Hawaii Day 6: June 18th, 2008

Once again I passed the day mainly at my lovely rental house, relaxing, writing, and meditating. In the evening, I decided to investigate Kalani, on the web at www.kalani.com, the resort a friend of mine has told me so much about. It is about a 20 minute drive from where I am staying, down highway 130 towards the current lava flow, then around and up highway 137 a bit. There is a great sign on this road, where you can choose to go to The End of the Road, or follow highway 137 to Kalapana. Incidentally, Highway 130 didn’t used to end abruptly – it was consumed by lava when the current eruption began.

So I headed towards Kalapana to check out Kalani Oceanside Retreat. First, I had dinner on their lovely lanai. The grounds are fairly picturesque, and the dining area overlooks them, which makes for a pleasant place to enjoy a meal. The dinner, at $24 for a rather average buffet, was very overpriced, however. Lunch might be a better bet here, since it is probably similar, but only costs $15 for the buffet. It might have been more worth my money if I ate fish, since shrimp scampi was the main dish. Even then, the food was good, but more on the dining hall end of things, as opposed to the gourmet end. It’s a good way to get to observe the folks at Kalani, in any case. There appear to be quite a number of characters either in residence or passing through, so great people watching abounds!

After dinner I stopped by the café, which was sparsely populated, but playing great music. Then I decided to check out the Open Mic they were having in The Rainbow Room. This was quite an adventure! The performances consisted of a wide variety of talents. First a man played the ukulele. Then a French Canadian woman put on a very decent belly dance performance. Following her, two men did the Hawaiian Cowboy Hula (you can just imagine – it was better than that!). I think one of the men who performed the hula was Richard Koob, part owner/founder of Kalani, but I can’t guarantee this. The guys performing the dance said that this hula was performed by some Hawaiian cowboys, who participated in a rodeo in Wyoming. The cowboys won a number of awards, and performed it as a sort of victory hula. There really are cowboys, and a history of horse and cattle raising, on The Big Island. Whether any of those cowboys went to Wyoming and performed a hula dance is unverified by Yours Truly. After the hula performance, a woman read a poem by Hafiz, and had everybody hold the hand of the person next to them. After that came a trio of girls singing along to acoustic guitar. They also demonstrated about 15 different ways to wear a sarong. Then there was a very funny stand-up comedian, who told sarcastic, borderline inappropriate stories. He was followed by a guy who juggled very well. The juggler turned out to be the partner of the belly dancer, who also juggles, so they did partner juggling at the end of that segment. Then they (the juggler and the belly dancer/juggler) also did a salsa dance number for everyone. Talk about multi-talented! Finally, a girl taught us a few dance steps and a song about the moon, and everyone sang and danced for the full moon. At the end everybody held hands again. I felt all warm and fuzzy by then end of the evening!

So, my evaluation is that Kalani is a lovely spot full of lovely, if somewhat eccentric, people. And the full moon over the ocean was absolutely beautiful! Luckily no one was behind me on the road on the way back down 137, because I had to stop a few times to look at the moon.