Hawaii day 4

July 27

I awoke today to hear the call of a northern cardinal, a red bird with a crest on its head. I know its song and I can imitate it fairly well myself. It is the state bird of Ohio, for one. I had learned that cardinals were an introduced species in Hawaii. I followed the sound and saw my first cardinal in the USA on this trip, far from where I'd expected. I wonder how they got here? While watching the cardinal for a few moments, I saw a mongoose skulkily scurrying along the roadside ditch. This is an introduced species, too. How amazing is that, to take in a mongoose and a cardinal with the same gaze? It comes with the privilege of waking up in Aaron's Cottage in Hilo, Hawaii.

This morning I drove off to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens by myself, as Razelle agreed I should do, provided I bring her back a meal from Ken's House of Pancakes on my return. Fair enough. The botanical gardens are about 8 miles west of Hilo, down a scenic road off the highway. This time I made a point to stop at an overlook I'd passed yesterday. No one was there this morning, while yesterday no space was available among the cars already there. The small cove at this turnout just begged to be photographed. I obliged it.

I parked at the botanical gardens and went into the gift shop to thumb through the botanical books they were selling. This quick procedure always helps me familiarize myself with the topic before I get lost in a garden of new plants I've never seen before. I then walked up to the clerk to pay for an entry ticket. She remembered me from yesterday (which I found flattering), when I had stood before her to ask if my disabled wife could sit in the air-conditioned gift shop while I visited the gardens. Since there was no place for Razelle to sit, we didn't stay. Today I asked the clerk how many faces she must have seen yesterday and why out of all of them she remembered mine? She laughingly said she didn't know the answer. Every sentence she spoke was followed by a laugh; another one of the ways (I've discovered) that Americans serving other Americans disarmingly charm the people they must take money from.

The gardens are very impressive. Once you get to the bottom of the bridge and enter the landscaped gully you find an explanation of how these gardens got here. It was a labor of love that took years of dedicated work by a retired couple to assemble. I saw evidence of this all around. After about an hour of stopping and photographing one tropical plant more breathtaking than the last, I realized that these people were as obsessed with tropical plants as are some people I know in Israel who have impressive cactus collections. This is what comes of a hobby that outgrows the bounds of a backyard. The collection is so exemplary that school groups come here on field trips and are admitted free of charge to encourage learning.

I spent two hours in the gardens. Someone took my picture next to what I thought was a prayer plant (I was mistaken; it was a close relative – a zebra plant). This was important to me because I bought a prayer plant for my sister Miriam during my last visit to Toledo to help her recover from her cancer treatments. Seeing such a plant here had significance to me for that reason.

I kept my promise to Razelle and bought her her lunch at Ken's. She was grateful to have this meal and ate it with gusto.

At 3:05 PM I double-checked the note Jo Jo gave me with the time our tour was to leave for Mauna Kea. I was sure it was supposed to be at 3:30 PM, but to my horror I saw that it was 3:00 PM and we were already late. We quickly tossed a few important items into shoulder packs and raced out the door. Within 3 minutes we were at Arnott's Lodge, but our tour bus no longer was. However, Jo Jo was able to call it back, and when it showed up we sheepishly climbed aboard. Our guide and driver was Daniel. He is a large half-Hawaiian, half-Caucasian (his words) 28-year old man with four jobs: tour guide/driver, bouncer, singer, and Hawaiian language teacher in elementary school. He is licensed to administer CPR (he jokingly said he only administers it to women, though). He told us he had parkas against the cold for us and oxygen for altitude sickness, should anyone need it. Daniel is very good at this job and because of the vocabulary he taught us during this trip I am sure he is good at teaching Hawaiian. From the size of him, I wouldn't want to be the one he had to bounce out of a bar. He sang for us once at an altar that has cultural significance to Hawaiians and his singing voice was very nice to hear.

We stopped at a waterfall before leaving Hilo. Daniel used our camera to take a picture of us with "no evil" our stuffed toy monkey. He was amused. He's seen many a stuffed toy included in photos before, but this was his first monkey.

We paused at the saddle (alt ~6,000 ft) between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea where the Hawaiian religious altar I mentioned is located. Before we could ascend Mauna Kea, Daniel asked us to bow our heads reverently while he sang a traditional prayer of supplication in the Hawaiian language. We also paused here to become acclimated to the high altitude.

Our next stop was the visitors' center at ~9,000 ft. As we piled out of the tour bus I noticed some young men walking around with fringes hanging out of their shirts and skull caps on their heads. It didn't register immediately that this was unusual; I've seen this often enough back home in Israel. But we were not in Israel! We were half way up a remote volcano in the middle of the big island of Hawaii! Razelle and I introduced ourselves. We found out that these guys come from many different cities around the US to attend a Chabad summer camp in Kona on the big island. While we were adjusting to the altitude at this visitors' center, one of them brought me a pair of phylacteries (tephillin) so I could pray with them. They get to you, even up here! I declined, but I did offer to pray the evening prayers (mincha and ma'ariv) with them around sunset, if possible.

They were selling Milky Way candy bars in the visitors' center. It wasn't at all by coincidence. I bought one. They were also selling specially filtered glasses for viewing eclipses. I bought two of these.

We next drove to the top of Mauna Kea, we being an entire parade of buses and cars. Some of these cars had no business using this road; rental agencies forbid it, but their drivers didn't seem to care. At the top we parked and learned the identity of the different domes and structures.





In the distance, we saw other mountain peaks poking above a sea of clouds; one such distant peak was the highest part of the neighboring island of Maui! The highest peak of Mauna Kea was not the one we stood on, but one just beside it. The group of Chabad youth climbed up that peak to the site of the Hawaiian religious altar, to say their evening prayers. Daniel was pleased to see that the sacred altar was serving as a prayer site. I took a picture of them up there. I call the photo, "The Minyan on the Mount."

Razelle felt unwell up there and was quite concerned about it. Daniel didn't seem worried, though. He'd seen far worse on other trips. Razelle has never experienced this sort of thing before so she was easily agitated by it. Daniel brought out an oxygen tank and mask for her. She fought back tears as she inhaled deeply; she felt much better in a short while.

As the sun set I felt cold enough to request a parka. The weather was still and crystal clear. It was 39°F up there (about 4°C); as cold as winter had been in Australia. Daniel said visibility was the best he'd seen in some time. It was exciting to be nearly 14,000 feet above the ocean at that moment. It was the highest place on the planet Razelle has ever been.

Half an hour after sunset, we were required to leave the mountain top. We descended to just above the visitors' center to receive an astronomy lesson from Daniel. He taught everyone the four cardinal directions in Hawaiian and then pointed out some of the key constellations in the sky. I have a background in teaching the constellations too, and just had a similar lesson on the night sky while in Australia. When we were asked to guess the identity of a planet he pointed at, I blurted out, "that's Saturn." Daniel was actually grateful to have me identify it, and the constellations Draco and Hercules too, when he traced them with his laser light. He claimed that this gave him legitimacy. In the past, groups he'd taught this stuff to thought he was making it up as he went. He thanked me.

At the visitors' center we lined up at the telescopes to look at Saturn, replete with its rings and several of its moons. It was the cap to a great experience. Razelle was very happy she'd agreed to come along.

On the way back to Hilo, Daniel played authentic Hawaiian music for us from a DVD. It is sung falsetto. One of the songs included his voice, so we got to hear him sing again.

Daniel is quite a guy.

Back in Hilo, we drove again to Ken's House of Pancakes. We ordered takeout pancakes for tomorrow's breakfast. For us, there is no other place to eat in Hilo. If you ever get there, try it and see what we mean.