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
