Since when are rainbows full-circle? And how much do they want for the car?! About $50 left in cash, that’s all I have after paying for the rental…

I have an hour before the classes start, yay! Talk about a productive start into the day. Okay, okay, let’s deliver some magic here for you in these sacred minutes of calm. (Well, writing “calm” is quite speculative, I’d say, when there are people mowing grass and someone playing the piano right next to me – yes, we’ve got piano outside, isn’t that cool?)

But what should I write about? I know!

What about finally continuing with my search for Aloha?

Let’s see, where we’ve left off. On the Kona airport, quite literally.

♥

After having to disembark the aeroplane for some unexplained and unexplainable reason, all the passengers are finally allowed to get back on board and we can take off with about two-hour delay. But, who cares? Seems like nobody, really. Even my brain is laying somewhere on a beach and sipping cocktails (I know, that’s so cliché), and so I can’t make myself care either.

We’re in the air for not even ten minutes and I’m gazing down into the ocean. Even from up here, I can see the waves. They must be really, really tall if I can see them from here, right? We’re flying over some thin clouds – I can still see the steel-blue water through them – and suddenly, there it is; a rainbow. But not some ordinary rainbow, oh no.

For as long as I remember, I’ve always believed that you actually can’t see any rainbows when you’re up in the sky. Yes, I’ve heard the myth that when you’re above clouds, you can see the rainbow like a full circle but I always thought it was something so rare that it would happen about once in every fifty years or so, if it’d happen at all. By no means have I ever even dared to imagine that I’d see one full-circle rainbow myself.

But here it was.

I must have gaped at it for quite some time because an old white-haired, white-bearded Asian man (with such a tan that even the celebrities who spend half a week in tanning salons could envy him) sitting next to me suddenly spoke: “What you looking at?”

“The rainbow,” I answer after almost jumping out of my seat (yeah, I get startled very easily). He stretches over me and looks out from the window.

“Humm. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, never seen one before.”

“Hmmm… Where you from?”

“That’s an interesting question.” We laugh. By now, I really sometimes have no idea where I’m from.

“Well, I’m from Japan. But don’t remember much from back then, so I think I’m more from here now.”

♥

It doesn’t take long before I can see the island of Kaua’i. Actually, it didn’t even take an hour and we are about to land again.

The top of Mt. Wai’ale’ale is engulfed in white but I can see the very top of Kawaikini, making its way through the layer of clouds, faintly. The island is… Well, the only word I can think about to describe what I see is GREEN. It’s everywhere. The entire island is just GREEN – and I mean GREEN as in all caps, probably double underlined and in bold.

And, well… how are the slopes of the long-inactive volcano so… steep? Sharp? I can’t even find the word that would be suitable for what I see. My brain is just plain overwhelmed.

♥

And it’s almost equally overwhelmed by the prize they ask for the car. I know that about a third of that is what I get back if I successfully return the car without destroying it but… well… What I have left is about $50 in cash and no more than $30 on my card (yes, I keep track of my money – you see here that I have to – being on a tight budget all the time is not always fun). But well… I can manage. And in about three days, I should get some money back from the first rental so, on the… last day here, I should be fine already. Yeah, “should” is the keyword…

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The previous Searching-the-Aloha article is HERE.

You can find all the previous (and the ones that are to follow) posts from Hawaii HERE.

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And have a day full of wonder! 🙂

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