Merry Christmas - Hawaiian

Here in Hawaii, we have attended a couple of ukulele jam sessions, called kanikapilas. Some of them play only Hawaiian songs, and others play Folk/Country/Pop, etc. But, for Christmas songs, many of them have been translated into Hawaiian. So if you want to do a well-known Christmas song, but you want to sing the Hawaiian lyrics, you request, "Silent Night - Hawaiian", for example.

Here is "Silent Night Hawaiian" from a duo we heard last night - I only video'd the Hawaiian verse, but they did sing one or two English verses, too.

https://youtu.be/fuHgjEWM1oQ
Hawaiian slack key and ukulele duo



Here is a combined children's choir who performed at a concert we attended last Sunday. The children sang in the middle portion of the concert, and the first and third sets were done by the Kona Community Chorus. They were very good, and did some different pieces we had not heard before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGidG5Utevs
Mele Kalikimaka - combined teen's and children's choir

We wish you all a Merry Christmas - and hope you are safe and happy.

Mari and Ron

Geckos

Ron has done more reading about the geckos than I have. He learned that the pads on the toes of a gecko are capable of molecularly binding to the surface they are on. That is what allows them to walk upside-down across ceilings.

The other day when I was taking some photos of the geckos on the lanai, I took a few videos, too. I noticed that when they walk, a lot of times they are holding the pads of their feet upward. You can see that in this video I posted on YouTube.

You will also see a gecko jumping from post to post on the lanai, and a couple of geckos licking orange wedges on the lanai.

I think the video was too large to upload, but you can click on the YouTube link and see it there:

https://youtu.be/RtoLiVpnWu0

This particular species of gecko is called a Gold-Dust Day Gecko, and originated in Madagascar. The term Day Gecko distinguishes it from nocturnal species of geckos.

They eat insects, including cockroaches, and people like them for that, although they easily invade homes, and can be quite numerous. They will also eat lizards and other geckos; and they like fruit, pollen, and nectar from flowers.

I noticed that these geckos have four toes on each foot, even though I've seen pictures of geckos that have five toes.

Sometimes you can hear them clicking loudly at night - but I've only been told that that is the gecko - but there are four or five species of geckos in Hawaii, and apparently some of them are nocturnal, so I am not sure if the loud clicking sound I sometimes hear is from the gold-dust day gecko or not.



Here are a couple photos of today's sunset, viewed from the Honokohau Marina, where there are many sea turtles living.

On the Lanai

In Hawaii, the wrap-around porch, patio, or outdoor seating area, is called a lanai. On the house where we are staying, the lanai faces west, so we can see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.

Sunset from the lanai

We also have a papaya tree and some nearby coconut palms, and other palms. In the last few days, we have been putting out orange wedges, which the geckos really enjoy. We think the geckos are really cute, and photogenic! Here are some photos of birds and geckos on the lanai. We hope you enjoy them!

Japanese white-eye and a gecko on the railing and post of the lanai

Japanese white eye in the papaya tree

We also put out the seeds from a papaya fruit. This gecko seems interested.

One of these little guys (a yellow-billed Cardinal) was on the lanai just a few days ago. They seem to like the popcorn we've dropped.

The Japanese white eye seems to enjoy these palm berries. We have also seen Northern Cardinals eating these. They eat the outer red part, then let the seed drop to the steps below.

We haven't yet tired of the sunsets around here. Unfortunately, there are power lines in our line of sight to the sunsets from the lanai. Here is one taken from Miloli'i Beach:

Aloha!
Mari and Ron

Culture and Camaraderie in the Kona Neighborhood

When you get to know your surroundings in the west coast area of the island of Hawaii, you begin to get the subtle or not so subtle distinctions that separate Honaunau from Kealekekua, Captain Cook from Kainaliu, and so on. We are just on the surface of beginning to get a feel of the area like that, but our extended stay here allows us the luxury of getting to know the area and the people more than a one or two week vacation would. In the past week, we have concentrated more on activities that involved us with local people more than the sightseeing we did the first two weeks.

Last night was a highlight, with a visit to the Aloha Theater in Kainaliu. We saw the author of "Christmas With Mark Twain", Jerry Tracy, play the lead role in a nicely performed rendition. Jerry Tracy was born in Carrollton, Missouri. They encouraged us to take a photo of the stage set prior to the beginning of the show. Here it is:

Christmas with Mark Twain by Jerry Tracy.  

Kainaliu is also the location of our favorite music store, Kiernan's. At the theater, whom should we see, but AnneMarie L., who had us over to her home on Friday evening to join in a kanikapila (jam session) with several of her friends! We met her husband, Antoine, this time, who had not joined in the music-making on Friday.

Mari met AnneMarie at the kanikapila we attended Thursday morning. It turns out AnneMarie also plays mandolin, and has a special-made mando-uke! It looks like an uke, but has a mandolin fretboard, and is strung with single (not double, like the mandolin) strings, and is tuned like a mandolin. Anyway, Mari asked her if there were any mandolin groups on the island, and that's when she invited us to join her the next night at her house for a weekly jam session.

At AnneMarie's we met a couple from Noblesville, Indiana, who have lived here for a year now. We met another couple who sailed to Hawaii years ago and have been here ever since. The husband has a farm back in Illinois. The wife sings with  the local choral group, which has 90 members! We are going to hear their Christmas concert in Kailua-Kona today.

We have met a few of the neighbors in the past couple of days - ever since we decided to make our daily walk down the hill to the bottom, and back up again. This walk is 1 mile each way, with an approximately 900-foot change in elevation. Today we did it in an hour, plus 10 minutes meeting and talking to one of the neighbors.

It's all uphill from.....well, from anywhere you happen to be on the main road!

Some of the houses in the Kona Paradise neighborhood, near Honaunau on the Island of Hawaii. You can't see the one on Boki Road where we are staying because the hill steps back from about Fern or Ea Street, two to three blocks down the hill from Boki. I think the highest houses you can see in this photo are on Datura (remember, the alphabetical street names begin at the top with Ama, and go down to "M" at the bottom where the ocean is).

Yesterday, after doing this walk, we decided to drive to the bottom and do some snorkeling. It was fantastic! Our big goal for tomorrow morning is to walk down the hill with our gear, snorkel around for awhile - maybe swim along the coast, then rest for awhile on the beach before walking back up the hill. Sounds ambitious to me, so w'll see how it goes!

 

Surrounded By Turkeys!

This morning I (Mari) decided to do some bird watching from our deck. It is the perfect place in several ways: we are at or above the canopy/power line level where the birds spend most of their time, I can rest my camera on the deck railing and zoom in on the birds, and they are attracted to the fruit and flowers in the nearby trees.


Well, some of the birds don't spend any time on the power lines or in the canopy, but rather in the shrubbery! The past few days we have been seeing these birds that look strangely like turkeys, walking around the neighborhood. This morning, since I was bird-watching, I had my camera available for photos. That's when I noticed turkeys walking up the next-door-neighbors driveway, along the sidewalk, and around his yard! I would say there were four of five of them, all females, I think. A little while later, I happened to look down, and there was a group of them directly below me, in the shrubbery below, and then walking down our sidewalk. Then, I decided to go pick up the two passion fruits on the back deck that had fallen from the vine, and I heard the distinct crunching sound of someone walking around in the shrubbery there. And, guess what? Turkeys!

According to the pocket bird guide, domestic turkeys were the first birds introduced to Hawaii after European contact.

The other birds I saw this morning include Japanese white eye (introduced by Hui Manu, a bird club whose sole purpose was to introduce birds to the Hawaiian islands. Some ornithologists claim it is responsible for the decline of native birds); male and female Northern Cardinals (introduced in the 1930s);

The yellow-billed Cardinal (from South America).

I also saw Myna birds and the ubiquitous mourning doves, a couple of white birds flying down by the water, and some birds on wires that were too far away to identify.

Yesterday I put out the leftover fruit parts from various fruits which I had "juiced" to see if it would attract birds (or just fruit-flies!) At first, it was only the fruit flies, but when I got ready to throw them out, Ron told me he had seen birds out there in the morning. So, I put the fruit back on the deck. The next morning every last bit was gone. When I went to fetch the cardboard box I had been using, a house finch flew up onto the deck where the box had been. Not wanting to disappoint, I placed a few more pieces out there on the box: some grapes cut in half, an orange cut into sections, and pieces of avocado.

The first ones attracted were the fruit flies again, but once the sun was over the mountain, the geckos started showing up. The seemed to prefer the orange juice.

A little later in the morning, we decided to walk down the hill towards Pebble Beach and see how far we could go in a half hour. Since we are on the second road from the top, it would be a nearly 2 mile roundtrip on a very steep road if we went all the way down. (The cross streets in many Hawaii neighborhoods are in alphabetical order, with the "A" road being nearest the highway, followed by a B road, etcetera. Our road, Boki, is the B road. Ama is the A road. The lowest road on the hill is Mapuna Road.) Well, we went to Honu Moe Road before deciding to turn back - on the way up we realized there are TWO H roads in our neighborhood! Huh? We didn't go all the way down, but we did walk up to Ama before coming back home. This was a 1-hour round-trip walk. But not enough to get our 10,000 steps in for the day, so we will probably head out again in a little while.

Our neighborhood is called Kona Paradise. Here you can see it from the bottom of the hill.

Our neighbors have been industrious this morning. The next door neighbor was "mowing" his grass with a string trimmer.

A little while later, some other neighbors decided to run a concrete mixer for awhile while listening to some local "Jah-waiian" music. This is a combination reggae/Hawaiian style music that is one of the favorites around here. 

When it's noisy in the neighborhood, you can't close the windows and turn on the air-conditioner, because most house don't have either of those luxuries. We do have some glass windows, but others only close with wooden louvres. Whereas there is screening to keep insects at bay, there is no glass. This is "natural air conditioning", I suppose. When the ceiling fans are on, it works pretty well.

The louvres cover a screened window - no glass there at all. The ceiling fans move the air pretty well. There are three ceiling fans in the living room-dining room area.

2 Kanikapilas

We learned today that in Hawaii, a musical jam session is called a kanikapila. We attended two, one of which we've been planning to attend ever since we learned about it almost a week ago. The second one we happened upon by chance, or luck.

First thing this morning, we went to the assigned place, which we were told about when we visited Brian last week in his music store, Kiernan's Music in Kailaniu. It was a little restaurant near Kailua-Kona called Akule. This is on Ali'i Street, where many resorts in Kailua-Kona are located. It is at the end of the road, like so many places we seem to visit around here. We found a friendly group of about 30 folks. Here is a photo...we especially enjoyed seeing one of the men (Andy?) perform a hula to the second-to-the last song we sang. Most everyone had all their music on their iPads.

We learned about some other kanikapilas that occur in different places near and far, each with its own time during the week.

After we left, we decided to check out the location of a kanikapila we wish to attend next Monday. It is in a Park called Koloko-Honokohau National Park, not too far from the airport north of Kailua-Kona.

It was a bit difficult to find at first, mainly because road work is being conducted right where you need to turn in, and is easy to miss. So, after making a U-turn or two, we finally drove into the correct place with a visitor center, and lo and behold, a group of people were sitting there playing ukuleles and singing. Turns out it was the holiday party for a regular Thursday-noon group who won't be meeting the next couple of weeks. So, we not only got to play an entirely different set of songs - this time mostly Hawaiian songs, we also got to purchase the Mele Hawaiian songbook everyone around here seems to refer to, and we got to meet some more really nice folks.

Rance Pinao was leading this group, and he will be leading the one on Monday, too. One neat thing Ron and I are both looking forward to is the lesson we will get from Rance on Monday.

We were given a big plate of food at the latter kanikapila that some of the park employees had made and insisted that we take with us. It was all local food, like ham, Japanese rice, breaded, deep-fried fish, and some interesting desserts.

Afterwards, we took a short walk in the park to learn a bit more about local history and culture. We might take a hike on the Mamalahoa Trail Monday before the kanikapila.

Ron tries out the Mamalahoa trail. Definitely requires sunscreen and a hat!

We were invited to a small-group kanikapila tomorrow at someone's house - someone we met this morning. It is fun to be able to share music with people, and it is a great way to meet new folks.

Slowing Down......

I think perhaps Monday was a turning point for us. We may be done running around trying to take it all in as fast as we can. We woke up yesterday feeling like we had been beat up. We took it easy until mid-afternoon, then went up to the Ethno-Botanical Garden, for the 3rd time.

There is so much to learn there, but it doesn't shout at you. One has too walk slowly, read slowly, and look around, slowly. The garden is planted in regions, ranging from coastal to upland woodland. Down in the coastal region I read something that just stuck with me. There is a plant there that was used to stun the fish in the constructed fish ponds. Yes, there were huge fish ponds maintained to supply easy access for meat. When it came time to harvest some fish, the Auhuhu plant was picked, pounded into a sort of mash or meal and thrown into the pond. In a short time the fish started swimming around without purpose or direction, and could be easily gathered up. The big ones that were wanted were taken, and the rest left alone. In about 2 hours the poison wore off and the fish went on about their business of growing larger. This practice is, or was, used in a number of cultures. Here's a very brief article about that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_toxins

Auhuhu Plant

Further uphill in the gardens is the Koa tree, who's wood is currently highly valued for Hawaiian Ukeleles. Long ago, it was valued for canoes the Hawaiians would build, sometimes to lengths of 100 feet. The master canoe builder would come along and take part in a ceremony to select the proper tree to be used for the canoe. Part of this involved watching the actions of the 'elepaio bird around the tree.

If the bird landed on the tree but did not peck at it, then this was a good tree. If the bird pecked on the tree, this meant there were insects inside. Not a desirable quality for canoe wood.

Koa wood currently sells for hundreds of dollars per board foot. A board foot is 1 square foot of wood 1 inch thick. It is estimated that a log large enough to build a 100-foot long canoe out of Koa would cost $500,000 at current prices!

Then, today, we simply took a hike at Manuka Park again. I (Mari) learned that my CD was going to be featured on a local (Macomb) radio program, so we came home in time to listen to that on the Internet.

We were able to look around and find several types of free fruit in the area: regular guava, strawberry guava, and passion fruit, mainly. Plus some oranges from a tree in the yard where we are staying. We will make some juice from these, and maybe try a tropical fruit glaze for chicken.

The afternoon beckoned us down to the ocean, so we drove down the hill and hiked to the secret beach. Someone else called it that, but it isn't a complete secret, because each time we've gone, there are already a couple of people there. In order to not harsh their mellow, we went a little further to the rocky shore and listened and watched as the waves crashed. A person can take a lot of that without getting bored! Especially when the sun is beginning to set.

                             

                             Crashing Waves

Sunset