Aloha is Versatile

Goodbye Hawaii! Today is officially my last day on the Big Island. I'm packing my things, cleaning my house and getting ready to go.

So I thought I'd give a blog farewell to each of my beaches. This is where I've been living for the last three months. Be jealous.

Apua Point (at sunrise)

This was our lovely backcountry beach. After hiking out 6.5 miles over rugged lava rock, we would reach this beautiful beach. This was either my first or second favorite beach, I could never quite decide. The wind could get a little intense, but on good nights the stars were beautiful and we always got great sunsets here. Sometimes Pu'u O'o Crater would be glowing particularly bright and we could see the glow of the lava lake reflected on the clouds emanating from the crater. From here, our 10 mile day hike included Keauhou and Halape, both beautiful beaches with excellent snorkeling. The main danger here was being eaten by a coworker which happened with surprising regularity.

Kamehame

This was a fun beach. I always ended up here with fun coworkers and had a good time. This is also the beach where I saw my first nesting momma turtle. Had to watch out for animal dangers though! This beach was were I was almost crushed by aforementioned momma turtle, stalked by a bloodthirsty ninja kitten, menaced by hungry cows, and attacked by vicious wasps.

Kaloa

Nobody much liked Kaloa. It was dirty, had tons of odd visitors, and we didn't have a camp set up, so we lived out of the cars that we drove in. I had some good times here though. It was always fun to talk story (my second favorite Hawaiian slang term after howzit) with the local fishermen and educate people about the turtles. If you got too bored, you could always walk the five minutes over to Punalu'u Black Sand Beach to watch the tour buses pour out tourists who would photograph basking green turtles and black sand before rushing back onto their buses. Sometimes if we did something entertaining enough, the tourists would photograph us too.

Pohue Bay

Pohue warred with Apua for being my favorite beach. It was my first and last beach and I spent the most time here. A gorgeous idyllic oasis in the midst of a lava desert, Pohue was everything you could ask for. Soft white sand, swaying palm trees, occasional visits from pods of dolphins, could you really doubt this was paradise? Of the two day hikes from Pohue, Awili was a brutal 8 mile round trip trek across A'a roads, with nothing good at the end, but Kahakahakea had a wonderful saltwater crack in the lava rock to cool off in on hot days.

(Kahakahakea crack- made of win)

Aloha Hawaii! Thanks for all the good times. Keep it real.

Coconut 101

It may come as little surprise that in Hawaii, there are coconuts. In fact, on our very beaches, there are coconuts looming above our heads, threatening to fall upon us at any moment and crack our heads open. Perhaps because of this fear, or because we are often bored or hungry, we spend hours upon hours cracking open coconuts, drinking the milk, and prying out the meat. In the past months my coworkers and I have done our best to master the art of coconut opening and collecting.

Yogaboy is our resident tree climber. Standing at about 6 feet tall, his long arms and legs seem built for scaling palm trees. On our first adventure in the field, when we were still quite fresh off the boat, I returned to camp bearing a single coconut I'd found from where it had fallen on the ground. Inspired, Yogaboy left with a rake and returned with six. He has since gained the dubious honor of being the coconut guru, when sent to our best coconut beach, Pohue, he will monkey his ways up impossibly tall palm trees and demand his partner throw a rake to him so he can bring down large clumps of green coconuts. These he tends to stab with a stake and then drink the milk before discarding the husk. He ignores the meat, since green coconuts have thin layers of meat anyway and he prefers the milk.

Belle is our second best coconut forager. On one of our adventures in the backcountry, I found myself suddenly alone when moments previously I'd been threading through the underbrush on the way to a secluded snorkeling spot with Belle at my side. I retraced my steps to find her with her thighs wrapped around a palm tree, ten feet up the trunk, tugging on some very reluctant coconuts. Though those particular nuts proved too tenacious to pull down, between the two of us, we managed to get down a few from another tree for a refreshing afternoon treat. This may have involved me standing on Belle's shoulders, but since neither of us have the reach that Yogaboy can manage, we do what we can.

Now, once you actually have a coconut in your possession, you still have a long way to go. Since we happen to have plenty of time on our hands, there's really no problem spending hours upon hours smashing the husk with a rock and peeling it away, piece by piece. This was what I did with my first coconut, and after three hours of hard labor, minor splinters and abrasions from the lava rock, I had a beautifully husked coconut before me. Believe me, I have never had such delicious coconut meat as that. And I got to get in touch with my Neanderthal side. HALLEY SMASH COCONUT!!

In the months that have followed, I've gotten a little better at breaking coconuts. I'm still restricted to collecting them from the ground or using the shoulders of my fellows, since I haven't managed to scale a palm tree taller than 10 feet and by now Yogaboy has quite cleaned out the shorter trees. It no longer takes me 3 hours to break open a coconut, just this past week I shucked one in less than 30 minutes. Go me! Opening coconuts like a boss.

Here's my advice for opening coconuts:

Pick a coconut that is on the lighter side. Dark colored coconuts are very mature- their milk won't be that good, their meat will be thick and nutty, which is nice, but it will be hard to scoop out and you will be risking flinging coconut across the beach when you break it out of the shell. (Of course, this has nothing to do with personal experience and accidentally hitting my coworkers and/or turtles with flung coconut).

If you want coconut meat, get yourself a nice sharp lava rock and settle down- If you've got a stake or machete on hand, awesome! but really, let's be honest here. As turtlers we spend our time on remote island beaches- how often are you going to find a stake/machete? Much more likely, you'll be getting in touch with your caveman side. Just make sure to thank Pele before you use her lava rocks. Don't want to bring the night marchers down on your ass for not thanking the volcano goddess. (Night marchers are an odd Hawaiian legend- apparently ancient spirits of Hawaiian soldiers are supposed to walk along the lava rock at night to the sound of drumbeats and will be pissed off at you if you are not naked and lying on the ground when they stop by.)

Smash the top where the stem attached, not the sides- You will have to spend hours upon hours if you smash the sides. I don't know why this is, but it is much easier if you only smash the top and then peel. I have learned this the hard way. Let my pain be a lesson for you.

When you crack through the shell itself, have a bowl on hand or make sure to go through the holes in the top- If you just crack through willy nilly, you will end up soaked in coconut milk. And if you are camping out on a beach, you will continue to smell like slowly rotting coconut milk for the next few days until you finish your work week and get to go home for a shower.

Four limbs are better than one- It's not worth looking cool. You're husking a coconut for goodness sakes! Use your hands and your feet. Just don't use your head. Coconuts are awfully hard. And don't use your teeth. Rats can do that, but our teeth don't grow back the way that theirs do.

Enjoy!- You just husked a coconut, goddammit. That better be the best coconut ever.

Jumping off America

A few days ago, I completed a rite of passage. A great and powerful rite of passage, which now brings me into the inner fold of big island volunteers and gains me access to secret things never before dreamed of. Things like, um, well... hmm, I'm sure there's something...

Though perhaps my rite of passage earned me little more than a few bruises, an exceptionally awkward sensation and a great deal of fun, it also makes for a decent story. Which I shall now share here.

As most of you know but probably have never considered, Hawaii is the southernmost state in the United States. Being so, it also is home to the southernmost point of the US, officially known as South Point (creative, right?). South Point resides on the Big Island, and since that is my current home, I could not miss visiting the lower tip of the USA.

So on my most recent trip out to the field, my partner- we'll call her Boulder for her hometown- suggested that we take a trip out to South Point. Since our main working hours are between 5 pm and 2 am, we find ourselves with little to do during the daytime, so a visit to South Point sounded like an excellent idea. We invited Yogaboy and Belle, who were camping nearby (and by nearby I mean about 3 miles away) to come with us and they gladly accepted. They hiked out after their morning beach check and then we were off.

On the way over, Boulder, who has been here for quite awhile, reminded us that it is imperative that we jump off of South Point, or else be shamed forever more. Being relatively new in comparison, Yogaboy, Belle and I had not yet completed this rite of passage, and we were bound and determined not to disappoint. I, in fact, had been chomping at the bit for this opportunity; Judo and Roomie had done it a few weeks ago and I'd been wanting my turn ever since.

However, no one had mentioned previously that the jump was approximately 30 feet off a cliff wall. I'd been picturing a ten, maybe fifteen foot drop, not a 30 foot plummet from the edge of the land. Yet I was unmoved by Boulder's words, I would jump that cliff. Belle and Yogaboy similarly did not falter.

We reached South Point around midday and found ourselves accompanied by a number of tourists and a few locals there to show off their jumping prowess. The tourists and locals alike looked on with wonder as Yogaboy, Belle and I stripped down to our bathing suits. Mainlanders were going to jump? Now this was something they had to see.

We scoped out the terrain. Massive sheer cliff face? Check. Rickety ladder for climbing back up?Check. Deep enough water below that we would not die terrible early deaths brought on by youthful stupidity? Check. Time to fly.

Belle is so ready!

Yogaboy went first, followed by me, followed by Belle. Boulder, comfortable in her longtime association with the island, remained cliffside to take pictures.

That first jump was by far the longest. Falling thirty feet takes some time and while midair all I could think was "I am so f***ed when I hit the water". I may have been yelling, I don't really recall. Then I slammed into the water, sending my bathing suit askew and my brains slightly scrambled. I adjusted and popped back to the surface, simultaneously exultant and sore in all sorts of unnameable places. Someone should have reminded me to clench...

Up and out I went, exhilarated despite my extreme discomfort, determined to do it again and better. I was convinced the water was deep enough, this time I was going for a dive.

Something to know about dives when you are doing them from 30 feet above the water- angle out, not down, or else you will turn in midair and land squarely on your back. Which I, of course, did not realize and promptly did. Let me tell you, that left some sore spots. The onlookers were quite concerned when I resurfaced and after assuring everyone that I was quite alright, I drifted for a little while, allowing the cool water to nurse my wounds and pride.

Inspired perhaps by my daring (it couldn't have been my performance), Belle opted for a dive herself. This she performed beautifully, leaving me with the mad desire to try diving again.

See? Beautiful, right? So jealous.

Yet I had one final method to try- the running and jumping option. I convinced myself to do that instead and so I ran off the edge of the cliff, yelling like a maniac.

Ramming speeeeeeeeeeeeeed!!!

It was quite enjoyable, though my poor thrice bruised bottom informed me that another jump was quite out of the question, it was done being abused. Let me tell you, salt water enemas are quite unpleasant. The others were finished too, so we headed back, quite pleased with ourselves, stopping for pastries and a local classic, a loco moco. This monstrosity consists of rice topped with burger patties, fried eggs and gravy, and though it looks totally disgusting and promises to clog arteries faster than even McDonald's could manage, it was delicious and a perfect way to reward ourselves.

The bruises are still healing and releasing the salt water enema was a profoundly traumatizing experience (I feel like I know what it's like to have cholera now!), but all told, I had a fantastic time. And next time, I will perfect that dive...

Ramming speed!!

The Curse of the Day Nester

So, as it turns out, staying up till two in the morning and waking up at six every day gets a person a little off in the head. Add to that six days of hiking and and spending all that time exclusively with the same person and you've got some genuinely crazy turtlers. To let off some of that nuttiness, we have field notebooks that we fill with the ramblings of our overtired and strange minds. People fill these with stories, questions, pictures, puzzles, rants... you name it. Of course, I needed to add in my two cents, so this week at 'Apua, I wrote the following story, which I now share with you.

The Curse of the Day Nester

As many of you may know, T108 is a crazy girl. Nests in the day, hides from well meaning turtlers and generally throws us all off. So in a valiant attempt to learn the secrets of T108, our great leader Lauren deployed a force rarely seen on this side of Hilo- seven intrepid turtlers.

The days were hot and the nights were long, but we steadfastly scoured the beach for the elusive turt. Then something happened- and the world may never be the same again...

It all began when Eric wandered off- perchance to do some yoga, or to explore. Four other turtlers sat calmly playing cards, expecting nothing out of the ordinary until Halley the noob glanced up to see Eric slowly stumbling back their way. Alarmed by his shambling gait, she alerted her companions- Greg, Meg and Erika- and the four of them watched his approach with growing concern. He was muttering something as he shuffled forward and as they strained to hear what it was, the began to make out just one word.

"Brains... braaaaiiiinsss... braaaaaiiiinsss"

"My Gawd," said Greg. The card playing turtlers lept from the table, their cards scattered to the winds. Greg, in a less than valiant attempt to save himself, kicked Erika in the knees and ran for it, shouting "Don't eat me! Werewolves don't taste good to zombies!"

Yet the others stood fast (not Erika, she was on the ground for she had been kicked in the knees), and Lauren and Malia joined their ranks. Bravely they faced the zombie formerly known as Eric with hiking poles raised high and when he lurched forward to feed on the unfortunate Erika, the four heroic turtlers beat him back.

"Aim for the head!" cried Meg, who had done some very unexpectedly helpful research on the zombie apocalypse before this trip.

They beat him until he moved no more and then took his purple bandanna to mourn his loss. The erstwhile Greg returned and feigned ignorance about Erika's injury. However, as he had recently saved Halley and Malia's lives, they forgave him his indiscretion.

The following day, Malia left, for she had work to do beyond the field. Their numbers now reduced to five, the remaining turtlers maintained their vigilance, still seeking the elusive T108. At times, they wondered how Eric had been zombified, but since they'd set his body out to naturally mummify on the lava field, they thought less and less about it as the day wore on. Meg noticed a scratch on her arm, but thought little of it. Another day and night went by with no sign of the day nester- perhaps she'd moved to a different beach?

The next day, it was time for Lauren, Erika and Meg to leave. Greg and Halley bid them adieu and slumbered peacefully on their cots for a few more hours. Suddenly, something woke them both- a shuffling noise, the sounds of naupaka breaking and sand being thrown. The turtle? But she was headed right towards their camp! How could this be? Halley and Greg scrambled to get the turtle bag and calipers, then stood, trembling with excitement, behind the nearest naupaka plant.

With a crash, the turtle burst from the cover and heaved its way towards them. Halley, being a noob, had only seen one turtle before and was very excited, but Greg sensed that something was not right.

"Something," he said, "is not right."

And it was true. The turtle smelled vaguely of decay and blood splatters covered its shell and beak. It snapped its bill at them, lunged forward and sighed in a way that sounded alarmingly like "Brainzzzz."

It was a zombie turtle! This was the secret of the day nester, and from the shred of purple bandanna in her mouth, it was clear that this was the turtle who had infected poor Eric. Of course she came out at day- all the better to see her prey, and she did not need to fear the sun or predators.

The terrified turtlers fell back, aghast. The turtle snapped at them and caught Greg's foot as he tried to kick Halley in the knees.

"My Gawd!" he shouted in pain.

Halley dragged him away from the turtle- she did not know the way out, even though she could have escaped while the turtle feasted, as a noob she would soon be lost.

They ran and the turtle followed, but soon she was left behind. On and on they ran, until they reached chain of craters road. There a car awaited them.

"That's odd," said Greg. "I thought the others took the car. Why is this here?"

They didn't have a chance to wonder, for just then, Meg, Lauren and Erika stumbled from behind the truck, covered in blood.

"Braaaaaaaiiiiins, braaaaiiiins," they chanted.

"Oh no!" cried Halley, "the cut on Meg's arm was from Eric zombie!"

The two unzombified turtlers dodged the outstretched arms of their former comrades and sprinted for the truck. They dove in and shut the doors. The zombies lurched back to the truck and began to pound on the doors.

"The keys!" shouted Halley. "Where are the keys?"

Greg was looking out the window and did not answer.

"Oh no," Halley realized, "They're in the gas cap! What do we do Greg?"

Slowly, Greg turned his head back towards Halley. He grinned.

"Brains."

Halley fell back against her door and it swung open. She fell to the ground below and the four zombies descended upon her and ate her whole.

Satisfied with their meal, they returned to 'Apua Point to await the orders of their zombie turtle master and to guard her zombie turtle eggs. And one day soon, that nest will hatch and one hundred zombie turtles will descend upon the world.

It's a hard knock life...

Last night I was sitting out on a beach, watching the stars, drinking coconut milk from a coconut I'd cracked earlier that day. I was hanging out with some fun kids my age and was on the watch for sea turtles. It's a hard job, this one. In the last week, I've spent six nights camping on a remote tropical beach, have hiked over crazy awesome lava rock, jumped into a natural pond formed in a crack in the lava field and have visited a beautiful set of waterfalls. And to think I'm getting paid to do this!

Well... sort of.

But ten dollars a day and a place to stay seem like excellent compensation for what looks like is going to be three months of absolutely excellent Hawaii camping time.

My first trip out was rather excellent. After orientation with my fellow newbie, we set out in our 4x4 beast of a truck with a seasoned veteran for a six night trip to the beach. Getting to our site required an impressive amount of off-roading over lava terrain, a trip that, in a car built before shocks and good suspension, ended up feeling something like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. Babadumdum babadum babadumdum babadumdumdum!

Then we arrived at our new home for the next six nights.

Tough luck, huh?

As turtle girls and boys, our job is to monitor, protect, and research the extremely endangered Hawksbill Sea Turtle. Though Hawaii is well known for its beautiful green sea turtle (which, incidentally, is also endangered, though not as badly as the hawksbill), few people know about the Hawksbill's existence. Poor Hawksbills, no love. One Hawaiian that I met was rare in that he actually knew the difference between the two, but asked us why we were bothering to save a sea turtle that didn't even taste good.

(For the record, if you ever were to find a Hawksbill, do not make it in to soup. Besides the fact that this would make you a terrible person, it would also be a really bad idea- Hawksbills mostly eat sponges and are actually unpalatable to people.)

So what do we actually do, you may ask? Nighttime is where most of our work lies; we sit out on the beach from 7 pm to 2 am every night watching for momma Hawksbills to come up and lay eggs. Because I'm here later in the season, we also have nests that are getting ready to hatch, so we babysit nests, watching for little baby turtles to emerge. Our beach had a nest that was due, so every night we sat in front of that nest. That way, if we missed the hatchlings coming out of the sand, we would still notice them when they scampered over us on their way to the sea. Oh, to be covered in scampering baby sea turtles!!

Each day we woke up at 6 am to check the beaches again (in case anything happened in the four hours we were asleep), and then went on a day hike to check other beaches with previous Hawksbill activity. For one of these hikes, we crossed epic lava fields. For the other, we got to jump into a crack in the lava rock where a cool and deep briny pool had formed. The rest of the day was our own to do with as we wanted, which tended to include a lot of napping.

Not too shabby, eh?

To top it all off, I was lucky enough to get to see a momma sea turtle on my first trip! She came up and tried to nest for 5 hours, but all the nests she dug didn't suit her fancy, so she decided to go back to the sea. On her way back, we restrained her (read: turtle wrestling) so we could check her tags and measure her. Her back flippers didn't have tags, so I even got to help tag a turtle on my first trip. In case you were wondering, restraining a turtle is not an easy task. You throw a towel over her head to calm her down, then sort of put her in a head lock, holding her powerful front flippers off the ground. It was quite a challenge even for the three of us, and this was a smaller Hawksbill! Dude, what will I do when there's only one other person besides me and a full sized turtle? I better start doing some push ups.

(If anyone can tell me how to turn this picture so that it is horizontal rather than vertical, I would be much obliged. Blogger is being difficult. The picture I uploaded definitely is not oriented like this.)

So yeah. That's my new job here. My life may be made of win.

Aloha!

So, I totally lied and didn't end up blogging at all when I was living in Los Angeles, but really, you all didn't miss much. Besides, the majority of you (if not all of you) were there with me. It's okay. I suppose I could have turned my boring lab job into a series of entertaining stories, but it essentially boiled down to me at a fume hood, pouring acid into plastic containers and then heating said containers for hours on end.

I suppose I could also blog about the last few months and my adventures in Israel, Jordan, Norway and Sweden, but again, many of you already know those tales. Perhaps I shall put them in later, but don't hold your breath for them, they're only slightly more likely than A Day in the Life of a Kirin Teacher: Part 2.

But now I'm on the move again, living it up in Hawaii with the turtles. So I think it's time to start again, especially since I'll have way more internet than I had on the boat.

Oh, also, I think I'm Halley now, rather than Kirin. It looks like blogger wants you to know my true identity after all.

As far as things to say about Hawaii so far, I suppose this will merely be an information post. I'm living in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (my home has the word volcano in it, how cool is that???) and working on the Hawksbill Turtle Recovery Project. That means that I am now officially a turtle girl. That's my job title dudes (not really). I'm living in a house with nine other people and am heading out for six days of camping on the beach as of tomorrow afternoon.

I hope you all don't mind me switching from kirin42 to this, but I like being able to play with the layout and I can now put pictures into posts, which I think is pretty cool. I know Vagabond Tree Hugger is a little silly as far as titles go, but you guys know I'm kind of a hippie anyway. I haven't decided if I really like the background or think I've overdone it a bit. Let me know what you think.