"on a white, sandy beach of hawaii..."

here are some highlights from my recent trip with N. to the big island, where i grew up.  it was most definitely not a white christmas, but it was pretty amazing anyway!

 

this is in honomu (ho-no-moo) village, directly across the street from the house i grew up in (in fact, those palm trees in the shadow belong to the ones in our front yard!).  my sisters and i would wait in front of this store -- which also makes really good blueberry ice cream -- for the school bus each morning when we were kids.  this is also where the old men in the village hang out during the day, drinking their coffees, reading their newspapers, and watching the tourists go by.  and that store to the left, glass from the past, is where i worked my first job!

 

looking down the street from our driveway.  this is the main street in our village, and it's usually busy with tourists driving up and down from the falls a few miles up the road.

 

looking up toward my house (which is right where that green sign is in the center of the photo) from the bottom of the street.  the village is really old (it was a plantation village back in the day, and most of the old timers still refer to areas of it by "camp" name), so you'll see a lot of these old style buildings, many of which now house touristy stores and art galleries.  at the top of the street, where those banyan trees are, is our town gym.  i grew up climbing those trees and playing with one my oldest friends who lived across the street from them.

 

while we were in hawaii, N. wanted to take a drive down to the south point of the big island, which also happens to be the southern most tip of the united states.  this was taken on the drive there, right before we go the town of na'alehu (na-a-lay-hoo), looking north up the coast towards hilo (hee-low).  the bay you see there is called punalu'u (poo-na-loo-oo), and it's one of hawaii's famous black sand beaches, where you'll regularly see turtles hanging around.

 

same as the above picture, except here we're looking south towards south point (which you cannot see in this picture).

 

the windmills down at south point.

 

more windmills down at south point.

 

this is south point on the big island.  people jump off of these cliffs into the ocean and try not to get themselves killed.  this is also a pretty big fishing spot, so those wooden things you see is where the fish are pulled up.  whenever i'm here, and i look out at the ocean, i can't help but thinking how vast and deep the ocean is, and how small i really am.

i just think the picture on this sign is hilarious.

 

that's my dad checking out the waves while N. and i take a dip in the warm springs down at pohoiki (po-ho-ee-kee).  he and N. eventually went surfing for a couple of hours while i splashed around and got burnt in the sun.

 

beautiful, beautiful hawaii.  this picture was actually taken last christmas, which you can tell by the fact that there's a huge storm cloud blowing in.  this time around, there was absolutely no rain, as evidenced by the insane sunburn i got on my back and shoulders.

 

N., my mom, my cousin, her boyfriend and myself went up to the summit of mauna kea (ma-oo-na kay-a), which means white mountain because it snows up there some winters.  it's one of the big islands four mountains.  this is on the drive up to the summit, looking south towards mauna loa (ma-oo-na low-a), which means long mountain.  mauna loa is one of the largest mountains on earth in terms of volume and area covered.  an interesting fact to note is that both these mountains are volcanic and, while dormant, are in no way extinct.  that means they can explode at any moment.  yes, i live on a ticking time bomb.

 

these are four of the twelve or fourteen government observatories at the summit of mauna kea.  though N. and i have argued quite heatedly about this, i'm going to just put out there as a fun fact that mauna kea is the tallest mountain on earth -- yes, even taller than mount everest -- if measured from the ocean floor.

 

me and N. at the summit, when we weren't bickering about which mountain is bigger than the other.

and that was the last two weeks spent in hawaii, nutshelled.  we also had our annual family christmas day cook-off (N. and i lost to my older sister and her husband), saw a bunch of my friends from childhood and high school,  visited pu'ukohala heiau (poo-oo-ko-ha-la hey-ow), went fishing with my dad, and hung out with my family.

i already miss it.