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If You Want to Ride ATVs on Big Island
When Loli asked if I wanted to go along on a FAM tour (familiarization) to ride ATVs on Big Island, I did not hesitate. Always up for an adventure. Well, as long as it’s not life threatening. I have so many ways to die now I don’t need to invite the opportunity. The only catch was I had to pull myself out of bed at 5 AM and hightail it down to the King Kam in Kona by 6:30.
Loli is a tour guide, a dietician, facial expert, Pele expert, natural healer, and I wouldn’t be surprised to catch her dancing naked under a full moon. Just the kind of friend every woman deserves, given the fact I only met her last week. Wanna ride ATVs, she asked? I can bring a friend for free.
You betcha! This is a Kapohohine Adventure called Maunakea Trails ATV. This outfit offers many tours, but to ride ATVs on Big Island is a special trip. They pick you up at the King Kam at 6:30 in Kona and drive you two hours away to Hilo. Only we had van problems on the way and pulled off just past Costco to get a new van. Back on the road to Hilo.
In the middle of all of this, two pending sales canceled. Isn’t that the way it always happens in Sacramento real estate? Buyers who fly out of control just before closing. As a Sacramento listing agent, I have no control over buyers or their agents. But I dealt with it. Almost a plus we had to pull off the road so I could talk with my clients and arrange a strategy. Always working, no matter what. That’s the life of a top Sacramento Realtor.
When we arrived in Hilo, it was raining. Of course. It’s always raining in Hilo, it seems. That is the wet side of Big Island. The dry side, where we have a house, is almost always sunny. So you either like the sun or you like rain. Take your pick. And I should mention the coqui are in Hilo in greater numbers than Kona.
The ATV adventure was totally fabulous, even in the rain. You get pretty muddy, especially if you hold back like I did, primarily because the two women in front of me were too slow. I waited until they passed an obstacle, and then I jammed, let it roar and slammed through the mud, jumping over hills. It was exhilarating. So much fun. I was covered in mud from head to toe, and yet I wore a helmet, sunglasses, a raincoat (provided) and leggings.
Nobody else seemed to be as muddy as I was. But I also go all out. No holds barred.
Those ATVs slip and slide around corners and are capable, surprisingly, of climbing over large clumps two-feet high of mud at high speeds. Nothing like the ATVs my husband and I rode in Alaska. He did not really enjoy that adventure, which was pretty mild compared to this, so it is probably a good thing he is in California and I am here.
Love you sweetie!
If you want to ride ATVs on Big Island, this is a good outfit to do it with. You can also combine it with Ziplining on Big Island, if you like. After the 2+hour tour, they prepare and serve a BBQ lunch at the waterfall. You can also swim at the waterfall, which we would have done if it wasn’t raining. And cold. Bring a backpack with a change of clothes and a towel.
On the way back we stopped again at the Hilton in Hilo for a break before heading to Kona. Our guide, Marcus, an extremely informative and tremendous asset to his company, showed us a butterfly bush where the Monarch caterpillars hang out to eat the leaves. They are all over this place. Caterpillars on almost every leaf. It is not milkweed. I went all the way to the mountains in Mexico to view the Monarch’s winter holiday without ever seeing a caterpillar. You can see the butterflies in Mexico or you can view them in Hilo!
Kona Natural Energy Laboratory Tours Amaze and Astound
Makai Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Plant near Kona airport, Hawaii
If you do nothing else while on vacation in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, make sure you take at least one Natural Energy Laboratory Tour. It is really incredible. You’ll find a variety of tours to choose from, and all sorts of adventures await. You will see and learn things that seem impossible to ordinary mortals. It’s enough to make you want to go back to school to become a marine biologist or some other kind of scientist instead of maybe a Sacramento Realtor.
When the OTEC project was completed a couple years ago, I recall reading about it and feeling like science fiction has met finally met reality and the future is now. It’s a renewable and sustainable way to convert sea water into energy, utilizing science, that thing Donald Trump doesn’t believe in, science. The Makai Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion plant cost only $2 million to build. There is an entire park built around the Makai OTEC plant called the HOST Park, which stands for Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology.
This is also where you can buy Kona lobsters. They grow Maine lobsters here at the park, along with a large variety of other shellfish and seafood. They also do a lot of algae energy research and production from biofuels to food supplements.
Scientists at Octopus Farm in Kailua-Kona study octopus, with Makai OTEC in distance.
Many of the tubs in the photo above at the Octopus Farm support a live octopus for study. They are under one year of age. The scientists would like to find a way to provide a sustainable resource of octopus due to overfishing and killing of these magnificent creatures. Like my husband says, octopus are smarter than many people he has worked with. Certainly smarter than real estate agents, and I can say that being in the profession.
Octopus are friendly, inquisitive and extremely smart.
You can put your hand into the water and let them wrap around your fingers. After you meet an octopus in person, I don’t know if you could ever eat an octopus again. It seems too cruel to kill such an intelligent creature when there are much dumber species one could consume instead. Even The Beatles knew about an Octopus’s Garden, and how these remarkable cephalopods tend to rearrange their environment to suit themselves.
One of two monk seals in the wild of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
When our guide, Candee, and CEO of the nonprofit from Friends of the Natural Energy Laboratory, asked if we would like to see a monk seal in the wild, I did not believe we would find one. I thought maybe it was an excuse to stroll along the beach, climb over a bit of lava and hope to spot a monk seal. After all, there are only two monk seals who live in Kailua-Kona in the Pacific Ocean.
Hawaiian monk seal in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, in the wild.
I was very surprised to stumble upon this cove and find a monk seal. The Hawaiian monk seal is endangered. In the park, we were able to visit the Marine Mammal Center Ke Kai Ola as part of our tour. This place rescues and rehabilitates monk seals and releases them back into the wild. They say a monk seal needs to live to be at least 5 years old before the female can mate, but getting them to that age is a challenge.
Monk seals swallow fishermen’s hooks and face all sorts of dangers as a baby. The mother doesn’t stay with the monk seals for very long after birth and they either make it in the wild or they die.
A Cat Jigsaw Puzzle for Those Rainy Day Hawaiian Blues
A cat jigsaw puzzle like Cat-Ology Leonardo can push the boundaries of sanity.
We never set out to undertake a cat jigsaw puzzle. When my husband was in Hawaii with me over Christmas, we decided to pick up an umbrella I have never yet opened because it was raining pretty hard at the time and hasn’t since. We were early for the Rogue One movie so we bopped into K-Mart to look for an umbrella. I think we are incapable of entering a place of merchandise without drumming up other things to buy.
For example, there were no wine glasses at the house. In all of Macy’s, where I went earlier to buy a down pillow because the pillows were too hard, I couldn’t not find wine glasses. The best I settled for was a set of 6-ounce crystal and one of those four glasses was broken. I asked the clerk to prorate the purchase and she could not, if her life depended on it, figure out how to deduct 25% off the price. When you’re on an island, you go with the flow.
Yet, hooray, K-Mart had a set of 4 wine glasses. Granted, they were not the chardonnay glasses I had hoped for but they were for white wine, again, you go with the flow. Also at K-Mart we discovered the evil world of puzzles, specifically a cat jigsaw puzzle. It has 1,000 pieces. Cat-Ology Leonardo.
My husband had the entire frame built out by the time I finished my emails. But the cat jigsaw puzzle would engulf many hours of labor since. After a while, your neck begins to ache from the strain. You stand up, move around the table, change chairs, nothing helps. It sucks you in.
When he left to return to Sacramento, the cat jigsaw puzzle was not finished. The cat’s head was in place, but the body, and all of that fur was not. I was determined. I worked on the puzzle off and on between calls about Sacramento real estate. Tuesday night, I watched a movie about Janis Joplin until 9 PM and thought to myself, “Oh, I’ll just place a couple more pieces before retiring.” Next thing I knew, it was midnight! I was still out there on the lanai with the geckos. Three hours later.
This is what an insane person does. But at least I recognized the trait, so I’ve got that going for me. I have not completely lost my mind. I finally placed all of the pieces, except one right in the center of the cat’s body, yesterday afternoon. Oh, no. A piece went rogue. It does not count if one completes 999 pieces. I grabbed my cell, turned on the flashlight, got down on the Futura pebble surface and searched like the crazy person I am for that missing puzzle piece.
Maybe it was never in the box. Maybe I should call the manufacturer and complain? Yeah, they could ship me the missing piece. Just as I was about to text my husband to ask if he had a cat jigsaw puzzle piece in his pocket or if he was just happy to see me, I found it lying next to a chair leg. I live to face another day at our house in Hawaii with the knowledge the cat jigsaw puzzle is completed.
