Hawaii Day One:

Day one was travel... A cab to the airport in Northern California. A plane to Honolulu Another plane to Hilo. A rental jeep to the house in Naalehu. It was a long day. By the time we got to our “part” of the island, it was dark, we were tired, grimy from the trip, famished, and lost.

We drove around and around and around. I counted three ambulances and five garage parties. (Note to self: be careful driving. Question for later: what is behind the parties in garages?) We did find a grocery store before we left Hilo. The traffic cop was wearing white gloves. (I love that) a white short sleeve shirt and dark blue/ black trousers. He looked very sharp. We did not think to buy water, ours is not potable. (It is a new house that is in the final phases of being put together and does not have the filters installed yet. The water gets collected from the runoff of the roof and stored in a huge tank. Really cool, but wow, that's a lot of rain.)

As we wee nearing the final miles of our long journey, we became very lost. The road we needed was not marked with a sign, so finding it in the dark was difficult. And I do mean dark. There are few street lights. When there are lights, they are yellow and our part of the island does not have any at all. So it really was very dark. And there we were, driving along on dirt and partially paved roads we had never been on looking for a street sign that was not yet there.

And then...

Right in front of us was a dog. An earnestly barking dog in the middle of the road. It was German Shepard, small by breed standards, huge by barking dog in the road at night standards. It came out of the bushes and came down to the jeep. It wanted us to go away from there in a big way. It corralled around the jeep and continued to bark at the doors as we turned around and headed back the way we had come. We figured that we must have gotten onto someones driveway, rather than a road.

So back down the road we drove. We made another turn, and there was the dog again. Barking and herding the jeep again. I was a little on edge by this time and The Boyfriend was thinking that this was a little odd. But since the dog was in no way going to let us pass, we turned around and continued to look for the road to the house.

And then suddenly, we were on it. We were not really sure how we found it, but there was a sign saying that we had found the second road we were looking for. (We never did find the first road, we just got lost enough to find the second road, thanks to the dog...)

So we started to look for the house. In the dark. Late at night. There are only a couple of homes near ours, and of course, they were all in bed for the night. So we drove up and down looking for house numbers trying to figure out which one was ours. None of them were. We were starting to think sleeping in the jeep was a good idea.

And then...

There was the dog. In the middle of the road. Barking urgently now. It started trotting to the jeep and barking at the doors. It circle the jeep and kept barking. It was decidedly herding us back down the road. So we turned around again, and started down the road. The dog barking it's escort along the way. The Boyfriend was driving ever so slowly, trying to not hit the dog that was determined to heel at the front right fender of the jeep. And then the dog stopped at what was a break in the tall grass. We looked to make sure it was no longer at the side of the jeep, and there, just past the dog, in the shadows, was the house! The dog had taken us right to the driveway of our house! We drove onto the driveway, and parked the jeep in front of the garage. Looking around, we did not see the dog, so we carefully got out of the jeep. There was no dog. Not a single sign of a dog anywhere, not even a bark. The dog had taken us home when we were lost, and then vanished. The Boyfriend said Mahalo to the island and we quickly unpacked the jeep.

(Of course we still had to hunt around in the dark for the key, and then hunt around in the (still dark) house to find the breaker box, but for the sake of the story, day one had reached it's close. The rest is all just dinner and showering, unpacking, and collapsing into bed...)

Oh, how could I have left out the part about eating dinner at the best restaurant in Hilo? My birthday dinner was at The Hilo Bay Cafe. It was TO DIE FOR!!! Great service, beautiful presentation, incredible food. The Boyfriend had the special fish of the day, a kind of pink snapper on a bed of spinach with a burre blanc and topped with mac nuts. Mmmm... I had the pork chop with asparagus and red onion mashed potatoes, a red pepper coulis and demi glace. Mmmm... We shared a pineapple cake with a whiskey butter sauce and topped with vanilla ice cream. Mmmm... Heaven on a plate. (They also serve local beer. The Boyfriend had one, to which he said: Mmmm...)