hello, how do you do?

been having a rather lovely time recently.
yesterday me and taj [a house mate] went fishing with bamboo sticks off the rock outside our house, taj got 3, laverick nil. then later we cooked them on a fire on the beach. just after our rather small fishy tea a big samoan boy picked us up in his truck and we went to his mates to drink kava [for non Samoans kava is a drink made from the root of a pepper plant, it tastes like dirty water with a hint of Cinnamon and is supposed to numb your body]. so we sat outside this house drinking kava out of a bucket with 3 vast Polynesian boys playing ukes and singing. pretty cool but the kava didnt really do a whole lot apart from make my legs abit numb.

went for some epic hiking a few days back, it followed the ridge of these mountains, only problem was the ridge was around 2ft wide with 2000+ft drop on either side. parts of it turned into rock climbing than an actual walk and took over 5 hours. about 3/4 of the way through i heard a massive scream and turned around to sea david dragging hannah to the ground. turned out she had reached for a branch that bent or broke and was about to fall several thousand feet off the ridge. pretty dodge. the plan was to hit up 2 other hikes [one with a 50ft waterfall to jump off] but just went home with jellied legs.





off to maui on tues then hopefully big island, back here and ny for a few days. also need to tan my chops off.

p p p pounders

word up.
off to the beach in abit with some chums, later tonight off to honolulu to try and get tickets for MGMT who are playing there tonight. rather excited!
last few days have been mint, staying in a place on the northish shore called la'ie with some guys i met on the kalalau trail. we cruise around all day going to beaches, snorkel and body surf and generally jest around to the max!
yesterday got up at 3am to do this hike called stairway to heaven. over 4000 steps and 8,000ft up. i have a mint arse from all that exercise [and rather sore knees]. its sort of illegal to do it so we had to climb over some wire fences then follow a little path under the freeway. its a residential area where you go in and all the neighbours get majorly cheesed, we found out why after we set off a load of dogs barking and a cockrel crowing at about 4am. started off the steps to some major leg burn and dodgey belly but made it to the 1st platform to see the sun rise, yet when we got to the top it was cloudy and couldnt see a think. the top of it has some old abandoned WWII buildings with 2 huge dishes on top, it was used for submarine communications apparently. met some old dude up there who was telling us the US army hired a swiss mountaineer to blaze a route up which took him 3weeks then they put in the stairs and then brought up winches and concrete. must have been the worst job ever, huge huge drops on either side of ridges only a few ft wide and most of the climb almost vertical. walk down was abit dodgy in places where you could just see the ground thousands of ft below and just a little metal rail keeping you up!

other than that mainly been hanging out. been really cool living with the boys. theres about 7 or 8 people in the house, all of them mormon. all of them totally altered my perception of mormons. most of them here are really open minded, none judgemental and up for discussing everything. none of them drink, do drugs, have sex, smoke or drink caffeine which at first sounds super boring, yet when you actually get to know them and hang out its pretty obvious that not having those things doesn't stop you having fun at all and that missing booze and drugs actually makes people more up for doing varied and interesting things.

oh new favourite thing is pounders beach. its a beach just down from here where the waves smash you up pretty good. we've been going there to body surf and muck about. so much sliding down the side of a wave then getting barrelled and smashed up and spun upside down underwater. ace!

oh some women drove her car off a cliff into the sea at the end of the road we're on. pretty sad. pretty mental.

Whats Serbia?

Its a country darling.
got a lift from some right daft americans on their honeymoon. she was classic. as rebhead would say she didn't know 'shit about fuck'. spent the day cruising round and getting high. was fairly nice, although several times thought 'wow glad im not driving right now', only to realise that the guy driving had smoked a fair amount more than me. doesn't do much for your paranoia.
Final night [hopefully] of sleeping rough. got myself a sweet beach for tonight though.
got stuck with this mental on the bus. he wouldn't shut up about his time in nam and then started on some rant about the benedictine monks started out and how they were all screwing each other and something to do with sparrows. the bus driver ended up stopping the bus and telling him to pipe down. i was also given a fairly comprehensive guide to what i should have in my bag, i doubt i'll be taking too much notice of the advice since the man who gave it had several large holes in his face.
this library is amazing. 4 computers, always being used by old hippy guys looking up recipes on turnips and stinking the place out. yesterday i walked out to find a cockerel standing on the handlebars of a bike, turned out to be someones pet who rode it round like that. pictures to follow....

Just life changing facts. Thats all.

Fact 1) Kauai has the wettest place on earth.

Fact 2) Kauai also has the 9th driest place on earth.

There.

Tried hitching to Waimea canyon today. Currently stuck in Waimea as no one will pick me up on the canyon road. It seems to be only Hawaiians [who aren't too keen on howlies [white people]] or tourist [who are scared of anyone who isn't wearing a porter's outfit] driving by, so hit up the library since the town is a dump.


Last night got back to Hanalei with a ride with some dude who rattled off the same old fox news esque scare bullshit about how i'm going to be murdered by ice heads, beaten to death by locals or raped by chickens [there are chickens everywhere on this island all of which are fairly sexually aggressive to white guys]. Doesn't do much for a great nights sleep.

Met a guy on the beach playing hackysack, he was a massive hippy but was cool so i joined in. he was dead cool yet totally bonkers, probably the most intense man ive ever met. kept telling me about all the energy flowing from kauai, mother earth, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. gave me a hackysack though so sound.

this morning went to catch the bus, my 'hi, mind if i sit here?' got me the rather curt response 'we aloha here' from this hippy wench with massively hairy armpits. she then turned away to teach her kid some hippy mumbo jumbo about how you should love people and the energy it gives to them.

Bitch.

Ended up talking to her and she was fairly nice, although insisted on getting into energy, 2012 [for those of you who don't stink, think hemp is the shit or tie-die every last item of clothing 2012 has apparently been mentioned by loads of ancient civilisations as a time when something majors going to happen. loads of people over here are obsessed with it. seems to involve a lot of energy and long meaningless words to do with collective consciousness and the west being a complete bastard [just more facts there]].

seem to have got to that stage in my trip where i begin to hate the contents of the country im in. at least this time i can avoid being too racist.

one thing that did brighten up my rather soured mood today was this cheeky little number sported by a rather rotund gentleman on the bus. we'll show the Taliban who's more militaristic ey?

vow of poverty

well. spent yesterday faffing. today isnt too much different.
hitched back to hanalei [my new bedroom], sat down with some boy who was passionate about plants and as a result massively boring. he had some shit tat on his leg saying 19?6, it was meant to challenge our ideas about what time we were living in. he also had a tash and faux nerd glasses. twerp.
then hoiked my crap to my usual spot and bumped into a seemingly cool hippy lady. she turned out to have no teeth and be mad. took a vow of poverty after being raped by a satanic cult. now was homeless in hawaii and studied the scripture and kept an eye out for sinning and the devil. she was fairly mad, kept ranting about sin, gods, bastard christians, wicked morals. buzz kill to say the least. pretended to go to the toilet and legged it. the prospect of waking up to a tramp with rotting gums doing some ritual on my tent didn't bode well for a good nights sleep.
today i tried to hitch to Lihue [main town on kauai], made a trusty 'i have chocolate sign', only to find out that tourists have no sense of humour and rude boys find it a good reason to threaten to rob me. caught the bus. turns out theres fuck all in Lihue. apart from wallmart [which will only sell dried fruit if it contains 90% chocolate drops [fat bastards]].
so ye getting abit of island fever. been here 3weeks or something now though so maybe time to move on. planning on doing some volunteer work in oahu. not sure what with but should be a good way to meet people. sitting on a beach surrounded by american sales execs fiddling with their 'cells' or trying to escape mad bums isn't.

festival of cheese

hello!

for anyone without facebook [ie mother] you can get my photos here

yesterday ended riding in the back of a pick up truck with my 3 new american chums, sun setting over the mountains, wind in our hair and the biggest grins on our tanned / muddy faces. ace.
spent 5days on the kalalau trail, an 11 mile hike along the most beautiful coast line ive ever seen. also some of the most dangerous.

spent the 1st day hiking on my own, then bumped into 3 american boys [one of who asked me if id heard of chorley, turns out he used to hang with my friend from college little sister. mad.] and camped with them on the 1st beach, on the 2nd day we hiked to the final beach, alot of it was fairly hard work, hiking up and down the switchbacks, some of it was super dangerous too, about 1km of it was 1 to 2ft wide with an almost vertical thousand ft drop down to the sea and a cliff on the other side. pretty scary.

the beach we got to was amazing, proper little community living in tents, stunning waterfall to shower in, perfect sea and impossibly gorgeous mountains right behind. the next day we swum about 15mins round a headland to this beach you can only reach by swimming, was so so stunning, no way i can possibly explain how good it was, huge 1000+ft wall of rock over hanging on 1 side, turquoise ocean, little crabs hunting in the surf and a huge arch through to another beach. all totally deserted. swim back was a little scary as the sea picked up and im not the strongest swimmer. clearly didnt die though. sound.

that night i had a smoke with this guy ryan we were hanging with, fairly sure there isnt a better place to get high, just sat round the camp fire on the beach gazing at the stars and moon silhouette the incredible mountains. the moon made life a little tricky though. as i went to go piss in the sea i came across this mad change in tone of the sand. it was bright white, i couldnt work out whether it was the sea, foam, aliens or drug induced stupor. i stood there for a fair while not quite sure what to do. turned out to be the moon. i turned out to be quite high and stupid.

day after we hiked up into the valley, it was vast, all terraced using the huge basalt rocks to build walls, was apparently inhabited by 10,000 hawaiians some time ago, now all the terraces they used to grow taro in has turned to Forest / jungle. we picked loads of guava, mango and oranges from the trees and found wild ginger to make tea with. pretty ace.
met a dude on the way out who was kayaking around with a hammock and some rice and swede, he for sure had the life.

not sure what the crack is now. have plans for deep sea fishing with my $600 i earned. flying to Oahu to hang out with the trail boys. then who knows. surfing i hope.