Welcome to Kona!

Getting of the plane it was nice and sunny... and a bit warm :) The Big Island is about 4 times bigger than Saaremaa, it is the biggest island in US.  On this island, peak called Mauna Kea is the world's tallest mountain when measured from its sea floor base. The Big Island is quite different from Maui, mostly you see lava rock everywhere which makes it look quite dead. I haven't yet found any long sandy beaches as in Maui, when you find a sandy beach then it is barely 50m in length (although on wiki page there is a picture of one, must go there :) ). But just like in Maui it mostly rains on one side of the island :)

Hawaii Ironman takes place on the 12th of October, prior to this date there are various other activities and races and parades to look forward to. 3 Estonians will be competing at the Ironman World Championships this year: Marko Albert (pro), Indrek Teppo (M35) and Indrek Klampe (M40). In total there will be quite many supporters here from Estonia to cheer them on.

I arrived on the 1st of October - in the evening we celebrated Maarja's birthday with a nice barbecue dinner at their place. Due to jet lag it was a bit difficult to stay awake until 11, but we all made it thanks to the refreshments offered ;) I was warned that most likely the next morning I'm up by 5am no matter what, the time difference and the heat just make it impossible to get a good night's sleep. But I slept soundly till 6:30 :). The day consisted of a morning run and giving a swim lesson at the pool. Others wanted me to teach them how to swim butterfly, so we spent about 20 minutes after the workout doing the drills and getting from one end to the other swimming fly :)

It is just so hot here, if I'd have to compare it to something I have witnessed before then I'd have to say it is hot like in Vietnam. During the day we spent about an hour at the little pools by the condominium - with level 30 protection sun lotion on I managed to get a bit burned :) Lying in the sun is quite a challenge as it is just so very hot. Walking barefoot on the pool deck is out of the question, even though it is light colored surface, you simply burn your feet. For cooling yourself down you get to jump in the pool where the water temperature is about 28 degrees :) so not much difference of the outside air temperature - cooling down effect lasts for about 4 minutes after getting out of the water. What a nice place for doing nothing all day long :D

Pools right next to our apartment

At our condominium we have little green friends with beautiful round toes - meet bright green gecko's! There are some other kinds as well that even change color as they wish, but those are a bit more rare. The green ones are everywhere, on the deck and inside the room. In the evening they gather around the lights and keep throwing their tongues out for catching flies. This morning I was lying on the deck and one just ran across my toes and later came to stare at me while I was reading. As I write this I can see 3 of them around me :)

Our companions - bright green geckos

Birthday rally continued on the 2nd of October - in the evening we had people over for celebrating Aho's birthday :) Most houses and condominiums have nice big terraces to sit around all night. It does get a tiny bit cooler once it gets dark, but not much at all. Either way it is nice to sit outside with the jungle sounds all around you - crickets mostly. There is also one drawback about the nights - absolutely huge roaches appear. And they fly :-S Scariest thing ever. Geckos do eat them, but the roached are just huge, almost as big as the geckos themselves :)