Taking it Easy. TOO Easy?

Hawaii April Travelog #29
Waikoloa - Fri, 15 Apr, 2022, 4pm

We've been taking it easy at the resort today. Taking it easy is nice, especially after an all-day road trip / hiking trip yesterday with spotting Umauam and Hanapueo Falls, hiking 'Akaka Falls, and sunset at 9,200' on the flanks of Mauna Kea. But I fret that we're taking it too easy.

We lazed around a bit first thing in the morning. Then we went to our resort's main swimming pool, the one with water slides. We exercised in the water a bit (it's good for resistance training, especially working my sore leg muscles) then went down the slides over and over until we got tired of water rushing up our noses from splashing into the pool at the bottom. Then we ate lunch at the poolside bistro. After lunch I was feeling too full to go back in the water— despite eating a purposefully lighter lunch of fish tacos instead of, say, a bready pizza— so I lounged poolside for a while. Eventually we came back to our condo to rest up.

Indoors we've been watching a lot of TV the past few days. Hawk found a show on streaming called Stan Against Evil. It's a series that ran for 3 seasons about a pair of small town sheriffs confronting supernatural forces that have killed every sheriff in their town for hundreds of years. It spans the F/SF and dark comedy genres and it's... not very good. In fact it's bad. But it's one of those so-bad-it's-good shows. Bingeing through it has become our guilty pleasure the past few days. And that's where I'm worried we're taking it too easy.

Am I becoming like my parents?

When I was a kid I chafed at the overly relaxed pace my parents set on our summer vacations. We traveled to the beach a few times on our annual summer vacations. Young teenage me wanted to maximize each trip. To me it was, "I'm at the beach, for one week a year. I've got to make this count!" And so I wanted to get out onto the beach early and stay out there most of the day, body surfing in the water, building sand castles, and just soaking up the sun.

My parents, though, had other ideas. Their idea of the daily itinerary for the beach was 8:30am wake up. 9:00 watch TV (whatever's on). 10:00 go downstairs for breakfast/brunch. 11:15 back in the room watching stupid, worthless daytime TV (which they don't even watch at home)... and relax because "you can't go in the water for 3 hours after eating." 1:00pm go down to the pool. Sit outside the pool until 3. 4pm back in the room to change. 5:00pm Okay now it's time to go to the beach!

It was only years later that I understood the fundamental misfit between our expectations. Young me saw vacations as precious and rare and 1/52 opportunities to do amazing stuff I couldn't do the other 51 out of 52 weeks a year. But to my parents vacations were rest. To them it didn't matter that we were at the beach; it was their 1/52 opportunity to go slow.

At 50+ am I becoming like my parents? Here am I at a beach resort, and I've barely been to the beach! Instead I take it easy in the pool and watch so-bad-it's-good TV up in the room.

There are a few things that make my situation this week different, though. One, I'm still recovering from being wrecked after that epic hike up the Koko Head Tramline trail on Monday. Two, the beach isn't walkable from here, and going to it pokes my not-yet-healed wound over being bait-and-switched into a resort 1 mile from the ocean. Three, we're doing things as allowed by my aching legs. We were out all day yesterday! And four, we're discussing some hiking and sunset on the beach for later this afternoon. Stay tuned to see where we go!

Puako Petroglyphs

Hawaii April Travelog #30
Puakō - Fri, 15 Apr, 2022, 5:30pm

We took it easy around the resort in the morning and the afternoon today in exchange for going out later. Our first plan was to visit Puakō Beach, recommended by semi-local friend, Dave. Then we saw on the map a petroglyphs reserve and decided to visit that first. So the beach would be our second plan. Well, first plan, second act. 😅 Anyway....

The petroglyphs area was near a beach parking lot. At first we wondered, "Is this really the right place?" as all we could see facing away from the beach was The Floor Is Lava.



This is part of what I described as my first impression upon landing in Kona-Kailua earlier in the week. The floor is lava. Here at least it's only a small patch of lava. There are also trees around the edge of it.

A gravel path wound through the piles of lava rock. It all looked... a little too manicured. There were a few stones with etchings on them tilted up on display. An informational sign openly cast doubt on whether these were genuine artifacts or... modern reproductions. I thought about giving up on this park as being hokum— it was clearly a concession created by a high-dollar resort nearby in exchange for permission to build— but then the trail turned sharply and narrowed as it ducked into a thicket of trees.



When I say these trees were thick, I mean they were thick like the stunted trees of the Blight in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Their trunks and branches twisted around in crazy patterns. We had to duck and dodge in many places, and even with many of the trees being scorched by fire and mostly bare, the canopy overhead was so thick we sometimes couldn't tell what color the sky was.

Suddenly the thick stand of stunted trees gave way to a volcanic clearing.



Here the lava rocks were oddly smooth and all tilted in the same direction. Petroglyphs were carved into most of the "tiles" separated by surface cracks. And they all seem oriented toward the Kohala volcano.

What do the sigils mean? The signs say we don't know. That's really sad because it's not like the Hawaiian people disappeared 800 ago. Hawaiians still live in Hawaii. And even the last Hawaiian royal, Queen Lili'uokalani, lived until 1917. Coudln't we, uh, ask Hawaiian people what these Hawaiian symbols mean? Well, we can, but that's where the sad part comes in: they don't really know, either. Through the 19th and 20th centuries foreign powers (Britain, US, and Japan) sought to control Hawaii. One form of control was to replace their education with colonial schools. Even Lili'uokalani learned in a school run by Christian missionaries who sought to suppress her cultural heritage as being primitive and ungodly. Now we're all poorer for it.