Another day at the beach

Just up the road from us is Hapuna Beach State Park. It is a classic beach – big wide curve of sand, great waves. In fact the waves can be a bit much – the beach was closed last week due to bigness of waves. We learned to body surf a couple of years back at Hapuna, and a day at the beach is part of our routine here.

On our last visit to Hawaii we pulled into the parking lot at Hapuna and we could see the rescue helicopter hovering over the beach. That didn’t bode well – kind of hard to have a fun day at the beach if someone was in distress. It turned out to be quite something else – it was training day for the local rescue people. Lots of superfit supertanned young fellows in black swim trunks were jumping out of the helicopter, running up and down the beach, diving into the surf, jumping in and out of boats. It was quite a show.

Yesterday at the beach we had quite a different show. It was tree trimming day! A group of four men were climbing the coconut palms to trim the fronds back, cut off the coconuts and flowers and other stuff. When I say climbing I mean just that – they had spiked shoes  and would grab the tree and start climbing. Once they got to a certain point they’d fling a rope around the tree and clip it to themselves so they could then lean against the rope and use their machete to hack at the tree.

This guy was way up there and the tree was really swaying in wind. Took him a long time to get settled and start cutting.

In some jurisdictions there would have been traffic cones and a safety marshall and keeping people away. Not so much here – people were gawking right underneath the trees being worked on. We were out of the line of direct fire where we were sitting, but enough stuff was flying around that we retreated to the picnic tables.  After the cutting was done another crew came along to pick all the stuff – the usual story. A few minutes of cutting leads to hours of picking up.

That’s business part of the coconut plant – those are coconuts to be – only a few grow up to be coconuts.

Earlier in the week we were at the golf club for breakfast, and the trees were being trimmed there – one of the gardeners took a fallen coconut and cut the end off so we could drink the contents – doesn’t really taste like much- and then he cut it open so we could taste the inside. He scraped out a mild tasting jelly – didn’t taste like coconut, really.

So – it seems to be all about the coconuts this time around!

And here’s a gratuitous fish picture for you:

 

The most beautiful lemon coloured koi at the King’s Shops pond.