Hawaii Avocado Festival in Kona

If you look closely at this photo of the action at the avocado booth at the 13th Hawaii Avocado Festival, you will see Avocado Man. He is in the back behind the juicer wearing an avocado costume. At first blush, my friend Linda thought he was having a medical problem; whereas I thought he was carrying a baby in a knapsack. But it was just an avocado costume with the seed in the center.

We are not accustomed to staring at half avocados because it is only the whole avocados you generally see. Except a whole avocado is not a terribly attractive outfit.

Linda and I had gone to Holualoa for our Saturday morning yin yoga class. It is a wonderful experience, stretching what was once beyond our abilities. The class is taught on the third floor of a historic building, and all the windows are open to let in the ocean breezes from the spectacular view. Taking the class with others over 50 is pleasant too. There are no show-offs in class, and everybody struggles.

Amazingly, I can almost touch the floor with folded arms by bending at the waist, so I am making excellent progress. After class, we stopped at a gallery to view Anita’s artwork, the random woman from New York I met yesterday. I bought a beautiful ceramic soup spoon holder, handmade with a small turtle perched on its edge.

We toured a few open houses along Guava Road off Hualalai in a gated subdivision. One was atrocious. I had viewed it online and, as a Sacramento Realtor, I cringe for that listing agent. It is horribly ugly, no curb appeal, awful updates. Much of the design looks like they were created by the seller saying, “Oh, look at how cheap this product is, let’s buy it. Better yet, let’s install it ourselves without training or reading directions.” No rhyme nor reason for the design, and there is nothing you can do make it better short of tearing it down. Price tag is almost $1 million.

The view in the photo above is of our walk along Ali’i Drive toward the Hawaii Avocado Festival at Hale Halawai, just past the Waterfront building. Many spring flowers are beginning to bloom.

Inside the building, we spotted Avocado Girl! She is wearing a costume commissioned from a shop in Hollywood that cost $500 to make. Our local newspaper, West Hawaii Today, reports she is to possess supernatural powers of some sort, but see, dogs like her.

Behind her is Dr. Tim’s Medicine Band, which played a lot of old cover songs from the 1960s. They probably played indoors — which doesn’t carry sound well for a band — because it was sprinkling a bit outside. There would have been people dancing if alcohol was served, but these family-rated events do not serve even beer or wine.

Because we were so busy touring open houses and doing yoga, Linda and I had a really late lunch at the Hawaii Avocado Festival. She chose a bento bowl without kimchee and I went with the spicy noodles over lettuce. Primarily because I will eat almost anything that is served with jalapenos and is only 10 bucks.

Of course, this is the view of the back yard of the Hale Halawai, the beautiful lava beds, beach and ocean. Even a light sprinkling rain was not enough to draw crowds away from the Hawaii Avocado Festival.

They featured sharwil avocados and a large assortment of others, including the avocado named Linda. Which is almost as big as my head. The focus seemed to be on shipping avocados to Japan. Apparently, even though USDA decided last month to lift the ban of sharwil avocado shipments to 32 states in the U.S. but only during November to March, that is not enough. Further, 25 years was a long time to wait to ship avocados to the Mainland.

According to West Hawaii Today and the executive director of the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers Association, almost 80% of the 9 million pounds of avocado production in Hawaii goes to waste due to restrictions on shipping by the federal government. We have no choice, Hawaii is saying enough is enough, we’ll ship to Japan then.