The Beauty of Leis

I had a very stressful day the other day.  I had to fly our little newborn son over to Honolulu for an appointment with the only pediatric urologist in Hawaii.  It turns out that our son was born with a congenital defect called kidney reflux, which means that one of his kidney ureters doesn't work quite right.  He may grow out of it, he may need surgery.  We just have to wait and see.  

So I had to fly my little two-month old over for the appointment and fly back.  Needless to say I was pretty stressed out.  He's a very laid-back baby but I didn't know how he'd be on the plane, and in the airport, and in the cab, etc.  We've flown with our other son only one time and the return trip was a disaster.  He was great the way over, but on the flight back he decided he'd had enough sitting still and threw a full-on tantrum.  It was a night flight from Honolulu to Kona and only forty-five minutes long, but felt interminable.  The cabin went dead-silent.  We were those parents you hate, hanging our heads in shame and hiding in our seats as we tried to calm our boy.  It was awful.

This baby, however, was an angel.  It couldn't have gone more smoothly.  We made our connections and everything went well.  He tolerated the uncomfortable car seat in the cab, withstood nursing in weird positions in unfamiliar places, and endured being worn in a baby carrier for hours without complaint.  Although things went as smoothly as possible, I was exhausted by the time we returned to Kona and needed a treat.  There are two lei stands at the airport with reasonably priced local leis for sale.  I choose a pikake lei for myself and wore it the rest of the day.  That string of delicate little jasmine flowers gave me the little lift I needed.  

The scent of leis can soothe and calm and inspire.  They are worn and offered for many occasions and reasons.  They are a wonderful thing to enjoy while here in the islands, and to take home.  There's a plumeria farm and lei stand up the road from the Inn that sells incredibly fragrant plumeria leis.  I would highly recommend picking one up to have in your room while here.  For something more permanent, we have a friend who weaves gorgeous leis out of local ti leaves.  She gave me one years ago and I still have it hanging on my wall.  One year while I was living in Washington and enduring snow, a friend lovingly carried a tuberose lei all the way back from Hawaii to place around my neck.  It brightened my cold dark day considerably.

So when you're here please take note of the flowers and plants and leis... Many of our guests observe that there is something distinctive about the way the air smells and feels when they land in Kona and step outside: the gentle air is moist but not wet, warm but not hot, and smells of something sweet. This is the scent of Hawaii.

Christmas and New Years Bookings

The couple of weeks spanning Christmas and New Years is the single busiest time in Hawaii as far as tourism goes.  Ticket prices jump up at this time, and drop down again the first few days of the new year.  Normally everything books up early, and it can be difficult to find any last minute accommodation.  We even suggest that guests who wish to eat Christmas brunch or dinner out book ahead (most resorts do something, many small restaurants are closed.) 

We normally are fully booked at this time from about August.  However, we had a cancellation and still do have some availability.  To make a holiday reservation with us, please contact us at: info@luanainn.com  The last couple of years we’ve had guests actually see humpback whales off Keei Beach on Christmas Day.  It’s a fabulous place to ring in the New Year!

Keiki (Kids)

We are pleased to announce that on August 18^th our second son, Ryan, was born.  He is a beautiful, peaceful boy and we are extremely thankful. 

As far as the business is concerned, there has been no change to our level of service.  We closed for a couple of weeks following Ryan’s birth, but have since re-opened.  Guests can expect the same high level of service, great breakfasts, gorgeous grounds and lovely rooms as always.  Ken is doing breakfasts each day temporarily (normally we alternate days), but I’m out and about visiting with guests as much as I can and will return to work soon.

Speaking of kids, the Big Island is a very kid-friendly place in general and most places – including restaurants if you’re respectful – welcome keiki with open arms.  Here is my short-list of kid-friendly local spots:Fun places for young kids:

• Honaunau Bay (next to Two Step): shallow, sandy, protected water
• The big tide pool at Manini Beach (when the tide is right)
• The tide pools at the City of Refuge
• The playground at Yano Hall (on the way to Choice Mart, it’s the closest playground to the Inn)
• Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden
• Higashihara Playground (right off the highway just north of Teshima’s) with the huge castle (which is so cool you may want to go by even without kids)
• Pualani Playground: the new playground off the highway just south of Kailua, good to stop at on the way to dinner in Kailua
• The kiddie-pool at the public pool in Kailua
• Old Airport Park (North Kailua): pretty yellow sand, lovely large tide pools

 Good places to eat with kids:

• Manago Hotel: you can play at Yano Hall first then walk across the street when they’re calmed down and enjoy kid-friendly service and local-style family food.  Our oldest son likes their beef teriyaki and pan-fried local fish.
• Teshima’s: this is a family-friendly local restaurant and the first restaurant we took our oldest son to.  He had his first nori and miso soup here and has loved it ever since.  He also likes the beef stick and the ahi sashimi.
• Jackie Rey’s restaurant (off the Kuakini Highway) serves fresh ono and hand-cut fries for their kid’s menu fish and chips – you have to respect a place that does that! 
• BaLe (Kailua): what child – or adult – can say no to yummy Vietnamese noodles!?!

Our favorite places: Paleaku Peace Gardens

Speaking of secret places tucked down winding roads, Paleaku Peace Gardens is one of my favorite spots in the Painted Church/Middle Keei area.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts, it’s about a two mile run/walk from the Inn, or about a two-minute drive.  It’s open Tuesday through Saturday from 9-4 and also hosts various events and a wonderful Ashtanga-style yoga class Thursday evenings and Tuesday mornings.  Admission to the garden is $5, to yoga is $10 (please check the website for updated information). 

Paleaku is a beautiful garden and a very special, peaceful place.  You’ll pull down their driveway and park under some very old trees most likely filled with chattering mynas, then enter through a shaded walkway lined with interesting plants.  Part of the year, a crimson jade flower will be blooming above you.  You walk through a partially open/partially covered walkway and sign in, look at gifts if you like, use the restroom, grab an umbrella if it’s raining.  There will most likely be no one else around.  You’ll hear birds and the tinkle of little fountains and wind rustling leaves, but this is a place of silence, not a tourist-spot or heavily-visited botanical garden.  It is a peaceful place and its mission is to host/foster peaceful activities. 

You exit the entry walkway and head down a grassy path that ends at a brilliant white Buddhist stupa backed by a sweeping ocean view.  There’s a covered area with two Tibetan sand-paintings on the way (I saw the monks working on these a couple of years ago and it was amazing), and a green parrot named Harriet (Harry, for short) that likes to whistle at you as you pass.  The grassy lawn is bordered by some strange exotic flowers and deliciously-scented flowering trees and elegant cocoa palms.  A breeze blows up from the ocean keeping the grounds comfortably cool.  In addition to the Buddhist stupa there are other sculptures, a labyrinth, and a Galaxy Garden.  There are some very old, interesting trees here (a huge old strangler fig with massive above-ground roots, a bodhi tree), an orchard, and loads of lovingly-tended flowers.  It is easy to wile away hours here looking, strolling, listening, sitting, and being quiet.  If in a need of a quiet respite one sunny morning or one misty afternoon, you will indeed find a bit of peace here at Paleaku.

Green Luana

On the one hand it feels a little hypocritical to call ourselves green while living in such an extraordinarily luxurious house, but on the other, we do take seriously doing everything we can to minimize waste and impact.  This has always been our process, but it’s come to our attention that our guests appreciate this, so we thought we’d put it out there.  Here are some of the green practices Luana Inn has always followed:

• Composting of kitchen and yard waste 
• Growing food on the property and buying as much local food as possible, cooking from scratch rather than purchasing imported ready-made foods (like bread)
• Solar-heated water     
• Use of florescent bulbs and timed/controlled lighting systems
• Non-toxic cleaning supplies such as Simple Green and Vinegar (as much as is possible, although we of course use bleach for sanitation)
• Use of washable cloth rags for light cleaning versus paper towels
• Paper-less communication and marketing: we are totally web-focused and believe in a minimum of hard-copy advertising and guest communication
• Recycling – we sort and haul everything that is recyclable on the island
• Re-usable shopping bags: we leave cloth bags in each guest room to encourage guests not to use plastic bags because garbage is a major concern on the island.
• Clean water: we put Brita filters or PUR water filters in each guest room to encourage guests not to buy plastic water bottles.  Please note that these filters are for taste only, and that the Inn is on county water which is clean and safe.         
• No hotel soaps: every guest room is stocked with large bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and we use refillable soap containers with our favorite old-school liquid soap, Dr. Bronners, because it feels good and has clean, organic ingredients.
• No Styrofoam or paper in the kitchen: we are not fans of the typical accoutrements of the “continental” hotel breakfast, including paper napkins and Styrofoam cups of coffee.  We serve a hot, homemade breakfast at a beautiful table with linens and real dishes.
• Like most accommodations, we are happy to provide fresh towels daily, and we do a regular linen rotation for all long-stay guests.  However, between scheduled rotations we encourage guests to re-use towels to conserve water.  Please note that we aren’t strident though, and will never guilt-trip a guest (as we’ve heard some other B&B’s do.)  We have practices in place that work for us most the time, but our guests’ comfort is our biggest priority.

Clean Luana

Being a small B&B doesn’t mean we aren’t running things professionally.  We once had a friend who stayed at another island B&B which she described as “funky”, where she – in her words - was afraid to look behind doors and in corners.  There were loads of ants and a prevalent musty smell, beer bottles left out from previous guests and an air conditioner that made her wheeze.  This isn’t relaxed and funky and cool, it’s gross and unnecessary.  We take cleaning extremely seriously here (I admit I’m a bit of a germ-a-phobe) and follow these practices (among many others):

• Daily maid service     
• Guest linen rotation
• And yes, we regularly wash bed covers and shams - even pillows!
• Guest dishes through the dishwasher (not just rinsed with water or cleaned with Windex!)
• We sanitize: although we use white vinegar and simple green and other non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners as much as possible, we are not afraid to use bleach regularly for guest safety.

The truth about owning a small business

We recently spent some time chatting with a friend of ours who is a restaurant owner/chef.  We hadn’t seen each other for awhile and didn’t realize how much we needed to talk.  It’s a lonely, isolating world being a small-business owner, and it’s a major relief to sit down with someone who understands this and blow off some steam.

Here’s the down-and-dirty reality.  It may look like a dream to the outside world, but in reality, owning your own small business is very, very hard work.  For example, as Anthony Bourdain, with characteristic bluntness and humor, discusses in “The Nasty Bits”, for people who dream of opening a restaurant, the reality is – most often than not – that they will fail.  If it was as easy as swanning about the dining room in nice clothes giving out free drinks to friends and raking in loads of money, everyone would want to do it.  The young celebrity-chef wanna-be who is faced with boxes of onions to peel and dishes to wash and the reality of the heat and sweat and stress of a professional kitchen will not last.  He describes successful chefs who at times return to the “menial” jobs of prepping garlic or washing pots because they appreciate the meditative nature of such jobs, and have understood that it is these seemingly small, mundane tasks that actually make up the bulk of your days in a kitchen.  If you can’t perform these tasks mindfully, if you cannot find pleasure there, then you should not be in a kitchen.

Running an inn is no different, really.  As I was re-reading this book for the second or third time, this part about peeling garlic made me think about cleaning toilets and doing laundry.  It’s not uncommon for us to do ten loads of laundry a day and finish folding in front of the TV at nine at night, and to spend eight to twelve hours on our feet each – and I mean each – and every day.  And it’s typical to work seven days a week, with a day off every couple of months.  It may look like a dream from the outside, but being a small business owner – even in Hawaii or in a beautiful restaurant – is hard work. 

We’ve been asked with surprising regularity if this is “all” we do, and what our “real” jobs are.  To be asked this, after spending hours scrubbing and cleaning and mending and peeling and cutting and baking and washing and folding and ironing and sweeping and hauling and managing books and marketing and being on the phone and computer and running up to Costco and Home Depot and Lowes and baking and cleaning and washing some more and tossing and turning all night wondering how we’re going to pay our bills … I am speechless.  But, I try to take it as a compliment, that we make things look easy because we are professionals.

As our conversation drew to a close with our friend and we’d aired all our common complaints and stresses and fears, we returned without hesitation to the fact that we love what we do, wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Sure, it’s extraordinarily – if not obviously – hard work (you can forget weekends, evenings, holidays, any sense of security, and probably a pay check for many months or even years when you first start out).  However…we choose this work so that we could be with our kids, and raise them in a beautiful place we love.  We’ve risked much to do this, but we still believe it was totally and completely worth it.  We love it here, and we love the work.  Our friend is fabulous at his job, and his customers can feel this.  We genuinely love taking care of our guests and sharing the island with them, and we think that they can feel this, too.  We are constantly working to do better by our guests, to improve everything we do – from our website to our welcome book to our breakfast offerings to our marketing.  We have met the most fantastic people here, and it is our absolute pleasure taking care of them.  Yes, it’s hard work, but we wouldn’t be doing anything else.  Again, I think it’s like being in a kitchen.  It may be hot, you’ll definitely get burned and cut, people will send back food and abuse your waiters, your feet will ache, you’ll stress endlessly about paying the bills, but at the end of the day – or long night – when things have settled and you see how happy you’ve made your guests with your creation, with your vision, with your dream, you know you are in exactly the right place and wouldn’t trade it for the world.