We got ready early so we had time to call Lex Brodie's (tire place) to see what to do with the car. They recommended not driving on it with the cracked side wall, so we opted to change the tire out with our spare. We used the teamwork approach this time, which worked quite well.
We arrived at our first participant a little early, but she was very friendly and eager to chat. There were possibly some frogs in the area a few weeks back, but she hasn't really noticed any otherwise. She enjoyed gardening, and was trying to encourage all of her neighbors to grow their own vegetables and fruit to be self-sustainable, and not have to pay the high food costs. She gave us a couple of large avocadoes, grapefruits, and then some fancy granola bars.
>We went to our second participant part way through finishing our first participant (per her request), and we selected our one point to survey. This woman come from Kauai, where she hadn't heard any frogs. She also chatted about the vog here, and it sounds like that's the ugly haze we've been seeing over here. It hasn't really been clear here since we arrived, and it sounds like it hasn't been for several months now.
We came back to the apartment around 2:30 and decided to make veggie burgers on the grill. We talked to the office staff and it sounds like they had coqui here a bit ago after a landscaper did some work. The landscaper came back with his wife, who made a coqui call to lure the frogs and then catch them. I would guess this is a common way for the frogs to come to this side of the island. Our dove friend visited us again on the lanai, but didn't make its way inside this time.
After lunch, we decided to go for a walk up to downtown Kailua Kona. We saw the oldest church on the island, as well as King Kamehameha's last house, and the King's private temple. There weren't too many people out and about, but those that were didn't seem to be all too friendly. We saw a beach area with a number of people waiting to ride a wave in, but there weren't all too many.
We decided to stop for shave ice on our walk back, and settled on lilikoi, pina colada, and lychee as our flavorings. It was pretty good (and huge for a medium), but not as good as the one we had last year in Maui.
We continued our trek back to the condo and packed up before heading out.
We had planned to do our transects on the first property, but we didn't hear any frogs. As it was getting closer to darkness, we still didn't hear any frogs, and the owner asked for Seth*s help with the computer. It was a Windows machine, so Seth said his track record isn't too good with them, but she mostly had a specific internet question, which he attempted to help with (actually, we both did). It sounded like the computer was better off when we left than when we started, but hopefully that lasts. She chatted a lot and seemed like a sweet lady.
I picked up the stakes and sound recorder, and listened for frogs, but didn't hear any in the area. We headed over to the second property to do the same, but still no frogs. We drove back to our apartment and heard some frogs along the way at a newer looking house, which we think were probably brought in on landscaping plants. We tested out the gate code on the driveway, and chilled out for the night.
We got up early to do some errands, then headed back to the house and went swimming. Our first appointment isn't until 11:30 a.m. and then we have another appointment at 5:15 p.m. The second house for sure has frogs, which is exciting.
It seems word of our research is spreading. I received an email from the woman we will be staying with the last 5 days on the island and she told me we had met a bunch of her friends in Kapoho, her nephew, and one of her good friends in Paradise Park, so she's anxious to meet us. How funny!
We went to the first property, only to find a note indicating that the woman would be unable to meet today. Bummer. I called one of the houses I had down for calling on Wednesday to check their schedules, and was able to get through to the first one. We went right over and surveyed the property, so it worked out well, though we weren't sure if the husband was a bit disappointed he wasn't home for the interview or not. They had a pretty old, mangy dog that was curious what we were up to. He looked like he could have used some more food and love.
After this property we drove up the coast to head to the Hamakua Mac Nut plantation, and the Pu'ukohola Heiau National historic site. At the nut factory, they were actually working on labeling cans, which was neat to see.
At the National Historic site, we watched a video about King Kamehameha and the making of the Hawaiian flag, which was interesting. We also walked along a short trail to look at some heiaus (temples), including one for the sharks. We think we actually saw a couple of sharks, as well as some turtles poking their heads up.
We headed back to Kalaoa for our next participant, after picking up the remaining sticky traps from the previous participants. This woman was from Puerto Rico originally, so she is used to the frogs being considered a national symbol, and she's also an animal lover, so she doesn't mind them. Her mom is a biologist, so she does understand the invasive aspect, but not fully, as she thought they might be invasive in Puerto Rico, which they aren't. We chatted for a bit, and then took our measurements on the one point on their yard. We set up our sound recorders and waited for it to get dark to do our surveying.
We heard several frogs on this property, or next door to this property, but we didn't see any on our plot in the back, though we did see lots of cockroaches, giant snails, and cane toads.
We drove back to the apartment and watched a bit on Modern Marvels while exercising.
The sun was out today! It has been a while, since the vog has been so bad. We were beginning to wonder if this was the gloomy side of the island, but it's only gloomy when the vog is bad.
We had one participant scheduled for 4:15 p.m. and another that we were supposed to call and schedule with. I reached his wife, who sounded a bit skeptical, but I was able to talk to this participant and arrange to come by around 2 p.m.
We decided to take a walk up to one of the markets in this area (open Wed thru Sun). The main road, Ali'i drive, is often quite busy with traffic, though there is a shoulder area, and a fair number of people are outside walking. Plumeria trees line parts of the road, and sometimes people are out picking them, probably to make leis.
The market was a bit disappointing, compared to the markets on the other side of the island, but the did have white pineapples for sale, so we had to buy. White pineapples are supposed to be the sweetest pineapple you'll ever have, and they aren't sold in the mainland. They are too difficult to ship, I guess, so we have to enjoy the sweetness here. We chatted with the woman we bought the pineapple from, and it turns out that more white pineapples will be available in the coming weeks, and the price will go down from the steep $2/lb to a little less steep $1.50/ lb. The pineapples were green now, which I guess is how some retailers do it, as they pick them a little unripe, with the hopes of making more of a profit. This woman must not get too many tourists talking much with her, as she thought we lived in the area, which was funny. This market had 6 produce vendors, which is the largest of all the markets nearby, so probably our best bet for produce (all of which is higher than the Hilo side of the island). We walked back to our apartment, and I went for a swim while Seth read.
After grilling out our lunch, we headed to our 2 p.m. participant. He was a sweet older gentleman who seemed to find me amusing. He showed Seth around his backyard, and seemed interested in what we were doing. He doesn't have any coqui on his property, but does have another noisy frog, which I think is the greenhouse frog. He thanked us for doing what we were doing, which is always appreciated.
We headed to our 4:15 p.m. appointment, and the participant showed us the less managed part of the property that he wanted us to survey. He was anxious because he's been hearing frogs right down the road, which is a little too close for comfort (these are the frogs from the property we surveyed the other night that had them, as he's just up the road from them). He doesn't like the frogs, and wants owners to be more pro-active about taking care of them, though he doesn't know what exactly people should do to control for the frogs. He was hoping we would take care of killing the frogs, but no such luck. We set up our gear, which was much trickier than other properties in the area, due to some thick understory areas, with lots of mosquitoes.
We drove to a road nearby with a nice overlook of the coastline, watched the sunset, and had our dinner.
We went to both of the properties to walk around and listen for frogs, but we didn't hear any that were on their properties, so we just let the recorders run. We picked up the recorders and headed back to the apartment for some margaritas. There was a message from one of the participants we had talked to on Monday, saying she had tried emailing me, but that didn't work, and I could call if I wanted, so I decided to try that the next morning.
Today was another sunny start to the day (though it did rain some later on). We needed one more participant for the day and were going to try calling the original participant from earlier in the week that wasn't able to meet us, but she beat us to it, and called us. She was quite ill with strep or something similar, so we decided that we would only sample her next week if we couldn't find someone else during the day today. I called the Monday participant and we chatted a bit about the frogs, and she was sorry she was so busy house-sitting and getting ready for a guest, as she wanted to show us around this side of the island. She did tell us about a good trail to check out, so we thought we'd do that later in the day.
We were going to tour the Natural Energy Laboratory, but we left a little later than planned, and ended up heading back to the community to try and recruit our last participant. The first person we talked to was not the homeowner, but was going to call the homeowner for us during her lunch break. I said we'd keep trying to find another participant in the meantime, but gave them my number to reach me either way.
The next person we talked to agreed to participate, so we got set up. No coqui frogs on her property, but there were greenhouse frogs (garden frogs as she called them), and she is the first person to know what they are and what they sound like. The greenhouse frogs have been around for a couple of years already. She can hear the coqui off in the distance, but none nearby. She had to head out to take one of her daughters to the airport while we finished collecting our data.
We headed off to the Kaloko National Historic Park to eat our lunch and head off on some hikes. We hiked along old lava flows in this park, which is not quite complete, though still nice. We headed down to a fish pool and saw lots of sea turtles bobbing their heads around. We also saw the Ai'opio fishtrap and another temple (Heiau).
Seth got a bunch of sand in his sandal, so he took it off, but then he stepped on a hidden stick in the sand and punctured the bottom of his foot- ouch! We sat for a bit, and then decided to continue on. A woman looking for a light for her drunken boyfriend approached us, and she mentioned that the water around these parts is pretty dirty. We continued walking, and came across a somewhat hidden park ranger. Seth asked him about the water, and it sounds like there can be buildup of bacteria in the area, so Seth should clean his wound out good when we get back.
A little bit further up the trail, we caught a glimpse of a sunning Honu (green sea turtle). It looks like this turtle is number 23 for someone else's research. I kept my distance, but this was definitely a highlight to my day.
We didn't quite continue out to the furthest end on the trail, as they lock the parking lot gate at 4, and we didn't want our car stuck there overnight, so we took an intersecting trail back, figuring we have more time to do the other side in the future.
We got back to the apartment and I took care of the bugs, while Seth read. I decided to go swimming before making dinner and heading out to our nighttime participant.
We arrived at our nighttime participant at 7 p.m. and were greeted by the woman telling me that her husband did not want us to record. He then came out of the house, introduced himself, and apologized, but didn't want us recording. He wasn't home when I talked to his wife, and it was obvious he was skeptical of my research. He was annoyed by one of the demographic questions I have asking about income (though I told him there is a 'prefer not to answer' option) and he was generally condescending towards his wife and her participating in my research. It seemed like he had overreacted a little bit, and I got the sense that he realized that as he was talking to me and learning more about my research, but we honored his request not to record. Always something new! He was fine with us leaving our bug traps up, but just didn't want us doing our sound recording, as that was too intrusive for him.
We headed to the houses of our previous 2 participants, and picked up the bug traps. We decided to use the night to drive through the next two communities and do our frog hunting. We heard frogs in spots all along the drive, which is interesting. We ended up at the end of one road where I was hoping to sample, but the road was gated and manned by a guard. We decided to chat with her to see if we could go through the community, and it sounds like they only have a couple of frogs (she patrols the area and has to report such things), and we'd need to get permission before going in anyways. We were cut short by her patrol station calling her, so we headed on our way. We drove through the two communities, recording where we heard the frogs, and then headed back to our apartment.
Time is moving fast, but we've been busy! Today, all we had to do was pick up sticky traps from our last participant yesterday, so we decided to do a bit of touring. I had read about "Turtle Independence Day" up in the Mauni Lani Resort area, so we got going early to check it out. We found out they were going to be releasing 5 honu (green see turtles) into the ocean around 10 a.m. We decided to walk around the park area for a while, since we were there around 8:30 (the event said it was occurring from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m.). We saw several turtles swimming around the shoreline, as well as a couple of eels, and a giant puffer fish. We also saw baby honos in a kiddie pool swimming around for people to touch. We asked about the turtle we saw yesterday, and it sounds like the shell was likely marked by taking a drill and then painting the number on it (sort of like filing off your nails). The mark only stays for a few months. We also saw a teenage mutant ninja turtle entertaining kids by making balloon animals.
When the time finally came for the turtles to be released, there was a long procession, several speeches (including senator Akaka), and then there was some hula dancing in honor of the turtles.
The turtles were carried out on a stretcher, of sorts, by local children. The turtles were then released by a number of different volunteers, some even decided to display the turtles before sending them on their way. A couple of the turtles swam straight from the release point, but the majority paid visits to spectators on the sidelines.
This is the 19th year of turtle releases from this point. The turtles are raised in the ponds next to the resort (they come from an aquatic center in Honolulu) until they are several years old and deemed ocean-ready. What a neat idea, and with great turnout!
Next we walked around the resort and saw a small hammerhead shark in one of their ponds, as well as another sea turtle.
We drove north to Lapakahi State Historic park, but the gate was closed due to the holiday. We sat next to the gate and ate our lunch and enjoyed another clear day of sunshine!
We headed south to pick up the sticky traps from our participant the previous day, and then continued to Kaloko National Historic park, to see the Kaloko pond, which we didn't see the other day.
We came back to the apartment and had some margaritas before grilling out an early dinner. We headed out for the 4th of July parade around 5:20 p.m. or so, as it was scheduled to start up the road around 5:30. We picked a viewing spot towards the end of the parade route, and enjoyed the show. There were lots of local politicians, as well as a man on stilts, a puppy swap, some religious groups, a 103 year old woman born on the 4th of July, a couple of bands, radios, and service men and women. Not much for floats, but was still fun to watch.
We also had a great view of the sunset over the ocean.
We planted ourselves on the rocks alongside the ocean, expecting the fireworks to start around 8. We were joined by a number of people, so we expected the view would be nice. Some young people started lighting fireworks, but they weren't the exciting shells (or "balls" as I call them) that are dangerous, but fun to watch... almost like a mini fireworks show.
At 8:27 p.m. (3 minutes before show time) it started raining. Not just a light mist, but a steady, cool, rain. We sat there, expecting it might lighten up, but no, it got even harder. I, unfortunately, left my windshield wipers at home for my glasses, so I had some difficulty seeing, but, sure enough, the firework show started, and the view was great. The grand finale left something to be desired, but they had some interesting fireworks, and it adds a whole new dimension to the fireworks experience when you are sopping wet!
We walked back to the apartment in the rain (still), and Seth wanted a photo to mark the moment. Of course, we had to make unhappy faces, though it was pretty hard not to laugh.
Today was our first actual day off since coming to the island, since we had no participants, and no traps to pick up (I did have bugs to take care of, etc. but that doesn't count). I made papaya, mango oatmeal, and did a little work before we decided to head out and try doing some snorkeling. We had been invited to a July 4th bbq tonight, but it was at one of our participant's houses on the other side of the island. So, we decided it was too long of a journey (and expensive with gas at 4.69 a gallon) for now, but we asked to invite ourselves over the last few days of August when we'll be back on that side.
We stopped by Snorkel Bob's for Seth to rent gear (there was stuff in the apartment that fit me), and then we headed down to Honaunau park. Parking was a bit packed, but the water wasn't really that full, and it didn't feel overcrowded on land either. We picked a spot and went for a snorkel. As it turned out, Seth didn't actually get a mask, as he thought I had packed an extra, so we had one mask for two people. I had some probs with the mask leaking, so I took a break and swam through the ocean while Seth explored. There were quite a few urchins near where we set in the water, which made it a bit tricky, but we managed. The views under water were gorgeous! We'll definitely have to come back when we both have masks, and hopefully when both masks are functioning properly. We snorkeled for about 2 hours before decided to head over to the national historic park next door.
We drove into the Pu'uhonue o Honaunau National Historic park and chatted with the gate attendant. She was impressed we were all the way from Utah, so I told her what we were doing, and she started talking about the coqui. She lives south of the park, and doesn't like the frogs. She thinks they should spray the whole island by plane to get rid of them, but she knows many people wouldn't like that. We chatted with her until another car pulled up, and then we headed into the park.
We saw a reconstruction of the Hale o Keawe temple, a game with pebbles called Konane, tree molds where lava flowed, wooden images, or Ki'i standing watch over the Hale o Keawe, the Heleipalala pond with a view of a work structure, as well as the Keoua Stone, which Mark Twain wrote about in his Letters from Hawaii, as it was a favored resting spot for the high chief of Kona.
We decided to head back to Kona, but were on a mission for a macadamia nut pie (and free samples) to have with our bbq. We went on a bit of a wild goose chase, and, of course, we went past the area where the pies were located on our way out, and when we figured out where they were, the store was closed. So... not to fear, we went to a grocery store, and checked out the bakery section. Sure enough, they had a "Gourmet macadamia nut cream pie", which was on sale (better yet), and we got ice cream (also on sale) to go with it. I opted for the pineapple coconut ice cream, while Seth went for the mocha almond ice cream.
We grilled out veggie burgers and ate on our lanai. Apparently the veggie burgers were a bit of a conversation starter as people using the other grills down by the ocean wanted to know what Seth was grilling. Who would have guessed. We decided to scoop up our pie, ice cream, and Honey Mac Nut wine (super, super sweet wine we'd been waiting to have as a dessert, per the winery's recommendations) and head down to watch the sunset near the ocean. Nowhere near as spectacular as the previous night, but still pretty. Was nice to see the moon come up as well, and not get rained on!
We watched a movie and chilled out for the evening.
Today was recruitment day, which means I try to put it off as long as possible. I decided to try out the three snorkeling masks in the apartment, to see if they all leak, or just the one, so I went for a "swim" in the pool. It turns out that only the one we took yesterday leaks- go figure. I enjoyed floating around the pool and watching the light bounce off the bottom in unique patterns.
We grilled out brats again for lunch and then headed out to our first community- Honalo. I booked people for the week, and got phone numbers for some who weren't sure of their schedule later in the week. It sounds like some frogs have been coming in on plants people are buying, and others are hanging out in the coffee farms surrounding the area. We booked the seven participants for this community, and headed a little ways south to Kealakekua, where we decided to try and recruit the 7 participants for this community as well, since they are in such close proximity with each other.
We recruited one participant right away, but then had several people say no, mostly because they didn't think there were any coqui in their area (just noisy birds, according to them), and didn't think they needed to worry about them coming. All of the people that I talked to that actually agreed to participate sounded like they had heard frogs in the area at some point, still did, or knew of someone actively taking care of getting rid of them. Should be interesting to talk to people from both communities. Hopefully not too many are "no shows" though this is the first time we've tried back to back recruiting like this before.
We had a phone message from the resident manager when we returned, stating that we needed to remove the beach towels from the railing on the lanai, and no clothes could be on the lanai. Hmm... does this mean we have to walk around nude? Curious, but I think not. I guess they don't want people drying clothes as they should be dried. Oh well.
I went for a swim while Seth worked on finishing his book by the pool. The sun was beginning to set, and left a pretty red hue on the ocean, while the sun itself wasn't visible due to clouds and haze.
We made spaghetti for dinner, complete with cut up pineapple bacon brats (we had more brats than buns), and finished off the Macadamia nut honey wine with pie and ice cream. Yum!
It sounds like we weren't the only ones to get in trouble by the resident manager yesterday, as Seth heard him yelling at some kids having fun in the pool, then scolding a lady for carrying a glass bowl down to the grilling area. I guess he was just having an especially bad day.
We decided to explore the other side of the apartments, since we hadn't walked over there yet, and noticed that there really aren't many full units here (with lights on at night). After our short walk, I worked on editing a paper, while Seth did more reading, before heading to sleep.