Beach Creatures

I took some more video on Poipu today. A seal and fishermen. The interesting about the men fishing in surf is way the bait is taken out further than it can be cast. One of the men swam it out. We have seen several techniques on other trips to accomplish a similar thing. The use of a kayak and a kite.

 

Shaka

Hawaii is the only state that has its own wave. There is that farmer's wave of raising one finger from the steering wheel (the pointer finger) that is unique to Iowa, but that is more of an occupational thing. 

The Shaka takes a little practice. Mom usually employs it when she is driving mainly to thank someone for her letting her merge. I do think that some also use the shaka to say "excuse me" when they accidentally or purposefully cut someone off. 

I read some of the speculations about the origins of shaka. These ideas range from a train conductor who lost his middle three fingers giving a signal to the engineer to move on and having his gesture mimicked by the local kids to the Spanish sailors who used this gesture by holding the thumb to the mouth indicating let’s have a drink. 

 

Wailua Falls (again)

 This is one of those repeats I warned might occur because we spend so much time on the small island of Kauai. 

Some of the common photo stops for tourists are the waterfalls which are fairly numerous. Kauai is mountainous and rains are common so it is possible to view small falls after any rain. The more permanent falls were what attract the photographers.

Last year was very dry and the falls were so wimpy I don't think I even generated a post about them (post from 2019). Just how dry was it? It was so dry that the gardeners started to break out the sprinklers and this is impressive when you understand that Kauai has areas that receive among the most rainfall on earth. I did take a few photos of the falls last year. This is Wailua Falls.

This year has been different and has probably been as rainy as we have experienced since we began coming here. A recent rain dumped over 5 inches and this is enough to close some roads due to water over the road and mud and rock slides. You can get caught and unable to get back to where you came from under such situations so emergency alerts are common when heavy rains are expected or underway.

Here is what the result looked like the day after for the water coming over the same falls.

Impressive. 

People Pictures

 Some photographers need to have people in every photo no matter the focus of the photo. I am not one of those persons and from time to time people wonder if I ever purposefully take a picture of a person. I do, but people pictures are not what I tend to write about.

However, just to prove I can photograph at least a couple of the people on our trips here are a couple of those individuals.

The food was really good, but I am unable to write about both people and something else in the same post. 

Hawaiians for Trump

 Hawaii has a very diverse population, but only about 10% Native Hawaiian. In the most recent election it voted 64% for Biden so it is more Democratic than Minnesota. In fact, it is the most Democratic state based on registration data/

So, I was kind of surprised to see this truck sitting on a beach road. So bright and Trumpy. And orange.

I couldn't really think of anything else to say. In these rare occasions, I have taken to asking ChatGPT for suggestions. The AI bot suggested - “This truck is giving off some serious Aloha-right-wing vibes." I guess I will go with that.