November 27, 2014
Day 11: Hilo: Banyan Drive and Happy (American) Thanksgiving
I think we figured out that all the evening noise at Manuka was not crickets or other insects, but rather tree frogs. The clue came from a listing for a B&B that we were looking at. The owner conceded that they had tree frogs, but was offering free ear plugs. Here at Wild Ginger there are tree frogs too. But we need no ear plugs, we like them. Besides, we are probably listening to our ipods anyway.
Breakfast here featured a virtually unlimited amount of papayas, something that is so terribly expensive back home. There we also those small and sweet bananas, and a kind of hot rice pudding, topped with fried banana. There was also toast, something I like a lot. But made with low quality (but here - not exactly cheap) American sliced bread, it really is not worth bothering with.
We have a five day stay coming up here in Hilo. Three of these had been planned for cycling around Puna while staying in Pahoa, but because of the lava thing, we have ended up headquartered only in Hilo. It's ok, because we have some fun excursions planned, including a shot at making to Pahoa for a look, and back.
Today our out and about time was limited, because we needed to be back for Thanksgiving dinner. For some reason, the Americans hold Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. This is too far from actual harvest time, and too close to Christmas, but they seem happy with it. The Friday following Thanksgiving is Black Friday, the day when retailers can go into the black by making a lot of sales. Electronics often plays a big role in it. How about an IPad Mini for $199 plus a free $50 gift certificate from Walmart?
Banyan Drive, near the airport, is where the better hotels are located. But it also features - yes, Banyan trees. These are huge things with many hanging root like affairs. Some were planted by famous people, like Richard Nixon, or Amelia Erhart.
At one end of Banyan Drive is the Hilo Seaside, the most budget oriented of the hotels in this area. This is where we happily stayed when we came here in 2006, and we were mightily impressed by their brackish water pond, full of Koi and a few other kinds of coastal fish. We stopped by, for old times' sake, and again were mightily impressed by the Koi. We are easily impressed.
As we passed from Wild Ginger on the east side of town, through to Banyan Drive on the west, it struck us again how many "sketchy" characters were about, and how few (make that none) flamboyantly dressed free spending tourists. The transients or derelicts are easily explained by the mild temperatures, but the lack of tourists could be because this is the wet side of the island. In fact, it did rain on an off all day, and the forecast for the next week is just the same. It's a tropical rain pattern, though, pouring down one minute and bright sun the next. It's ideal for for plants, of course, but nothing would have ever dried had we been in the tent.
The population at the Wild Ginger is a little hard to figure. We could only really identify one pair of Japanese girls, who looked like standard issue hostel users. Everyone else appears to be an employee of some type, or maybe a long term resident. Whoever will all are, we all got together for Thanksgiving dinner. Prepared by mystery people in a mystery kitchen, it was actually superb. There was a real roast turkey, and many side dishes, including a stir fry of many really fresh vegetables, like snow peas. One truly unique desert was a tapioca pudding studded with purple sweet potato pieces. In fact we can already note that foods in the sticky, pasty, lumpy, sweet category are popular and typical here. They are actually really good.
We had prepared ourselves for suppertime with some microwaveable ready to eat rice and boil in pouch Japanese curried vegetables. But we may have to hold this in reserve, as the rumour is the staff is roasting up another turkey!
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Today's ride: 14 km (9 miles)
Total: 293 km (182 miles)
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