| Here's Eric on our fourth morning after a good night's sleep and looking pretty genki (energetic)! He's standing on the rocks right over the wall near our condo. All the rocks are from an ancient flow from the small volcano called Hualalei, which is nearby. This kind of rough lava is called a'a here. There is another kind of lava that is smoother called "pa hoe' hoe' ". That's the kind of lava that is flowing out of Kiluaea right now. Hualalei is set to go off this year they say, but right now there is nothing really going on geologically with it. We'll see, it is supposed to go off every 20 years, but I think since the island is moving farther away from the main "hot spot" and the area off into the sea is already forming a new island (still underwater) that perhaps it may not go off on time this year. Only time will tell if I'm right. I'm not a vulcanologist.
Eric had to be careful here because some of the waves were huge. We waited for the huge set of waves to finish and then took it during a slightly less rough set of waves. People have been killed by being swept off rocks in this area during high surf. I don't want to lose Eric, so we were careful.
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A surfer on the high surf in Kona Harbor area near where we ate lunch this afternoon. It's right around 1pm our time, so this guy was surfing during high tide. You should see how many rocks are in that area when it is low tide. |
| Another shot of the same area from the balcony of where we ate lunch. Notice the palm tree in the above picture, towards the right hand side. This is the same palm tree. Also, notice how clear and sunny it is here–this is important as in this set of pictures you will see a sudden clouding effect within less then a mile as my camera goes up the slopes of Hualalei. |
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Here is Eric at lunch. He's looking more and more relaxed each day we are here. I also think this is a great picture of him. He's such a hottie 😉
Look over his head slightly above, you'll see the smallest bit of clouding….
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| Send the camera a slight bit more to the right and you see the huge amount of clouds building. It's called the "slope effect" The moisture comes off the water, but doesn't form clouds until it hits against the slopes of the Hualalei volcano. I'm pointing the camera towards the slope here and it goes uphill gradually slightly to the right part of picture. Within an hour these clouds look like they are ready to burst open, but we on the beach were still under sun and it was pouring rain less then two miles away!
I left Eric's shapely ear in this picture for you to have a point of reference from the previous picture.
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Okay, another waitress who couldn't wait to take our picture. Same balcony but my side of the table. Can you tell I hate getting my picture taken? I really didn't want to do this, but it turned out okay anyway.
Eric as usual looks great once he gets some sun. I burn, I rarely tan. I still look like I've been powdering with rice powder. At least the chances of me getting skin cancer are low since I use lots of sun block.
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| Okay, finally the mystery is revealed! We ate at the Kona, Hawaii Hard Rock Cafe for lunch. The food was basically just the normal fare, but the service was friendlier and nicer here then any other Hard Rock we've ever been to. The view was the best too. It's also the smallest one we've ever been to. Since Eric used to be a musician he loves this place. I like to see the rock and roll memorabilia but rarely is the food something to get excited about.
Notice Eric is on his new cell phone I got him for Christmas (he begged me so handsomely I couldn't resist). He's calling his agent and asking him to send one of his old guitars to be hung on the wall here 😉
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| Sally Lucci, owner of the Parrot Resort and Spa, sent us a digital picture of Modi-bird hanging out at her house. Look how happy she is–posing for the camera like a pro! I guess she doesn't really miss us that much (sniff). She looks very happy 🙂 Thanks again Sally! |
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Okay our first really spectacular tropical sunset in Hawaii. This is the view from the back of our condo slightly to the left. As you can see it was cloudy so we had to time this shot very carefully. When the sun sets here it does it quickly. Look at that reflection on the water! Even though this is a great shot the picture still doesn't do the colors of this sunset justice. Still, Eric set it up so beautifully that it's almost a picture postcard 🙂 |
| Eric got on my case about not having any pictures of me alone and lots of pictures of him alone. So because I'm a sunset freak I posed for this picture. I'm sure you can tell by my hair that it was misting rain when we took this shot 🙂 Oh well, when I got this cut I wanted a tousled look.
Also a quick note, notice how calm the waves are now. This is the area I took those "breaking wave" shots this morning. It really settled down although this morning (1/7) and last night they had picked back up again.
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