The Place of Refuge

Friday, October 11, 2024. Waikoloa Beach and Volcano Village, HI

Today’s card is the Eight of Cups, which seams appropriate for our visit (by land, this time) to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, the Place of Refuge.

We woke up earlyish and went out again to the Hilton Coffee place… which took longer than expected, but did enable us to see another sea turtle and a native Hawaiian heron. We rushed through the museum path, got back and packed, then we said said goodbye to the Hilton Club House #4 . We headed south along the southwestern coast. We didn’t see any wild pigs, but we continued to see wild goats along the side of the road.

Pu'uhonua O Honaunau is a place where defeated warriors or Hawaiians who had broken social rules, or kapu (punishable by death) could flee to for sanctuary. It was also a place where the chiefs could hang out at, once they made it through a gauntlet of defending warriors. Mark had downloaded a walking tour from the US Park Service and we learned about a Go-like game, and lava tree castings, and the importance of stories of families’ relations with the local land.

There is an active shrine on the site that features several large, carved wooden ki’i (an image representing an akua, or Hawaiian god); the ones within the shrine’s sanctuary are different manifestations of the god Lono (responsible for rain and fertility). I tried to photograph the images, and the lighting was not cooperating, so the ki’i were washed out or underexposed. I’m always impressed by the texture of the carvings.

Under a kind of A-frame, we spoke with a woman as she wove palm fronds into baskets, roses, and fish. The fish gave me a Proust Moment, and I suddenly recalled a mobile made of small, black and golden woven fish, hanging in my sister’s upstairs bedroom in the house my parents rented in the late 1960’s.

Mark asked her how long her baskets lasted and she pointed to the first basket she ever made, thirty years ago. The fronds were trimmed to narrow strips. They started out green, and turned yellow-brown as they aged. The fronds were soft and not difficult to work with. She seemed pleased with how interactive we were and we had a nice conversation with her.

We ran into a park ranger and Mark asked about the carvings—they were too large to have come from the local palm trees. The ranger said that a wood carver would work with a priest, climb the volcanos where the rainforests were, and select a tree; the type of tree chosen would depend on which akua was being represented and also what relationship the carver had with the tree. These were guides more than rules, and the ranger indicated that tree selection could be pragmatic.

I can’t help but want to contrast and compare Hawaiian sculpture with ancient Egyptian sculpture. Hawaiian sculpture is wood, spans a shorter time period, and doesn’t have any words or written spells on it. My sense is that Hawaiian sculpture is more textured with bold geometric patterns, whereas (aside from linen clothing) Egyptian sculpture is more smooth. I am supposing that some of these differences come from the Hawaiians not having ready access to metal tools.

If I had to come to a conclusion after an hour and a half of touring Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, I would that Hawaiian religious sculpture is more about the stories between a place or natural phenomenon and a person or person’s family, and that Egyptian religious sculpture is more grounded in a magical tradition. Exploring the similarities and differences between kapu and ma’at is a whole other essay.

Next to the park was a place folks could enter the surf and snorkel, so we did. This was the second bay we had snorkeled in on our Tuesday snorkel tour. Yellow fish swam right at the stepped rocks where one entered the water. There were fish (and people) everywhere. While we were there, dolphins cavorted in the surf.

After snorkeling, we drove through the twisty highway to Shaka Tacoz (the more southern one), a fish taco place where geckos came out of the woodwork to lick up the guava sauce. The food and geckos were great, although the music was bad pop from 1980 (at least our cashier liked it, because she sang along with every tune).

More driving. We made it to a black sands beach where sea turtles basked in the sun. The beach is very black and like Yachatts, Oregon, only with much more lava and less basalt. The sand is more course lava pebbles than actual sand. There were folks in the surf, but it looked much more rough than the other sites we’d visited. I took photos of sleeping turtles. Mark got some excellent mahi-mahi from a food truck; I got an ice-cream bar.

Still more driving. We did not see wild pigs or goats. In the town of Volcano Village, 4000 feet above sea level, we made a food run during the last ten minutes of operation of a quirky market. The market reminded me of Capella Market in Eugene, which is a bad sign: the aisles were even more narrow, and the layout more haphazard. I had low blood sugar or something, so I apparently walked past food I would have purchased and could only find things like nails, hinges, laundry detergent, and third-tier-Hostess-knock-off pastry pucks. There was some sort of episode at the cash register with cheese sticks of insanity that I don’t recall very well.

We had fine dining in Volcano, which included newly discovered Mai Tais. The restaurant was filled with very large portriats of birds. Which looked varying degrees of angry or judgey.

After dinner, we fall asleep to the sound of about a thousand cheeping invasive tree frogs from Puerto Rico. The tourist book warned us about the frogs and the insanity their song could bring, but we thought they were charming background noise.