Day 26: Hawi to Pololu Overlook (and back): Powered by Peanut Butter

February 5, 2016

Our breakfast conversation was enlivened this morning by an emailed comment we received on what we have been saying about food in Hawaii. As we downed our fluffy bread and peanut butter sandwiches, plus single banana each, all at double Seattle prices, we read that our problem must be that we are dining out too much, and we should learn to prepare fast, nutritious, and economical meals on the road.

Readers of our blogs know that food is always a topic, but this particular story began when I asked myself how it could be that in a land of fresh fruit, sunshine, and sea air I feel that we are losing strength, and gaining weight. I picked up a magazine called "Edible - Hawaiian Islands" to see about all we must be missing. What I found was a lot of good looking food, but none of it is anywhere near where we usually are geographically, and economically.

The conclusion I came to was that supermarket food here - processed, prepared in-store, and fresh is of low quality, and high price. Normal Hawaiian eating out food is low on vegetables, and relatively high priced. But finally, when you can find a higher quality restaurant you can have good food, but at prices that are higher again. By "higher again", we mean high enough that no normal mid income cyclist could sustain the cost for a tour of even moderate length.

For us, this whole structure is a big shift from England, France, and Germany, where we found processed and supermarket prepared food that was fine and that gave us lots of strength and ability to pedal and lose weight too.

We knew we would run in to this problem in America, which seems to have committed so much ingenuity to dropping food quality in the interests of raising profits. But it was news all the same to realize that it is getting to us.

As for the email writer's feeling that we should combat quality and cost problems with lots more scratch food preparation, we look at our little stove and dwindling fuel supply, not to mention this hotel's threatened $300 fine to anyone caught cooking in the buildings or on the property, and just shake our heads.

No, by the time "breakfast" ended we just concluded there was no hope for it. We will have to pay the price for the occasional decent meal, and honestly - think really hard before committing to future trips in what claims to be one of the wealthiest, and you would then guess, healthiest countries going.

Drawing on whatever energy was contained in that peanut butter breakfast, we set off east, in the direction of Pololu. This retraced the ride we had started yesterday, passing Kapa'au and the Kamehameha Statue, and heading into the region of the three gulches. In part because riding this direction has quite a bit of downhill to it, the ride just seemed super enjoyable. The ecosystem here is wetter than Kona and dryer than Hilo, so there are lots of beautiful tropical looking things, but without a lot of steamy moisture or rains.

As with yesterday, we cruised through the gulches with no problem, focusing more on the extra lush foliage down by the streams at the bottoms than on the climbs back out. Beyond the gulches the road unexpectedly climbed a fair bit, but again no big deal.

The Pololu Lookout is much like the Waipio lookout. This figures because the two valleys are a part of seven similar landforms all lined up along this remote section of coast. Right now it seems like Pololu is basically uninhabited. In the early part of the 20th century rice farming was carried on there, but this was wiped out by the 1946 tsunami. Now, there is a black sand beach there, and some groves of wild mango trees, but that is about it.

A trail leads down into the valley and they say it takes about 20 minutes down, 30 minutes back. We took a pass on that. Instead we backtracked to a road leading down to Keokea Beach Park. The park occupies a beautiful bay which today had quite high surf. A rocky shore meant no swimming, but a beautiful job has been done of providing picnic tables and shady shelter. It was great just to watch the surf and enjoy the tropical surroundings.

On one side of the bay a small breakwater has been built, with the purpose of creating some protected water. Whether this was the plan or not, the bit of protected water is only a couple of feet deep, ideal for very little kids. We waded in this, as did a few other people. Some tried lying flat in the water, but it was not deep enough to feel like one had "swum" at all. Still sand and "surf", even in the keiki pool, is always fun.

We pushed out of the steep road that had dropped to the beach park and worked our way past the gulches and such toward Hawi. We stopped in at both the Takata and Nakahara grocery stores to make sure they were not hiding all sorts of easy and nutritious stuff we had missed. Nope.

Yesterday we had spotted and bought some banana bread slices at a coffee shop around the corner (Kohala Coffee Mill) and set our hopes on going back for more. Unfortunately yesterday's supply was it. Now we are setting our hopes on the farmers' market tomorrow. A year ago we had bought a good banana bread from a lady there. We hope she has waited out the year we've been gone, and that she will be there with our bread! Otherwise we remain - powered by peanut butter.

Pigeons enjoy a sprinkler. We though it looked kind of wasteful to be running a sprinkler here, but the birds were having a grand time.

We went back to the Hawi Gallery and found it open, This turned out to be a serious ukelele shop in this little town. Many of the instruments were made in Hawaii, and some were from a luthier right in Hawi. They also had some quite nice Chinese ones. Prices, it turns out, range from $130 to $2000.

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 860 km (534 miles)

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