We left Waikiki in our beat up Geo and headed West..
It was 3 pm and traffic was stop and go for most the way.. clearing for stretches, then stopping again..
H1 ended and we were now heading up the west coast on the Farrington Highway.
When we got a few miles up the coast, we started to see these tent cities along the beach. They were elaborate set ups, multiple tents connected by big tarps and sometimes trucks or busses mixed in. Some had parking areas, with decent cars.. Some had POW MIA flags flying.. These tent homes stretched up most of the West Coast...
Come to find there are some 4000 homeless that live on the beach here. They choose this area because its on the lee side of island, it doesn't rain much here and very few storms hit here. Its the perfect place for outside dwellers. Also, there are not many tourists on the west coast, so the state officials seem to turn the other way. Apparently many of these dwellings have generators. They thumb their nose at society..
We reached Makaha, and were surprised at the lack of services here. We saw two old grocery stores, a few liquor stores, many boarded up "drive ins". Apparently, the drive in burger joints were big here. They all look to be from the late 60's, and 70's in design.
We found the Condo unit, the only ones we saw the whole way up the coast, so it wasn't hard to miss. There are 2 tower condos here, right next to each other and right on the beach. Both have security gates, and then security lock to get into building area, and another security lock to get on the elevator.
We opened the door to the condo, and we were pleased. Its real nice condo, the bedroom is all the way back towards the water and there are double sliding glass doors to the lania, with sweeping view of the ocean.
The front of the condo units are all the louvered glass windows. The entire front wall is made up of louvered windows.. They are secured though, not the kind you can slide out. Its big business in Hawaii, fixing the louvered windows to be secure. Most every structure on the island has louvered windows.
We unloaded our gear and then went to register at the managers office.
It was 5pm now, and it was shift change. We met the night security guard. The security guard patrols 24 hours a day, on the beach, walking the halls, parking lot.. Its nice to see good security.
We asked where we can get groceries. They told us to go to the store on the East side of the road, not the one across the street.
We took their advice and drove down to the Tamakura Supermarket.
The building appears to be 50 years old, and never maintained..
I can barely describe what I saw in that store, but I will try. I wanted to turn around and leave immediately, but we only saw one pizza place that looked decent, so we needed food.
Everything was soo expensive.. Tortilla chips are 4 bucks a bag. 4 bucks for a dozen eggs....
I wanted some fresh fish.. I picked up a package of frozen fish. The label said "codfish". I don't know if it was.. the fish was yellow and completely freezer burned. It looked as if it had been filleted by a 5 year old.. There was bones all through it.. It was the scariest piece of fish I have ever seen.
They had big bags of frozen, whole, in shell oysters. Frozen oysters? can you do that? Did they ever hear of jarred or canned oysters?
There was packages of Dungeness crab, with guts and matter in the packaging.. They all looked very, very old..
We didn't buy any seafood.
We did get a decent head of lettuce, tomatoes, a loaf of bread, small cheese package, eggs, coffee and some misc condiments and snacks. Oh, they had NO macadamia nuts. We bought a big thing of nuts for 3 dollars in Waikiki...
We went back to condo and unloaded groceries and headed to beach to watch sunset. Everyone gathered on the beach for the sunset. I swam a little as we waited.
Sunset was at 6:30 and it was cool and I didn't have my camera.
Right after the sun went down, a group of senior haolis blew conch shells in unison. Then, they turned to the North and blew the conch, then the East, blew conch, then South.. Everyone clapped when they were done. I thought, how great that must be for them. Obviously retired and living here. That is the only thing they need to do each day. I hope I am that lucky some day...
We sat on the lania and watched a family swimming and playing in surf for another hour after sunset. They have big spot lights on the roof that shine into the surf.
Hungry now, we went to the pizza place down the road a mile. We had no idea what to expect and were a bit nervous. When we pulled in, another car parked next to us and a military family got out. We asked them about this place and they said it was good. I asked about other places around here to get drink or dinner. They told us we could go to the army rec center down the street, that was about it..
The pizza place was called Red Baron pizza, no relation to the frozen brand. It was pretty funky, the place was full of locals. We ordered a pitcher of beer. It took a while for it to get to us. Thats island life...
We ordered a big cheese and B ordered a side salad.
The side salad came in a huge place, with two small bowls.. I didn't want salad, it had ham in it. I am not sure, didn't really look at tab, but guess they charged us for two salads.
With the salad came a dressing thing, it had three big bowls of dressing. B likes to mix and match her dressings, so this was good. However, they came by in a few minutes to get the dressing back, it was a community bowl of dressing.. weird..
The pizza was decent and we had lots leftover.
That concludes day two...
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