I was greeted by a red-crested cardinal this morning as I sipped my coffee, and we soon made fast friends as I fed him some tortilla chip crumbs. There are a lot of songbirds here, and they create a sort of symphonic wake-up alarm.

It’s guest arrival day, so we picked up our second rental car at the airport. We used to rent a 13 passenger van here, but I grew weary of driving it and finding parking for it, so now we rent a small SUV and a minivan to get us around the island. It’s a more flexible setup, too, and allows us to split the group for various reasons.

There’s a fair amount of planning that goes into a day like this, as we need to keep track of our guests’ arriving flight times, who is picking them up, making sure we coordinate with Clare and Dan on meal times, and little details like procuring leis and stocking the cars with cold drinks for the arriving guests.

I picked up guests Patricia and Chris, who arrived from Portland, OR. They’re new to us but not new to adventure travel, and we hit it off right away. The plan was to drop them in Kona for a few hours and return to get them later in the afternoon. Next we met guides Ryan and, for the first time, Kekau. We had lunch at a local’s joint that has a typical Hawaiian comfort food menu that, for instance, puts asian food on the same plate with a cheeseburger. My lunch had rice, macaroni and cheese, cabbage, beef ribs, shrimp, and fried fish all piled atop one another. Comfort food, indeed.

Tucking into our meals and our outdoor chairs, we “talked story” with Kekau and Ryan, as they say here. I immediately found common ground with Kekau in surfing and cars. Heather likewise did with their shared passion for the ocean. Kekau is a quiet, contemplative, confident waterman that we are very much looking forward to working with this week.

We had all of our guests gathered up and at the Hale by 3pm, and got them settled into their rooms. Patricia, Chris, Luise, Charlie, Kimberly, Angie and Kyle. Soon we were giving our welcome speech and our swim safety speech, which Heather and I tag-team on. It makes me laugh when I think about how I used to have to use a cheat sheet for this. We tell our guests about things like how to stay healthy in the tropics and what to avoid in the ocean. Giving all of that information a few moments to sink in, we planned a swim in our little bay.

You wouldn’t believe this, but there are not many places that you can just walk into the ocean on the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s a relatively new island, geologically speaking, and sharp lava rocks ring most of it. Beaches are rare, but ours is a gem here in Waileia Bay. The sand is white and very soft, and we just walk in and start swimming.

It was a typical first swim as the guides watched over our new group of swimmers. Ryan and Kekau atop their stand up paddleboards (SUPs) and Heather and I swimming. The water was still a little choppy from the day’s winds, but the water was clear and the fish abundant. Our instinct to bring on a fourth guide for this trip was a good one, I think, as we will be pretty spread out at times. We have a mix of speeds and open water experience levels among the guests this week. That said, we will look to form small groups of swimmers, in pairs and threes, to keep things manageable and enjoyable in the water.

Our evening libations and cuisine, in order, were: Mai tai cocktails, Ahi tuna sushi, a ridiculously local salad, where the greens were grown mere inches from here, mahi-mahi cooked with vegetables in a paper sack, and green tea and vanilla bean ice cream w Waimea strawberries. Clare and Dan hit a home run with this dinner, and I expect many more. The wind picked back up as we headed for our rooms, the Kiawe trees shushing us to sleep.

Hopper

Hawaiian Comfort Food and Talking Story.

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