Orienting to Hawaii

Monday, October 7, 2024. Waikoloa Beach, HI

7:00 A.M. which means it’s 10:00 A.M. at home. This morning’s tarot card is the Three of Pentacles reversed, which I’m thinking is me worrying about work and writing craft and vacation.

Today is a recovery and orientation day. Despite wanting a bit more sleep mentally, my body was ready to be up at 5 A.M. After a brief attempt at more sleep, I got up again for the day.

Mark was already awake, and I stumbled about our condo trying to see if I could see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, but I think it’s too close to the sun. Also, it took me some doing to locate Polaris, and there’s a shield volcano in front of everything, and the ocean is to the southwest (not the westwest). I think what’s confusing me the most is that I’m not in a valley oriented north/south.

We’re staying in a Hilton resort village made up of three or four properties and shopping centers. Our unit is nice. It’s on the third floor of a blocky mansion-style building with a red tile roof. We’re on the northwest corner, with a spacious balcony that gets a lot of late afternoon sun (and late-night geckos). The resort is on the southern coast, just below the most western tip of the Big Island. The saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa is east of us. I really should have looked more closely at a map, because my directional sense, never my strong suit, is especially scrambled the entire trip.

The grounds are well maintained and manicured—sort of like Disney World, only without all of the branding. We’re in a part of the resort that isn’t zooey. I’d say most of the folks in this section are white, middle-class retirees and their families. There’s a smattering of folks from Asia and India.

I’d say it’s a toss-up which is the loudest: the birds, the local water features (I jokingly referred to the artificial creek running around our unit as our moat), or the air-conditioning unit across the street at pool. I suppose that staying at the resort must be similar to being on a cruise ship, only without the ocean travel.

If we wanted to drop a lot (more) money, I could have a day spa treatment and massage and we could swim with enslaved dolphins.


Mark has disparaged (rightly) my humming of “Mele Kalikimaka”, and so of course my brain has switched to the song, “Puka Shells.”

In the morning, we went to a local access beach about fifteen minutes east and tested out the snorkel-masks Dad loaned us. I would say the most surprising thing about the beach was the sign warning folks about unspent military ordinances and to not touch anything that might look like a grenade.

The water was surprisingly warm; throughout the trip I had to keep reminding myself that we were in the tropics and that the water would be much warmer that the 50F it is off of the Oregon coast. A turtle buzzed Mark while he was swimming underwater. There were lots of triggerfish. Mark found a semi-secret cave that one had to swim to above the rocky cliff on the east side of the bay; it was a little too public for making out in, and we had to settle for a quick kiss around snorkels.  I absorbed too much salt water my third time out and suddenly felt sick while still out in the surf—luckily, I wasn't too far out and it was easy enough to float back to the beach.

I also wasn’t expecting to be out in the sun so much and got a particularly awkward and ugly sunburn: the tops of my pecs were bright red and I had white streaks underneath, which made me look especially saggy; I’d unevenly applied sunscreen around my neck, so I had red “straps” running down the sides of my chest and a white bib-shape over my sternum. I looked like I was wearing a Holly Hobbie or Marie Osmond dress made out of sunburn.

I'm thinking that today's tarot card should have been The Sun, reversed.