miracle on maui!!!!

hello everyone...so....i waited (i know that is hard to believe but i did, patiently sort of) and turned my computer on this morning and it worked! FINALLY. so...we had a post we were about to post before the damn computer broke. here it is!!

these pictures are from our haleakala crater experience...which is detailed after...
















that second to last picture is a chameleon!! smashed on the road of course, we thought it was a dinosaur! a mini one. the other is a HUGE SLUG!!! whoa. scary.



soooooooo last last weekend we decided to visit the haleakala crater. spend some time with the crater man. we went with three other wwwoooofers (and two others joined us......later....). we planned on leaving at 7 but some people were late and i got mad and joe and i walked started walking to the end of the road to hitch hike. as things turn out, we waited and waited. i got more mad. then...the three we were going with came driving up in the back of a truck and picked us up. i guess i learned a lesson, maybe.

so we were on our way...we hitched a ride to the bottom of the crater. still had 22 miles to go. then we got a ride from a bride. we didn't know til we were in the bathroom at the top and the girl who picked us up was putting on a wedding dress! crazyyyy. the top of the crater is about 10,000 feet. we then hiked into the crater down to 6,930 feet to holua campground to camp for the night. the hike was absolutely beautiful. we were IN the clouds. it was steep. betty would have been scared the entire time, i don't think she would have made it! the hike was 3.7 miles.

we got the site, set up the tents and tried to warm up soup with wax heating stuff, worked OK. warm soup. as soon as the sun went down it was FREEEEEEEEEZING. joe and i froze. by freeze here we mean it was 45 degrees. which is pretty cold for hawaii, right? yeah it was cold. and the ground was HARD. the good part was there were BILLIONS and trillions and gazillions of stars (and this time, i am not exaggerating enough, HA). it was perfect.

so, there were two guys from the farm that were going to meet us at the campsite but we had pretty much given up on them by sundown. at about midnight, everyone was sleeping except joe and i because we were freezing and the ground was so hard, and we hear those two bastards walking into the campsite (which is barely a campsite...we only found like 3 spots). they hiked down the crater, in the dark, with flip flops. insane.

so..............woke up and saw the sunrise. then hiked out of the crater. i was starving and couldn't wait to eat but we had to hitch hike back down the crater. people were being assholes and not picking us up. but we finally got a ride...went to paia to cafe mambo and i had a spinach falafel nut sandwich YUM (sorry liz, no pictures). and FRIES. i was so excited. and a big swell IPA. joe got a tofu burger. after lunch, we basically couldn't move so we went to the beach down the road. life's rough.

fall has arrived here! it is SUPER windy. and kind of cold sometimes (nothing compared to MN though, ha). good thing we had the neighbor come over and cut all the coconuts out of the tall trees so they don't fall and kill me. joe is still working on his coconut tree climbing skills. he will be an expert by the time we leave.

see ya'll soon! hopefully my computer won't die again!!

Mouth numbing goodness!

We have this beautiful plant growing on the property. It is called spilanthes, what a badass name!

Spilanthes is a member of the Asteraceae family, the same as echinacea. It is also known as the toothache plant. the red and yellow cone shaped flowers are what you eat, it is nuts. Once eaten they stimulate the flow of saliva which cleanses the mouth, tones the gums, and enhances immune function. Spilanthes also improves digestion, eases flatulence(woohoo), improves the appetite, and helps to overcome nausea and vomiting by its stimulating effect on the salivary glands.it is so weird because it makes your mouth go numb.

Chels is still scared to try it, hopefully she will soon! I will try to post some more flora and fauna soon.

Bad karma

Hello all. So, things went downhill the last couple of days. My computer got the 'black screen of death' also known as kernel panic or some stupid shit like that. Joe has his own problems-phytophotodermatitis! From fricken parsley. Watch for that parsley. I blame this bad luck on myself. Bad karma. Last week I was running to the kitchen because it was raining and I accidentally squashed a toad. It was horrible. I still feel bad about it. I buried it with a hibiscus tombstone. So...don't step on frogs or u will get phytophotodermatitis and your computer will die.
Besides that we are good!! Hopefully update soon...no pics though so it's not worth looking at the blog anymore I suppose. Ha. We will try to fix it asap after apple steals all my life savings!

Mahalo, chelsea and joey
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

hiking day.........

hello everyone. today we hiked a shitload. well it seemed like it anyway. we hiked down to the top of the waterfall (doesn't make sense, i know, but it is down) and across the little stream to the neighbors property (where waylon and kaycie stayed on their honeymoon!) and took their trail down to the ocean. it was VERY steep. crazy. we weren't excited for the hike back up. when we got to the ocean view it was AMAZING. so we swam, saw a sea turtled and others fished. cornelius, one of the wwoofers, from germany, spear-fished with some random fisherman. kaylie, another wwoofer, from oregon, used a fishing pole the fisherman found at the bottom of the ocean. she didn't catch anything but claimed she had bites. so, after getting sunburned and really hot, we decided to hike into the valley to see the bottom of the waterfall. it took us awhile to hike up the entire stream but it was worth it! we were in a GIANT green valley the entire time. it was a jungly grand canyon (maybe not that big but it seemed like it). anyway...you will see the pictures. it was beautiful. then we hiked out and i barely made it all the way back to our farm. weak. now we are exhausted and going in the hot tub.

cornelius and joe, the TOP of the waterfall...this is on our farm's property

view on the hike down.

the hike down...

kaylie, cornelius and joe

look at how blue that is!!!

joe, pondering life

kaylie, trying to catch fish

me, wandering off

where we swam, you can see the two fisherman on the rocks! so small.

the hike down...

the waterfall

THE MONSOON!!!

Hello family and friends! This is joe speaking finally!!!

We have survived our first weekend in Maui. Saturday it was raining at the farm so we decided to get a ride into the groovy town of paia. This place is soooo cool. We think we want to live hear! In Paia we stopped at Mana Foods and met up with cheezle (the other Chelsea) and headed to the beach.

In Paia we decided to meet up with some of the other wwoofers who were on the otherside of the island in Kihei. We had our first hitchhiking experience, was pretty fun. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beers on the beautiful beach on the southern side which isn't rainy. This is no joke. When we got home it was still raining, and continued to rain until about noon the next day. This was no ordinary rain, but a monsoon. Or as chelsea would it was raining frickin cats and dogs!

At the bitch with Cheezle

Me with our beers! Maui Brewing Company (they come in cans just like Surly!)

Beach at Kihei, not raining at all

Sunday we woke up and it was STILL raining, flooding everywhere. The exciting part was that the once trickling little waterfall became a roaring beast over night. We wanted to get away from all of the damn rain so we decided to go to little beach for the day. Before we left though, we went to check out some of the other waterfall beasts on hana highway.

Little beach on Sundays is crazy! People usually start getting there at noon and there are drum circles, fire dancers, people walking around selling outdoor herb, hippies, an naked people everywhere. I forgot to mention it was a nude beach. We spent the afternoon in the sun having a great time watching all of the weirdos in the beach!

This is the waterfall after the monsoon!

Raging waterfalls due to all the rain, 6.5"!

One of the many one-lane bridges on the hana highway

This is big beach, on the way to little beach

Walking down the path to little beach

This is where the hippies hang out!

A lady with a leopard cowgirl hat walks around the beach selling this magical cookies out of a lunchbox.

The drum circle goes on all day long

Crazy sunset

More sunset

little fire creeper. The best firedance show we have ever seen!

These are our new favorites! Strawberry guavas

in the middle of the ocean

our view from outside one of the buildings

helllllllllllo everyone. finally, we post. it has taken us (or maybe me) awhile to get used to things. still haven't. i am still going crazy/psycho, joe has moved on to having fun. on the plane ride over we got FREE mai tais and the the guy next to us bought us extra rum for ours, they were extra strong (gross, i had to drink bacardi, blahhh). we got free macadamia nuts too, yum (we got some extra ones to send you kevon, ha).

we landed, got our shit, and sam from the farm showed up in a red biodiesel sprinter van, otherwise known as a tall van, creeper van. he took us to the nearest beach and we didn't really know what was going on. it was amazing. i can't even explain how beautiful it was. the fricken ocean!! and hills and sand. it was great. then we headed to the farm. wendy, who works in the office, showed us around. it is a maze of a place. we were lost every time we walked around for the first 2 days. still get lost. there are toads everywhere at night that scare the shit out of you (or just me) they are HUGE like the size of rabbits. baby rabbits. i will get a picture next time i don't have a heart attack when i see one. (they are seriously, everyhwere, you almost step on them every step). we are going to do a video of our walk from our tent to the kitchen, just to emphasize how maze-like this place is. the place is a jungle. flowers everywhere!

drinky.

view from the air...finally saw something besides WATER.

sam picked us up at the airport and brought us to this beach to our first glimpse of maui

yup.

there is fruit everywhere you look. i think we ate 10 passionfruits each the first day we found out what they were. they were all around our tent. we don't have a picture yet because we ate them all. there are shitloads of bananas, starfruit, coconuts, avocados, papayas, suriname cherries, guavas, clementines, oranges, pommelos, limes, chestnuts, noni...etc growing everywhere. feasts all over the place. there is also an ice cream bean plant somewhere, we haven't found it yet. and a night jasmine. only blooms at night and smells awesome. we are going to search for it tonight.

there are six other wwoofers here, they have been here anywhere from 1-3 months. (joe just ran outside because it randomly started monsooning again. tents probably soaked, takes awhile to get used to sleeping in a tent, a normal, three person tent, oh what do you know the sun is shining again). they are all used to this place/lifestyle already so they all going place and running around and surfing and hitch hiking. eventually...we will too.

the first day we got here, we met everyone and then got back in the creepvan and headed back to town to go grocery shopping at costco in kahalui and mana foods in paia (which is SWEET they have everything there, very compact).

thursday morning we started work! joe and i got two other wwoofers, lulu and cornelius, to work with for the day. i weeded most of the day, planted some red beets, harvested some radishes...good for the first day. joe and cornelius weeded, fertilized okra with blue rock (which is hawaii's volcanic rock with natural phosphates or something like that), watered...etc.

friday is harvest day. we helped with some of that, learned some stuff and at the end of the day jumped in the pool. len, a guy that works on the property, was nice enough to drive all of us around the island for awhile and then we headed to the wailuku county fair. it was pretty much like any other fair but with all hawaiians, and us. and they had a poi mochi stand. it was good...interesting. we couldn't finish them all. of course, since all of us are a bunch of farm nerds, we only found joy in the produce/orchid tent. there was crazy vegetables and fruits grown all over the island. we wanted to eat them all. after the fair, we went to a bar and got massive beers (finally!). nothing beats oregon's beer selection though so we were a little disappointed. we have yet to explore a liquor store though, so maybe we will be surprised. probably won't have surly though.

sleeping at night in the tent is a challenge. last night it was SUPER windy the entire night. it was like fricken hurricane winds. luckily, it didn't rain like it has the rest of the nights. i thought we were going to blow away and had a heart attack everytime the tarp hit the tent, the tent hit the tent or what sounded like coconuts SMASHING into the tin roof...many weird noises. joe's gonna get his own tent one of these nights if i keep bugging him. the nights it rains, it sounds like actual dogs and cats are raining from the sky onto the tin roof. not even a fan would cover up these noises. i will get used to them eventually...hopefully!! it will be good for me.

grace garden, one of the many gardens.

view from the hot tub, sunrise. birds woke us up.

our new home.
side of our home and our "backyard"
we walked around and harvested a bunch of good shit.

the waterfall! we will get a better picture if it stop monsooning today.
interesting statue (one of many, they are all over)
salt water pool. perfect temperature.
passionfruit flower

joe, standing with his fruit picker.

suriname cherry, very weird tasting. not sure about it yet.
one of the pools we cross going to our tent.

rambutan. we gotta find some of THESE!

one of the aisles of fruits...
joey pickin' a clementine.

look at this creep!!

we also found out what our address is here...it has to say

Hale Akua Shangri-la (then our name)

P.O. Box 767

Haiku, HI 96708

hopefully talk to you guys soon!!!!!!!

chels and joey