In Hilo.
It was a very long journey from the Doyenne’s house to our current abode, with some panic and disruption along the way, particularly when we arrived at the airport to find that we needed to show proof of outbound travel not from the US, but from countries contiguous to the US, so our Mexico flights wouldn’t do. So we had to pull out our phones and frantically search for tickets. Fortunately we knew where we were going next and when, and had already looked up flights, just not booked them, so it was fairly straightforward, but still not the thing you want to deal with when standing at the front of a very long queue with a long flight ahead of you.
Our place in Hilo is really lovely. It’s a small old house in the back of a large old house on street of beautiful villas and incredible greenery. Our little house is definitely creaky – for one, as the owner said, last year’s earthquake threw everything out of alignment – and it’s fairly dated to begin with. But there is everything here, and the furniture is comfortable (surprisingly rare in Airbnbs) and the kitchen and bathroom are functional, and it’s so nice to be on our own.
I really like Hilo, I must say. It’s definitely the residential part of the Big Island, quiet and old, and clearly quite poor though not entirely rundown, perhaps because of tourist money. There are a lot of meth addicts and homeless people camped out. The town itself is full of lovely old buildings, and is surrounded by the largest trees I’ve ever seen, so lush and beautiful in a very different way from tropical SE Asia. There the greenery spurts out densely, here it grows tall and waves in the sea breeze. Very romantic.
This morning we went for a walk through town and into the park on the other side. Just outside the park was a poke bar so we stopped for an early lunch and had an absolutely delicious assortment of poke, with some furikake sprinkled rice. The portions were American and so immense, but it was particularly notable how whole-hearted the flavours were, not at all like the poke bowls you get in health food type places elsewhere. Very tasty indeed.
We went to the farmer’s market and picked up an assortment of fruits and vegetables, and then returned, having a cold press Kona coffee on the way. Since then I’ve been working (the time difference is really doing me in) but I am in a very good mood.
New fruits we’ve tried included an egg fruit: the texture and colour of a hardboiled egg yolk. My first taste was gross, but it was rather like a durian in that it grew on me and by the end felt very tasty.