Kehena Beach

 

Yesterday, Sunday, I decided to go to the beach and apparently Sundays are when all the extroverted young and old hippies come out to play and have a drum circle and such… As one guy put it “I come every Sunday, see my friends and family and it’s like our church”

First, here is a picture of the tree house from the driveway. Sorry, these were all taken with my phone camera, something is wrong with my digital camera- but i’ll try and fix it, so there’ll be better quality pictures

And this is Teta (Dog) and Mavis Brown and Mocha (horses) and Mabel (Donkey)… We’re already friends.

In order to get to the beach I had to hitch hike (so much safer out here then on the mainland…) but first had to walk about 1.5 miles to get to the road that goes towards the beach. These next two signs are at the beginning of the lava viewing access road, which our drive way comes off of.   

A nice guy picked me up and took me to the beach even though he wasn’t going there… I tell you, I am really digging the Aloha spirit, but anyway, the Puna coast (where I am) doesn’t have many beaches and it’s mostly pretty rocky and cliffy but Kehena beach (where everyone goes) is a black sand (duh) beach that was formed by an earthquake at some point so to get down to the beach you have to take a pretty steep climb down a cliff but the view onto the beach from the top is amazing:

You can see that it’s a pretty small beach and on Sundays it's apparently crowded but I tell you- this place was beautiful. The water is really rough too and this beach has taken many lives. I went out into the water for many 10 minutes and got whipped around pretty good. It’s definitely not a place to go relax in the water, it’ll take you out to sea pretty fast. I mean I definitely will go back in, but the currents are stronger then I’ve ever experienced.

Here are the waves crashing on the breakwater and on the right hand side, where the guy is, is the path to get to the top.

 

It was a clothing optional beach, which I always enjoy, but I tell you- my pale pale shade of skin stood out tremendously against that black sand. I can’t wait until I tan up a bit (safely of course and by wearing a lot of sunscreen) so just by looking at me I don’t scream “fresh of the boat”. I’m excited to hang out here more and become friends with some of the locals/slash old hippies. They’re very entertaining, but my favorite was the old guy who shared a pipe with me that he had fashioned out of a microphone. Oh, it was too funny. I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures of any of the people yet because I feel like it would have been intruding some how. Except this lady on this really cool tree at one part of the beach…

   

Then, it was totally easy to find a ride back- but he only dropped me off partially to the access road, so I walked the rest of the way back and I’m getting really excited to be walking so much. I’m excited to really get in shape and be active. But I was so tired from everything yesterday, that when I got back I fell asleep at like 7:30. I really enjoy getting excessive amounts of sleep. Woke up just fine and had a great morning working. I started to prepare some troughs for cakies (Hawaiian for babies) by sprinkling the tops of the soil with ground shrimp shells (to provide calcium and also a bacteria that kills nematodes) and azumite ( essential minerals from  rocks in Arizona) and tomorrow, the soil will be tilled and we’ll plant. Also- I started some new seeds for some bag planters that I’m going to prepare this week.

I really like this farming thing and I’m excited that I got to start a new batch and I’ll be able to see them all the way through. I even don’t mind getting up early, which I never thought I would ever say. I’m going back to the hot ponds with Michael this afternoon and then later, I think I’m going to head to the Kalapana cafe, which is only a couple miles down the road.