Waipo'i Valley - the bliss

So we didn't know what to expect

when we trundled down the cliff face to visit Waipo'i Valley

on the Big Island of Hawai'i.

I mean I happened to have read 

the Hawai'ian Airlines inflight magazine 

that had a dreamy article about a young couple 

who grew taro in the Valley 

So I had a vague idea that Waipo'i Valley was a tropical paradise.

I knew Waipo'i Valley was isolated
and as I said in my previous post,

Waipo'i isn't big on roads.

But that's part of it's bumpy charm.

What is also charming about Waipo'i Valley
is the lush bush and fruit that grows wild.
Mountain apples that we grabbed as we drove under over hanging trees.

And liliko'i which are yellow passion fruit.
Big and tart tasting
which we ate as we walked across the valley to the swimming hole.

When you are with kids,
as with all idyliic, breathetaking places
that have a sacred feel about them
are slammed as the kids climb up the waterfall and
cannonball off the sides.
Such fun!

We probably walked for about five hours all up.
Through rivers and mud but
nobody seemed to mind nor seemed to be overly hungry.
Being in a tropical wee jungle was so different from anything we'd experienced before.
Actually just being out in nature and being warm was something unique for us kiwis!
The sun was warm and the water was too.
The mud oozed between our toes even with reef walkers on.
Jasmine our guide smartly wore socks inside her reef walkers.
I had Waipo'i mud in my nails until I got home to New Zealand!

After our walk,

and our swim,
 but only for some of us
not all of us laughed at Becky, really.
Well at least not until she really went for a skate in the mud much later.

The laugh was on all of us cause on the way back
Jasmine, in the red t-shirt there
led us through the stream about 3 metres to the left of this photo and
guess what?  it was shallow as!

We ended our say with a BBQ on the beach,
plenty of hungry hippos devoured chili and chips.

You'll notice that the utes are backed in.
The locals all back their vehicles in when near the beach in case of tsunami.
That bright yellowy jeep in the back was these college boys
who really shouldn't have taken their rental jeep down into the valley.
They had passed by us a few times driving up and down the river beds.
You can spot tourists (cause we so weren't) by their rental jeeps.
You can't blame them really.
I think everybody's idea of the perfect image of Hawai'i
is beaches, surf and cruising in a jeep with the top down.
Reality: it rains at least once a day and
people knick your stuff while you lie on the beach if you have a convertible.

On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

Waipo'i Valley - getting there

Ok my official favourite super wet, jungle place is

Waipo'i Valley

on the Big Island of Hawai'i.

Loved it.

Never going there again.

Ever.

Here's why....

See the cliff face over there?

If you look close you can see a zig zag path near the sea end.

That's a walking path.

Where this photo was taken from was the opposite side,

from the parking lot where the guard makes you park

unless you are in a 4x4.

We were.

*Gulp*

 Going down was fine

cause I was on the back of a ute sitting in comfy deck chairs
with Patti and some of the kids.

Read: I couldn't see how steep the road was and

was fascinated by the beauty so didn't notice the sheer drop.

I did, however ask myself why would you walk down

when you had to walk back up?

Poor souls.

Coming back up at the end of the day was how do I put it?

Harrowing.

Once again on the back of the ute,

a manual one.

We'd had a quick, contained tropical rainstorm,

where soaking wet, getting a little chilled,

could hear the engine straining,

we were traveling at about 5 mph cause

there was no way you could go faster

and Alex's ute was in the lead and was leaking oil as he went.

It didn't help that earlier that day
Patti had pointed out a bunch of rusted, old, crashed utes

that had rolled down the mountain side.

I should have counted how many times I said

"we are going to die"

with absolute conviction inside my head.

I think I'm getting old.

Actually I think I would have said that at any age.

This is us cruising once we made it into the valley.

Waipo'i Valley is one of those hidden treasures.

The 4H crew had organised for us to meet

with our local guide Jasmine.

Apparently the valley resident's get a little toey with strangers in their backyard.

Without real roads it's hard for a stranger to delineated property boundaries.

It's not really got roads or even tracks.

The valley's river work as roads quite lumpily but very effective

because where there is a river flowing,

there is a house or a farm on its banks.

We walked up to Jasmine's hideaway house

where she lived without mains power, water or sewerage for a few years

before the commute

(down the river bed, up the side of the valley's protecting cliffs)

became a pain in the bottom

(probably because of the rocky river beds/roads).

Once we had seen and envied the beauty, peaceful simplicity of Jasmine's place,

we jumped back in the utes to park up at the horse trekking place.

(these are not the horse trekking horses)

Waipo'i Valley is a very relaxed place filled with family plots

that have been inhabited by same families

probably since the Polynesians arrived.

The valley doesn't really do fences other than those

around the actual houses to keep these guys out.

Waipo'i Valley wild horses.

They are grunty little beggars who are kind of tame

in that they come into contact with people everyday.

Jasmine told great stories of playing with her cousins when

some would herd the horses under trees

where the rest of the kids were waiting,

sitting on the branches,

ready to jump onto the backs of the horses

and have the ride of their lives.

If you go to the Big Island I recommend

taking a tame Waipo'i Valley horse treks.

We had a great and extra special time because

we were playing at being locals but

if you can't do that,

and you can't unless you know someone from the valley,

 you should take a trek.

They will will pick you up and do the driving too.

The reason we were in the valley was to walk for hours, no! 

Ok a little, but more on that later.

It was to meet Jason and see how they grew taro.

I can't say I've taken much notice of taro.

I mean I've eaten it when I've hung out with Sesi

cause she's Tongan and Tongans eat taro.

I've eaten poi when I've been to Hawai'i before.

Glue was the taste and feel that came to mind.

But I had no idea there was two methods of growing taro.

Taro can be grown in paddies or grown on dry land.

At the University of Hawaii Manoa we had seen dry taro patches

where students had native planting projects but

apparently taro does better in water.

It takes 14 months for taro to grow.

It is a starchy root vegetable that is staple in the islands.

The taro is grown traditional styles and is organic by default.

They have huge problems with a the apple snail

that eats the stalk of the plant,

hollowing it out and the taro root won't grow.

The apple snail was bought in to combat something else.

The ducks were bought in to combat the apple snail.

The wild dogs of the valley eat the ducks.

Yes there are wild dogs and wild horses and wild ducks.

Maybe not wild ducks.

Jason the taro farmer looked a bit stressed about the apple snail.

You have to know Hawai'ians to be able to tell if they are stressed.

Since I don't particularly know Hawai'ians

you can imagine how stressed Jason looked.

About a fraction of a Mid-West drought stricken corn farmer,

who would be a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Jason looked like a 6 on the Mid-Western Stress Scale.

Which is about a 12 on the Hawai'ian scale of stressedness.

I suspect when your family has been farming the same land for 700 years

you tend to have a slightly different perspective on agricultural impacts.

Waipo'i Valley poi is the poi to have.

They process it themselves and

the best days to buy it is Mondays and another day of the week

that I can't remember.

You need to check it is Waipo'i though cause

there is some other stuff from Oahu thats not too flash.

Or you can just not eat poi.

Or give it to Thomas cause he loved the poi.

The rest of us endured it.

The Hawai'ians all had suggestions on how they liked it.

Maybe it's something you need to grow up with.

To finish this post

(spoiler: there will be another about the delights of Waipo'i Valley)

here's a photo of the end of the valley near Jasmine's little house.

This is why the valley is a braided river covered with sediment

passing through on it's slow way to the sea.

The water and sediment flows from the moist highlands.

Though the Big Island is having a drought at the moment.

I know for most of us drought means

next to no river flow

but in Hawai'i this is dry.

On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

paniolo on the Big Island

Ok so we took ten TeenAg members to Hawaii

to experience agriculture Hawaii styles.

Firstly, of course they have farms and stuff in Hawaii.

They only four days supply of food should 

they get cut off for some reason,

so the farms are working farms but 

there aren't enough of them to feed the population,

Most food is imported.

Which explains all the Mexican restaurants.

While on the Big Island we visited a bunch of farms.
But first let's talk about ranches.
Hawaii has a proud and long history of cowboy culture.

And it is a commonly known fact in the States
and other cowboy culture type countries that
those who grow cattle are ranchers
and those who grow crops are farmers.
This is an important distinction.

So the hosts of half of our small group of ten,
the Beatons are ranchers.
One our first day on the Big Island each group of our TeenAg kids
went to a branding.
This tradition is vaguely similar to the type of gathering
that we might have for a muster,
when family and friends come together to get the job done.
In this case the job was to brand, dehorn, vaccinate and worm the calves.
Cowboy style.
The kids loved it.
Loved it so much that most of them ended up learning to rope
and bring lariats home with them.

The other half of our group stayed with the Stouts.

That's Patti Stout in the middle here,

between Alex Beaton and Dr Billy Bergen.

Patti's dad was old school paniolo as was her grandfather

and probably back through the generations until

King Kamehameha I.

Patti's father is an esteemed member of the Paniolo Hall of Fame.

Dr Bergen is an equine vet who had worked for

Parker Ranch most of his life.

He loved the history, community and culture of Parker Ranch.

Over cowboy soup Dr Bergen shared the story of Parker Ranch.

Parker Ranch was the first ranch in Hawaii starting in 1847.

Yes that would be about 30 years before Texan ranches got themselves 

organised and Texan.

King Kamehameha I was gifted cattle by George Vancouver,

as in Canada Vancouver Vancouver.

The cattle as gifts were made kapu (tapu, taboo) by the king

and as a result breed like flies and bothered the people

by getting in their yards and munching on their gardens.

So this smooth guy called John Palmer Parker rocked up aka jumped ship

and offered a hand with wrangling the cattle

resulting in bringing in Spanish cowboys from old Mexico.

Paniolo is Hawai'ian for Spanish and

in turn became the name for the Hawai'ian cowboys.

Mr Parker also, like so many palangi married

a beautiful Hawai'ian princess, Kipikane.

With her hand in marriage Parker was able to own land.

There is still plenty of Hawai'ian homeland land

that can only be owned or leased by Hawai'ians.

There's a fair bit of it sitting unused.

May explain why they can't fed themsleves,

just sayin'

The Parker family has the usual tragic stories of excess and

premature deaths that seem to go with great land owning families.

The land passed out of the family and was owned by a few ranchers

until 1992 when the final owner Richard Smart died.

The ranch passed into a trust which supports

two schools and a community hospital.

Not to mention the centre of our temporary Hawai'ian universe,

Parker Ranch Mall.

The kids here are lined up leaning on the

statue of Ikua Purdy at Parker Ranch Mall,

Starbucks coffees in hand

enjoying a rather cold rain shower.

Ikua Purdy is the iconic cowboy for the Hawai'ians.

He should be to all cowboys.

He and a couple of his mates turned up in Wyoming in 1908

catching the train for days,

arriving and having to borrow horses to

sign up for the biggest rodeo in the West in those days,

the Wyoming Frontier Days.

Of course three brown boys rocking up without horses

entering the roping were greeted with derision.

Just as today, there was little notice taken of the epic cattle history Hawai'i has.

After all we all know cowboys are long, lanky white boys.

Ikua caned those white boys who laughed at his funny language

and expected him to fail.

He caned them on a borrowed horse.

He caned them after days on a train.

He caned them in 1 minute 6 seconds.

He caned them royally.

Probably because his great, great grandfather was King Kamehameha the first

and because he was good at what he did.

See Hawai'i is a lot like New Zealand.

We who are from small islands love it when one of ours

beats the guys from the big places.

So much of the paniolo culture reminded me of the East Coast.

Of riding bareback, of family, of community and hard work.

I'd say New Zealand and Hawaii have a lot in common.

The same feel about how we are.

The farming and ranching practices and ethic differ

but of all the places I've travelled to,

Hawaii is the closest to my home.

On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

fines

One of the traditions of Young Farmers

is to have a fines session.

The fines are for anything and everything.

Foolish mistakes, serious errors, hijinks's and jokes.

They take the sting out of feeling like an idiot

and help you feel forgiven and a little less self conscious.

The 2012 East Hawaii 4H TAG Exchange

fines session took place at the Honolulu airport

in the food hall where we had set up base camp

while we whiled away four or so hours before our flight home.

Louly and I had kept tally as the experience progressed,

periodically asking the kids what silly thing had happened that day

to record for the fines list.

Louly and I included.

Here are just a few....

Tessa otherwise known as Tissa,

lost her passport three time,

yes three times!

Once before we even had left NZ.

Thomas, bless him was checking the depth of a cave

but unfortunately picked up a soft rock that got a bit mushy in his hand.

Jacob, who should have known better,

drove into trees.

To be fair this was a reasonably common

occurrence with the kids.

Kate gets the blame for the Starbucks obsession,

although she did not start it,

she just continued it at every opportunity.

Nicola got us started on an iPad buying spree.

I think I got the record.

I got stung for my small and short-lived Reeces peanut butter cup obsession,

for walking into the screen door at the Kona condos

and I should have got one for tripping over a step

but somehow injury negates the need to fork out.

We should have stung Jacob for letting down the side

when he collapsed the pyramid!

The money was donated at Auckland Airport 

to a non-specfied local charity

in one of those drop your international change here boxes,

Then all the kids saw Prime Minister John Key

but more importantly some guys from the Black Caps

and we got a plane to fly home to Christchurch.

The End.

Hawai'ian sheep

The Beatons, who generously hosted half of our ten students

also had us help with a little bit of farmwork.

The Beaton's had recently imported a slew of ewes from California.

Bloodlines on the island can get a little concentrated

and bringing new bloodlines from the mainland

can help but there is a serious quarantine process to follow.

These ewes had been having alone time

for 30 days before we arrived.

Now it was time take some bloods off them

and see which ones were pregnant.

Jill Beaton is the sheep person on the farm.

These are her babies.

Our kids are pretty used to farm work

being off farms and all.

They are also well used to be given jobs,

handling animals and getting hands dirty.

Johanna was the queen of the sheep pen.

Let's note something very interesting here.

In New Zealand farmers wear short shorts,

often all year round.

If they get cold they wear thermal leggings under their short shorts.

The reason for this is simply that long pants - jeans, moleskins, whatever

get wet easily not mention really dirty.

Skin however does not.

Skin you can dry off and magically you are all set to go again.

There is no need to wear long pants cause

there is nothing worse than trugging around in wet clothes

so in NZ less is more helpful.

Just saying.

You can spot the difference between the Kiwis and

the Hawaiians easily by leg wear.

The kids are used to working like this in all weathers.

Nicola out all of us is probably the most used to inclement weather

coming from Wallacetown, Southland.

The Beaton's place is high above Paauilo.

Up in the clouds mostly.

At the moment they are in extreme drought

so any moisture from the air is fab.

But just to repeat Hawaii is a temperate climate

and in the places we spent much of our time it was cool.

And damp.

Not really wet, just incisively damp

in the most pleasant of ways of course.

Hawai'i is very pleasant.

Tissa in charge of the chalk and something else.

Steph and Nic recording which sheep had what done.

Tissa having a whale of a time handling the ewes.

Kids everywhere doing a good job

of wrangling ewes and worming them

then letting the adults take the blood

which was handed to me to collect and record.

Until it got too wet and my illegible writing became truly unreadable.

Thomas catching a ewe ready have her jugular vein relieved of some blood.

Then we all jumped on an ATV

and raced back to the ranch house for a towel down

(remember theres a drought and limited water so no showers)

before relaxing on the couch.

These are their normal faces.

Seriously.



On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.

Hawai'ian beaches

Whilst in Hawai'i we visited,

used and exploited only three beaches.

Only three for New Zealanders is a very poor effort.

We are a water oriented people.

If we aren't racing to a seaside beach in the summer

we are heading into the mountains to make

the most of water skiing and boating on a multitude of lakes.

So to only have spent a small amount of time at the beach while in Hawai'i

is criminal.

Of course that's not why we were there.
It wasnt a holiday, it was an experience.

We arrived too late for the 4th of July fireworks

 but in the morning we paid a suitable tribute visit to Pearl Habour

then to Waikiki to visit tourist central.

Except that we didn't.

We drove through Waikiki to a park on the far side

Where the kids jumped pretty quickly onto the sand to

paddle and wander along the quiet end of Waikiki Beach.

 I love getting to know places with locals.

Doug Beaton parent of Keoni was our driver with most of the kids,

while Alex (older) brother of Keoni drove the boys and the food.

They go together don't you think.

Thankfully the boys were well behaved

so no food was lost in the journey.

I will post about the food

because so far everyone in NZ has been quite sneering

about American food.

Pattie mother of Malia and Rosie sister of Malia joined us too.

Pattie would go on to host five of our girls at her place on the Big Island.

Waikiki was a surprise how nice it was.

Yes it was crowded,with locals as much as tourists,

and the shopping was the more expensive kind

(still cheaper than NZ).

Me and Lou had a very pleasant time 'hugging'

Duke Kahanamoku's bronzed legs.

Wild and crazy, we were.

The Big Island doesn't actually have endless beaches

like you'd imagine.

Being a relatively new volcanic island

they are still in the epic process of getting beautiful, idyllic beaches.

On the Big Island, the first beach we visited,
 for about an hour was Hapuna.

I can't remember where I've put the photos of Hapuna

but it was a hot, dry, sunny day

until we got to the beach.
A good long white sand beach,
not too busy.
The sun was quite cool and the water was cooler still.
Keep in mind I avoid swimming in NZ
(unless around Nelson)
because the water is freezing!
Becky, Lou and I were meeting some of the kids at the beach.
By the time they arrived, we'd swum and were lying in the sun
hoping to get a good start on brownness.
Once the kids had swum,
jumped off the rocks,
snorkeled and played with a ball we'd found them
it was time to go.
Boy did that time pass quickly.

The third beach we visited was the best.
The best because it was all the best parts of NZ beaches.
69 is near Hapuna but a million miles away in beauty and mood.

One long beach divided into pockets of privacy between the trees.

One end was suitable for body surfing

and the end we were at was protected by a coral reef.

So ideal for snorkeling.

I'm not a huge fan of snorkeling.

I think because I used to have really bad sinus and

the mask added too much pressure to my face

but this day I decided to not be a sook and see what I could see.

We saw plenty of fish - neon yellow fish, parrot fish and

the humuhumunukunukuapuaa which turns out not to be Hawaii's state fish.

Which is good cause you have to have rhythm to say it name.

The thing I loved about 69

was simply that we were all so close together but

also free to do our own thing.

The girls swam and snorkeled,

Rosie and Kamuela (little siblings of Malia) bounced in and out of the sea,

we swam, we planned the next few days,

even got a bit of reading done and a bit of tanning.

The kids had fun and were never far away.

It was all good.

I love trees on the beach *sigh*

I think in the whole two weeks we were in Hawai'i

we spent about 5 hours on a beach.

Not long, not enough but we so busy do ag things

that we hardly noticed not spending time at the beach.

Last picture of 69 comes from Johanna the groover.

Shaka brah!

On July 5th Louly and I took ten young New Zealand farm kids to Hawaii for an agricultural exchange for two weeks. They are members of the NYZF TeenAg programme. We were hosted by East Hawaii 4H specifically the Beatons and Stouts. We visited many kinds of agricultural and horticultural operations, varied and diverse, learned that American ag folks like to philosophise about their place in the world and had a great time snorkeling and shopping in the sun. These posts are in no particular order cause I was too busy to post while in Hawaii and can be rather abstract and should only be taken as an inaccurate at best record.