After a few days in overpopulated Oahu (which is the home of Honolulu), I hopped on my long-planned flight to Hilo (pronounced Heel-o) on the island of Hawaii. As in New York State, people have to make the distinction between the state and the island, so they refer to the island of Hawaii as “The Big Island” (as opposed to the State of Hawaii — of which it’s part). Hilo holds the distinction of being America’s wettest city, getting about 6 meters of rain a year. Fortunately, the Big Island, roughly the size of Connecticut, is large enough that different parts of the state have distinct climates.
I spent my first couple of days roaming around the tiny city of Hilo (albeit the biggest on this island) just trying to get supplies. Hilo is probably not much bigger than Lititz or Manheim, PA (50,000?). And unfortunately, they have a Walmart. This means the city isn’t big enough to support both Walmart and small-shop owners, who are far more likely to be experts in their fields. The minimum wage paid to Walmart staff, as usual, meant they didn’t know anything about what they were selling. I also ran into this problem with K-Mart in some small Australian cities.
Getting used to shopping in American supermarkets again was another headache. Healthy food was awfully hard to find, with double-sugar here and triple-sized items there. Needless to say, this severely complicated my ability to get healthy, non-perishable camping food, camping fuel (I had to figure out what Australian “Methylated Spirits” translates to around here), and to get some basic, easy photo needs met (which were over the heads of Walmart employees).
After about 24 hours of aggravation, I finally got out of Hilo and started heading down the west coast. The area, known as Puna, is famous for its hippies (or ferals, as we call them in Australia), rainforests, spectacular coasts, and volcanic remnants (including cool casts of trees caught in the lava). I found a hostel in the area with a very eccentric manager and lots of empty rooms. This seems like a really good time to visit Hawaii!
