Robert and Christina Go to Hawaii

Part 6: Waterfalls and Raw Fish

On Thursday, we woke up at 6:30, and arranged for a late, one p.m. checkout time. We breakfasted first on mangoes and the last of our strawberry mochi, in our hotel room, and after a shower, we were at the Suisan Fish Market at 8:03 in the morning, three minutes after they opened, because I had read that they had an excellent selection of poke and they were only a few minutes away from our hotel. A chubby local man entered immediately after us, but whereas I was dazzled by the displays of fish, and walked around in wonder, he knew just what he was doing: “Poke for breakfast,” he said to the man behind the counter, and he proceeded to buy some.

I poked Robert excitedly and told him we had to do the same. My far-more-conventional-than-I husband laughed, but let us when he realized I was serious. We tasted about four differently seasoned kinds of poke, and then we bought a quarter pound each of the Hawaiian-style ahi poke (with various sea vegetables—good but not our favorite), the Korean-style tako poke (with cucumbers), the whole small tako poke (bright red, perfectly vinegary and crisp), and the sesame marlin (my favorite).

We drove five minutes outside of Hilo to Rainbow Falls, where we parked, walked up a hill to look at the falls, and then spread our beach blanket under a banyan tree and ate the poke picnic-style. Rainbow Falls was deserted at this hour, with only a German couple wandering around, though we had the sense that it is a bigger tourist destination later in the day because it’s so easy for tour busses to pull into the lot, and it’s such a short walk to see the falls from the parking lot. We realized that that’s where all the other tourists on the Big Island are—in tour busses, as far as we could tell.

With all of our cubes of perfectly seasoned raw fish gone, we were ready for a longer, more adventurous walk, so we drove up the road a little bit more to Pe’e Pe’e (say it: pay-ay-pay-ay) Falls and the Boiling Pots. The same German couple joined us here, and we all four hiked down to the glistening pools of cool freshwater among the rocks. It was buggy here, though not as bad as yesterday, and the hike down was slippery and slightly steep.

I stopped at the second-lowest level of rocks while Robert went all the way down. The German couple immediately began stripping to their underwear to go swimming, but Robert declined (though he later said he regretted not climbing back up to the car, changing into his suit, and then climbing down to take a swim). Still, it was beautiful and peaceful (just don’t look at the German man), and the climb back up was much easier because you could see where you were going and you had things to hold on to.

Back in town, we went to the Hilo Arboretum, nearly giving up at the unmarked entrance. We finally found our way in, though, and were given a free fruit-picking permit for the day: we were each allowed to bring out “1 plastic grocery sack full of fruit.” An odd unit of measure, it seemed, and we grew panicky as we realized we didn’t have such bags, but we went in anyway with our map to the trees. We encountered many bugs, but not much fruit—most of it had already ripened and been picked, apparently disappearing into many other people’s plastic grocery sacks. We found a whole, unripe avocado on the ground; we found two little (inedible, we later found out—fortunately before we tasted them) fruits, one a poisonous “blue marble,” and one an unripe mangosteen-family bud. We saw giant bamboo trees, longan trees, and lots of coconut-related fruit that, according to our brochure, were filled with a liquid used to treat leprosy. However, I did find a Meyer lemon tree, and I picked two large, greenish lemons which were our prize for the day.

Robert by a bamboo tree; me with non-edible fruits;

After a chat with the woman in the Department of Wildlife and Forestry office on our way out, we drove back into town for another stop at the Two Ladies’ for more fresh mochi: we got a box of coconut milk pink squares, chi chi mochi, and of lilikoi (passionfruit) flavored squares, as well as my favorite—the peach-colored mochi stuffed with no beans, but only a crunchy chocolate and a marshmallow. We bought a white pineapple at the farmers’ market, too, on our way back to our hotel.

At this point, it was around 11:30, so we went back to the hotel to wash up, cut up our pineapple, and pack our car. On our way to the airport, we stopped at the KTA Superstore for lunch: canned Aloha Maid Hawaiian juices, and five more quarter-pound containers of different kinds of poke from the fish guy, who seemed happy to endlessly give us free samples. This time, we tried nori ahi poke, spicy no-cucumber tako poke, Hawaiian-style (sea-veggie) marlin poke, and sesame-shoyu clams. We gassed up, returned the car, and ate our poke and pineapple (delicious, firm, and sweet) while we waited for our plane.

Our flight back to Oahu was delayed about 15 minutes, but when we landed, we picked up our pre-arranged rental car for the final three days of our stay. This time we got a yellow Jeep Wrangler—which, due to fears of rain and due to what was feeling increasingly like heatstroke or sunstroke, we left covered up the entire three days. We drove straight from the airport west on H1 to Ko Ohina beach, a series of four manmade lagoons cut into the rocky coast by the developers of a new Marriot resort. Since we were on the public land via private property thing again, there were excellent roads, bathrooms, sidewalks, and facilities, and we were able to change, swim, and relax on the sandy beach watching a wedding party behind us and the sunset ahead of us. There were no waves and there was no current—this of course was my idea of the perfect beach, though not Robert’s, but we had a very relaxing afternoon.

Changing back into real clothes again, we drove back Diamond Head (eastward) on H1 to the University of Hawaii area in Honolulu, where we ate at Camelia’s all-you-can-eat (or all-you-can-cook, more specifically) Korean buffet. The buffet included six kinds of raw meat and about 20 side dishes in closed refrigerated compartments, as well as a giant pile of ahi sashimi pieces that I must have gotten my money’s worth on alone. The restaurant was nearly empty at 8:30, even though it didn’t close until 10:00, and we had a nice meal—the kalbi and the service were both especially good, and the woman manager came over and complimented Robert on his grilling techniques in general and his choice of fat garlic cloves in particular. We went back to our Honolulu hotel, where everything was just as we’d left it yesterday morning, and managed to stay awake until all of 10:30 at night.

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