This morning was full of me taking care of bugs, transferring data, and getting ready to be gone for another long day. We left just after 9, to arrive at our 10 a.m. appointment in Ocean View Estates. This participant was originally going to have us do our property measures on his church's land, but decided it would be okay if we worked on his property. He had limited experience with the frog, but didn't want them in this area. He told us about packs of wild dogs that roam this community, so we should be careful. Apparently there are also a lot of people that run stop signs at night. We got the information on the property boundaries, and then headed to our 11 a.m. appointment before doing the property measures.
We arrived at this participant's house, and were greeted by the participant and his wife, who I was told could speak english. So, I briefly explained why I was there, had them give Seth the property boundaries, and walked through the consent form. I listened to her translations in spanish and corrected her a few times when I was being misinterpreted. I'm not sure if it would have just been easier to do the whole thing in spanish on my own, but it seemed her presence there was to be a translator, so I didn't want to step on too many toes. This participant claimed to really like the frogs and thought they were beneficial for controlling the insects. He thought the frogs needed to be conserved, and would do this himself, but thought it too dry on his property to keep them alive. He was a bit of a jokester (telling me he was 100 years old at the end when I have him fill out the demographic sheet), so I wasn't totally sure if he was pulling my leg or not, but his son claimed to like them as well, so I would assume he was being truthful. I have had other participants say things that sound a little bizarre, but it would be rude of me to accuse them of joking, so I just roll with it as best as possible to try and get a sense of where they're coming from. The transcribing will be fun, since he answered all in spanish. There were a few things that were lost in translation, since they are more common english phrases (such as "invasive species"), but otherwise, the interview process was quite interesting.
We headed to the nearby park to eat our lunches before heading back to the first participant to do our daytime measures.
This property was a little less managed than the first property, and I managed to fall and gash my hand on some of the sharp lava, but it seems I'm just ending the summer the way I started it- injuring my left hand. Falling on lava is not a good idea. My other hand was saved since I had my leather glove on that I use while collecting leaf litter.
After we finished this property, we decided to drive around the Ocean View Estates community and check out the views from the top of the community. 1-acre lots used to sell for around $500 not too long ago in this area. This could explain why we saw a number of tent camp looking areas, though we also saw a number of nice houses as well.
We decided to drive to Manuka State park and walk around. Manuka is the largest of 19 natural areas in Hawaii and the park has a nice 2-mile loop trail. We decided to not rush through the trail and instead went to the park in Ocean View and played games in the field with the GPS. We looked silly, but it was fun running around wildly trying to squash the lizard. We did this until we needed to set up the sound recorders, and then we tried it again in the dark. I couldn't decide if it was harder during daylight or in the dark, but it was still fun.
We packed up the sound recorders and drove back in the rain to pick up the sticky traps from our property the previous night. Judging by the light rain, it looks like we lucked out by doing this property yesterday since it was wet, but only from rain earlier in the day.
Today we only had one property scheduled for 10 a.m. in Honalo. The property was a 1.2 acre organic garden, which is productive enough for the owners to give away to friends and sell some of their produce. The participant had a visitor with her who was just hired to help work with local businesses to figure out ways to help them not go under. We chatted for a long time about the frogs, as she really doesn't like them and doesn't want them. She has talked to all her neighbors and told them that if they ever hear one frog, they should take care of it themselves or call her and she'll take care of it, rather than let the frogs multiply. We enjoyed some fresh brewed organic coffee from their farm while we chatted, and then were invited to stay for lunch. We accepted since we didn't have any other properties to do the same day.
It took us a while to complete our daytime measures. This was partly due to us being followed around and chatting with the people, and partly due to the fact that the camera stopped working again. The visitor happened to have a digital camera in his car that we borrowed to take the last of our pictures.
Lunch consisted of delicious homemade taro burgers (nothing like purple burgers!) and fresh greens from the garden. We chatted for a long time about genetically modified foods and energy crises, and all sorts of interesting things. We ended up staying until around 4, before heading down to Ocean View to pick up sticky traps.
We made the long drive to Ocean View and then turned around to set the sound recorder up in Honalo, before heading to a nearby park to eat and walk around the field.
We read online that banging the camera lightly would work (no rice needed this time...) so we gave that a try, and it worked. Obviously, just a treatment for a larger problem.
Our first participant was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Ocean View. This participant claimed to have a frog in the front of the property that had been there a year and was thought to have been brought in on a house plant purchased at the Kona Walmart. She said she no longer purchases the plants there for fear of getting another frog. The participant had thought of having a coqui frog hunting party, complete with a prize for the person that found the frog, but still hadn't done this. They used to live in Alaska and were telling me all about some interesting school programming they had a hand in. They were quite friendly and I tried to give them advice about ways of taking care of the frog out front. We did our daytime measures and headed to a nearby park to eat lunch. Afterwards, I decided to try the gecko squash game again, and this time nearly doubled Seth's score. I picked a few ripe guava from a nearby tree while trying to cool down before the 2 p.m. participant.
The second participant was quite chatty and also didn't like the frogs. She'd heard them near the community center in town, but felt sure that the community would be able to band together and take care of the frogs if they ever made it into the community.
Seth spent a while talking to the husband of the participant about history as well as property values. He knows a person selling 5 lots, so we took a picture of his brochure/map to check them out later. Because we chatted for so long, we ended up not finishing the property until 5:30 or so.
We headed to a nearby park to eat, and then decided to drive around and explore the properties for sale. Seth cut up his leg while exploring one (lava can be quite brittle and VERY sharp).
We thought we were going to need to do transects on the first property, but we didn't hear the frog at all. We walked around the first point with our lights on and looked for possible signs of frogs, but didn't see any. We did see the biggest cane toad we've seen thus far, which was neat. It's no wonder that in some places they make purses out of these things. It was huge!
We picked up the sound recorders, and drove to Honalo to pick up the sticky traps from the property before heading home and taking care of bugs and transferring data to the computer.
Our first participant was scheduled for 9:30 ish down in Ocean View estates. This participant works the night shift up in Kona, so he had us come right after his shift was over and before he was headed to sleep. They didn't know much about coqui frogs because they don't have any, but they were friendly and willing to help with my research. They were somewhat in favor of the frogs if they would help control insects, as they didn't think the noise would bother them that much, since they are from the mainland where they have noisy nighttime frogs. Seth played fetch with their dog while I chatted, and finally wore the dog out. We finished up our property measures and decided to go to a nearby park to eat lunch.
We had one participant drop out, so I had asked the first participant yesterday if she knew anyone else that might be interested, and I was given some contact information. I decided to try calling from the park, and the woman was quite chatty and interested. She wasn't going to be around tomorrow, which was when I was originally planning to do the interview, but she was fine with us being there when she wasn't, so we set up the interview after lunch.
This property had a lot of pretty succulents on it, but was mostly lava. The woman was very conscious of water usage and tried to plant things that were adapted to the area. She really didn't like coqui frogs, and hopes they never come to this community. She felt that people would be able to work together to take care of getting rid of the frogs if they ever did come to the area. We chatted a while about her story of ending up in Hawaii (everyone's is different) before starting to collect our daytime measures.
We finished up with some time to spare before our 4 p.m. appointment, so we drove around and looked at properties some more. The area has a feeling of being in a national park, with all the different ages of lava flows and stages of vegetation, as well as the changes that result from elevational differences. It's a neat place to explore.
Our 4 p.m. participant was a little late due to an accident on the road between her house and where she works. The dogs were super friendly and were easily entertained by Seth (once the more skeptical dog warmed up to us). We had a nice chat about the frogs, including hearing about a slingshot method that her husband uses at his nursery to take care of eliminating the frogs. He came home as we were setting up, and I chatted with him for a while about various research projects he's involved with. We finished up around 6:15 or so, and were given some locally made sweet bread (purple from the taro of course) and a couple of pasteles that were made from the family next door. The pasteles had pork in them, and were wrapped in banana leaves, and are similar to tamales. They were spicy and pretty good.
We drove to pick up sticky traps from the previous day, and then headed back to the third participant's property to chat. The man was fairly busy, so we didn't chat too much, but talked until we packed up the sound recorder and headed north for the night.
The only thing on the agenda for today was picking up the sticky traps from the 3 houses yesterday, as well as setting up the sound recorder on the second house, since we only have 2 recorders, thus, only did two properties the previous night.
We decided to head to South Point to check out the southernmost point in the United States. We stopped by Chris' bakery on the way, to try out his Malsadas and see how they compared to Baker Tom's. Unfortunately, they were all out for the day, so we opted for a coconut turnover and a cherry turnover instead. We stopped and took a pic of Hawaii's newest invasive species- the zebra! (just kidding, it seems to be someone's pet...)
We made the long drive down to the south point, and noticed all the wind turbines that are out of commission along the drive. It looked like some strange graveyard for wind turbines and almost had an eerie feel about it. Welcome to Hawaii's strange energy laws- the company that owns the turbines (newer ones are down the way) is only allowed to sell approximately 1/3 their capacity back to the grid, so 2/3 goes unused. Why? Well, because the energy company needs some help straightening out priorities...
We reached the boat hoists along the southern tip, but I don't think you'd want to go swimming in this area, unless you want to be swept out to see with the current.
We walked further to reach the southernmost area of the U.S. and watched how the foam on the wave was blown backwards as mist with the strong winds in the area. The trees give away which direction the wind is blowing, if you can't already tell by feeling it. It's windy down here!
We walked a bit further and saw a couple of sacred burial sites.
We drove out along "Broken Road" and Seth was able to stop before having the car fall over the cliff into the ocean below, but you could see how that would be easy for someone to do.
Next we drove along a 4WD road to reach a green sand beach. Yes, that's right, GREEN. The ride was rough in spots, but not as bad in others. Some spots you were at an angle that made it impossible to see what was in front of you, and others you could see what was in front, which was many different options for roads to take. How do you choose? We followed the GPS to make sure we didn't get too far off course, but normally Seth's first choice for road was the most likely to have been the actual 4WD road, and not other people's paths.
The beach requires a bit of a hike down, but the first part is really the worst (and it's not that bad), which requires a bit of a climb. You just have to be extra careful because this lava is sharp. There were a few people enjoying the cool ocean water and waves. We admired the green sand and played in the waves a bit. The sand is apparently green because it is a mixture of olivine (a mineral) and black sand from previous eruptions. It really was quite pretty.
We headed back out on the 4WD road and met a number of people wondering how long the road was (2 1/4 miles) and how rough it was. We smiled and waved at people along the drive, but the only people that actually reciprocated were individuals that wanted us to provide them with info...
We admired the near straight satellites, thanks to our proximity to the equator, on the drive out of South Point.
We drove further east to stop by the local bakery that makes the delicious sweet bread we were given the other day, but they closed 15 minutes prior to our arrival- bummer. Instead, we drove back to Ocean View, picked up sticky traps, set up the sound recorder, and then shot the breeze with the last participant from the previous day. We have really met some interesting people on our journey. He had plans to head out and play darts, which it sounded like he was going to invite us to join him on, but he knew we still had a long drive ahead of us.
We went to the top lot at the nearby park to eat and read, before packing up and heading back to the apartment.
No participants to do today! In fact, we only have 1 more official participant scheduled for Monday, woo hooo. We worked our butts off these last few weeks getting through as many as we could so we might have a few days to do other work on the computer and to pack up around here and just relax a bit.
We went for a walk to the marketplace and bought a white pineapple- all 6.5 pounds of it!! We also stopped by the outside of the Bubba Shrimp restaurant, where Seth pretended to be Forest Gump.
We then went and did some errands to get food for the last leg of our journey here. We stopped by the Mac Pie factory and sampled a bit of the pie. It was good, so we decided to purchase a chocolate chip mac nut pie for later.
I thawed and marinated the last of our tuna, so we could grill it out for dinner. We decided to go for a swim and relax before dinner. It rained lightly while we were swimming, and it was fun to watch the water bounce on the pool. The steaks turned out well, and tasted good as well. We cooked them while watching the sun set over the ocean.
We watched a lecture after our late dinner, had some mac nut pie, and then went to sleep.
Today was another relaxing day. We went for a walk down to the abandoned salt water swimming pool, in the hopes that the tide was higher this time, but, while the tide was high, the waves weren't that big, so not that impressive. We came back to the apartment so Seth could do some work on the computer while I went and did some errands.
We grilled out brats for a late lunch/early dinner and I cut up the massive white pineapple. It really is the sweetest pineapple I have ever tasted, and it was white. Yum!
I did some work and then we decided to head down to the pool for a swim. It was quite busy at the pool, but I still managed to tread some water while watching the sunset light up the clouds. Seth watched the sunset an read before coming and sitting in the hot tub. We watched a history channel special on motorcycles, had some mac nut pie, and got ready for our last participant.