Hawaii - It's not just another state.

I actually believed I would not be blogging from Hawaii, however with the advent of wireless networking everywhere, (even in Paradise) well, why not. Even Kara was able to blog from places like Romania – Hell, I was surprised they even had electricity there.

So here we are on the beautiful Big Island, USA. We Americans take it for granted that Hawaii is just another one of our states, you know, like Iowa or Wisconsin. After all, it is so conveniently located to our borders, a mere 5-hour flight. I am sure the rest of the civilized world must lift a skeptical eyebrow when they acknowledge that we conveniently acquired this place as just another “state”. Yeah… right! Well, what the hell, we are big and powerful and what the hell are they going to do about it anyway? Hawaii is a state. Funny how we aren't that interested in wanting Porto Rico to be a state… but that’s another subject entirely.

The “natives” (meaning people born here) speak Hawaiian, a distinct language. However, it sounds a lot like pigeon-english which leaves me a bit suspicious. None the less, they have a lot of places here with names we mainlanders can’t pronounce. I don’t worry much about that; I couldn’t pronounce the names of the native American names in Washington State either. They have a lot of lava here, as we do in Oregon, so I’m not feeling like I have to adopt some type of foreign awareness pretentiousness either. They take VISA card here just like they do at home. No big deal.

Still there are differences here that make it worth the trip. Papaya for one… tastes like tepid ice cream here, back home Papaya tastes like crap. Mangos here are wonderful also; a little better than crap back home, but not by much. We make “POG-Tais” here – Rum and POG (Papaya-Orange-Guava) juice. They go down so nice! Of all the staple foods we picked up here, the rum is being depleted the most quickly.

Gasoline is something else, it is $4.35 a gallon or more depending on where you get it. So we try to limit our driving as much as possible. Worst of all, with the grand-baby and all the equipment, we had to rent an SUV. I can imagine a fleet of tanker ships laden with gasoline coming to the Big Island, my only consolation is that these tankers are returning to the mainland laden with holds full of pineapple juice. If I think along those lines, I don’t feel so badly.

Some friends of ours who travel a lot said, after their last trip here, that they thought they were through coming to Hawaii. I can’t ever think I would ever be “through” coming to a place like this. It is warm and wonderful and I can pretty much understand the language. I hope I will be back again someday.