Awake, awake!

Contrary to popular belief, roosters don't only crow at the dawn but also throughout the night. These handsome black and orange jungle fowl accompanied my jet lag waking. At 4.30 a.m local time I was reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel; historical fiction is generally not my thing at all...but a tenth of the way through I think I might like this. haven't read much since all the lazy hours we had on our cruise...then I really romped through The Help (brilliant thanks Lucinda!) One Day -a great holiday read and very funny and clever and some Kazuo Ishiguro short stories. And on the literary theme...it's fantastic to hear that Jason Wallace ( son of John) has won the young Costa award for Out of Shadows
Having now been in or on the periphery of American culture for over three weeks now, Im finding it a bit wearing at times...especially the food.It's loaded with sugar...we even had pre-packed whipped butter for our toast that tasted sweet! It's been hard to find anything Hawaiian...because this has been so fused into other cuisines;actually D and I had an Indian meal in Kapaa Thursday and it felt like home...how odd is that?! last night we did have some lovely local fish and shrimp and mine was on a bed of the indigenous sweet potato...which amazingly is slightly less sweet than normal stuff and PURPLE! makes for an interesting visual plate.

I've been a bit grumpy cos of lack of sleep and waking to cool temps and overcast sky...I had a HOT bath yesterday morning (reminder for future travels...always take a bath plug with you in showering nations..at least this place has a tub (note how I'm slipping into USese!) and I improvised with a full plastic bottle. And presently at about 6.30 am I'm sitting in fleece and joggers by the pool doing this. However, it promises to be sunny today and the temp gradient will be on a steep rise....a bit like yesterday when we saw the fabulous Waimea canyon and went from 52 -78 F in the space of an hour's drive.
Off to The Big Island today to stay with friend Charles Fogler for about 5 days...but to be honest we hardly know which day it is....
Still working on how to upload photos to this....that's my big project for the next few days!