Hawaii Day One: We Don't Crash

Day 1 (Friday): The flight was cramped, long and uncomfortable. The seats felt like they were made out of aluminum after an hour of the five-hour flight. Drew paid extra for the exit row so it could have been much worse. As I was two and a half weeks out of hysterectomy surgery, my doctor was worried about blood clots developing on the flight and wanted me to walk around as much as possible. "As much as possible" on a full flight with tiny aisles full of flight attendants' carts is twice to the bathroom, but I squirmed enough in my seat to make up for it.

The flight from Honolulu to Hawaii was late and last-straw-like in its cramped-ness and its smelliness, but mercifully short. As we headed out of Hilo in our rental car aimed for Volcano Village, the exhaustion of the weird system humans have created for flying in metal tubes set in.

It took a few tries down dark, jungly one-way streets to find the bed-and-breakfast tucked away in a subdivision whose only condition of residency seemed to be German Shepherd ownership.

Luckily, once inside the gates of the At The Crater's Edge Bed and Breakfast (don't ask for breakfast) the dogs magically stopped barking, the birds started singing, and we were led to our jungle hideaway - a room rimmed with windows looking out into a perfectly-kept Hawaiian garden with ten-foot ferns, wild ginger, and all manner of dinosaur greenery.

Our lovely room, as long as you are not into eggs, pancakes, waffles, bacon, sausage, or juice.

Drew asked about breakfast and learned that breakfast had been stashed in the room in an Easter Egg sort of way. There was poppyseed bread on the chest of drawers, a bowl of tropical fruit on the little table, a coffee maker, juice in a little fridge and a very random set of packaged snacks in the armoire. Okay. Mahalo.

View from our room. Not bad.

Sleep and dream of volcanos.


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