night.
I had some recorded audio to remind me of the order of events, but the sea ate it before I had a chance to download everything. Salt water is evidently hard on electronics. Who knew?
In Hawai'i, everything is outside.
Being in a building with air conditioning is weird. You are directly connected with an awesome, breathtaking oceanic environment at all times. Most of the Hilo airport, for instance, is open air. The weather is always between 70-80 in the daytime, and in the mid sixties at night. If someone surreptitiously teleported all your clothes off, you probably wouldn't really notice until you encountered some kind of reflective surface.
It rains every day, but rarely when you actually want to *do* something, and not for very long, despite being the rainiest place on Earth. Our choice to stay on the Hilo (or East) side of the Big Island was a good one, as most of the tourists, hotels, and associated craptasticism is on the Kona (or West) side. I was expected to get treated more like a honky tourist, but surprisingly most of the native and adapted people were enormously friendly and laid back. This is one of the most fundamentally different things about Hawaii. Everything except tourists is slow and laid back, and the entire culture embodies this spirit of warm generosity, acceptance, and knee-jerk good will. There were a few more hostile-seeming natives, but mainly in areas where the intrusion of American culture had a more destructive impact on Hawaiian culture, like Weimea. I think the fact that our group has a greater appreciation of nature and likely greater-than-average social skills also helped a lot. Personally, I just sort of got it. I slowed down, friendlied out, made odd hand gestures, and didn't take anything personally. That vibe is hugely healing, and I can well imagine going back just to get more of it.
But that's not the only reason to go back. Not by a long shot.
I went reef snorkeling, which was probably the biggest attraction in my mind going into this trip, at least five or six times over the course of our ten day stay. We hit a variety of different submarine areas. I hesitate to say "beaches" because, surprisingly, beaches are actually fairly rare in Hawaii, at least where we were. One important thing to understand about Hawaii is that it's *all* volcanic rock. This means that a huge portion of it is really...SHARP, including much of the coast. Foot protection of some kind was mandatory at about 80% of the places we went to snorkel. Without it, one's feet would be carved to ribbons in three or four steps. This was actually a problem once when we were snorkeling in tide pools with the tide going out. We got pretty far out, and the tide was slowly ebbing, and we found we couldn't float across the shallow, narrow channels between the pools anymore. There was a land route to back where we started, but it was a land route made out of slippery, razor-sharp black lava rock. It turned out that painfully scraping or finger-walking our way through the shallow parts was preferable to walking. In future visits, I will bring some aggressive pool shoes or similar protective, non-floating footwear and carry it with me in my belt.
There were fish. There were turtles. And urchins. And *all* *kinds* of other shit.
The Water: Where Shit's At.
On some level all of these pictures were brought to you by the person who took the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle Pictures above, because he let me borrow his diving condom thing for my Fujifilm IS-1. I've never had a chance to use a real camera with full manual control under water before, much less in such an ideal environment. Shooting underwater, especially with non-professional gear, is kind of a huge pain in the ass. You can't really see the screen on the camera, you can't hold it up to your mask, so you just have to kind of chase shit around while frantically pushing the Go Button and hope something comes out. I was really excited to be able to do it, and I'm very happy with how my shots came out, despite the zillions of problems. For a first time, it rocked! Thanks to Scott for letting me borrow the gear.
Despite my own lack of pictures of sea turtles, they were everywhere, and truly awesome creatures. They average over 200 lbs, and you're supposed to stay at least 10 feet away from them so they don't get annoyed at all the tourists. That didn't help when I was fondled by one unexpectedly. Something touched my hand, and when I looked down, fully prepared for one of the 6 or so annual shark attacks in Hawaii to be underway on my tender digits, I was delighted and still slightly scared shitless as one of these behemoths sailed underneath me. I took it as a sign of good luck, and thanked the turtle for the privilege of retaining all my fingers.
We went to four well-known spots to snorkel. First was Richardson Ocean Park, more of an actual beach with some rocks and reefs and deeper water, next was the Waiopae Kapoho tide pools, which are actually just in someone's neighborhood. They are connected by a network of shallow channels at high tide, but many are isolated a low tide, making their fauna a bit different than Richardson.
This is a good time to mention something else about Hawaii. Beach access is held in common, so no one is allowed to deny you beach access simply because they own the land along it. Hawaii didn't even have private property at all until the early 1800s, and that spirit of everyone owning and being part of the land pervades the entire island. Except maybe for Kona and Weimea. Despite this, or maybe because of it, there were countless "Private, Keep Out" signs along the beach on the property owner's side, letting people know that "community beach access" doesn't mean "let's borrow the lawnmower."
Another great snorkeling spot was Two Step, which is in the more southish area of Puna. The water was a huge variety of depths, but fairly deep right off the beach, and probably had the biggest variety of fabulous fish, including this fab octopus.
The octopi were totally def. They change color to match their background almost perfectly, so you have to either catch them moving or notice that that rock has a suspiciously large number of suckers. Once discovered and disturbed, they'll suck down into a hidey-hole and turn super-dark to blend in with the shadows! I never actually saw the one in this picture as well as the camera saw it. I'm guessing I was probably bobbing toward the surface when I hit the shutter, and it may have already been on it's way out.
Finally, we went to a completely idyllic white-and beach on the Kona (touristy) side. A huge, ugly resort hotel with security mangled the beach with its presence, but if you turned your back on it and its $14 mai tais, the beach was roaringly perfect, and accommodated casual surf play, minor boogie boarding, and snorkeling on the edges. This location actually had some of the biggest variety of fish, but it also had murky water from all the disturbed sand. I braved it anyway and enjoyed the awesomely 3-d underwater environment with it's caves and valleys, largely because it was my last snorkel of the trip. I later found out that one of the best ways to avoid being bitten by sharks is to avoid murky water.
Oops.
More later on non-snorkeling Hawaii!
