Quick! Let's go have another sublime experience before dinner!

It goes without saying that when one moves to Hawaii one can expect to have more visitors than one might have if one moved to, say, Lubbock, Texas. But I have to admit I was not expecting them to arrive so soon after I did. My friends -let’s call them Sally and Brain- arrived from California less than three weeks after I had arrived. I had not yet even found a permanent place to live when they jetted in for a long weekend.

Before moving here I had vacationed on Kauai three times. And while visiting the island I did what visitors do: I packed in as many sights and activities as I possibly could in a short amount of time. Sally and Brain were no exception to this trend. In fact Brain in particular exemplified the phenomenon. Gung Ho is not just a city in China. He was not satisfied with merely filling his own days with everything to see and do on Kauai. In between scoping out the next Hawaiin ruin and snapping photos of feral chickens he extolled me to summit a nearby peak (which he had named Mt. Boreas) as if to ensure that even after he left there would be someone to carry on his legacy of manic island exploration.

Living here I feel differently. I’m as thrilled as Brain to be exploring the island, but for me there is always tomorrow. So when, after a grueling 8 mile hike complete with swimming under a 300’ waterfall followed by snorkeling with a gaggle of sea turtles, Brain insisted on a second snorkel before we called it a day I wondered if I could keep up. It was at that moment that I spied a Hawaiin Monk Seal dozing on the beach like a tropical sausage and thought maybe I would follow its example while Sally and Brain worked on uping their turtle tally.

I hope I’m not starting to sound superior here. “Look at me at one with the spirit of Hawaii while my silly friends scamper about in a vain attempt to absorb something that can only be understood by an enlightened soul such as mine” was not what I was going for. I simply have the luxury of more time than they and the next time I visit some new place I will no doubt run around and exhaust myself. I was really glad to have Sally and Brain visit and I look forward to seeing other friends on Kauai.