Look Before You Sit Down in Paia

The condo we stay in is in Maalaea village. It's in between the ocean front and sugar cane fields. I love the semi-rural, semi-neighborhood here. Population is small and people mind their own business. You can sit in your jammies on the lanai with morning coffee and nobody cares.

You can spend an entire day on the lanai, watching the harbor, observing wildlife... doing nothing. There's a monk seal, a couple of eagle rays, a heron, jumping fish, mongoose slipping through the landscaping, geckos chirping, and brightly colored cardinals contrasting the green grass.

Everyone who visits my condo asks about sugar cane spiders, since the field is so close. I've never seen one, I tell them, but I understand they are very big and run fast. They must like staying out there in the cane, and that's fine with me.

One afternoon, Fran suggested we drive up to Paia, on the Northshore, and do some shopping. Maybe find lunch. We might as well bust a move, we've been sitting so much. So Fran and Judy and I drove 18 miles to the former plantation town, now tourist attraction. There used to be a big sugar mill here, built in the 1880s, and the population was once over 10,000 people.



Sugarcane and Red Dirt

 Most of those people, immigrants from China, Portugal, Japan, Philipines (in that approximate order) lived in camp-like housing. Eventually, as they prospered, they moved into tract houses in Kahului. The camps disappeared and the sites plowed into more sugar cane plantings. The storefronts remain, and are occupied now by boutiques, galleries, and cafes. It's very quaint, no ABC Stores here, like you see in most Hawaiian tourist centers.

Paia is a bedroom community nowadays. Commerce is centered in Kahului, but Paia is a nice place to live. Sugar cane fields border on the mauka (inland) side, and some of the best windsurfing beaches on the makai (ocean) side. People who live here know each other, and are very friendly toward visitors.

The three of us covered ground with enthusiasm once we claimed the elusive parking space. It's nice ducking into an air-conditioned shop in the 86 degree weather. Store keepers are good greeters, asking where we are from, and telling stories about how they came to Paia to stay. It's a hard place to leave, apparently. Some residents hold three jobs to get by rather than return to the mainland.

"Oh, look! Crepes!" I exclaimed. I love crepes. I could smell them baking on grills.
"And French wine, too. This is it!" My friends weren't sure at first. Most of Paia looks shabby and dusty because of the tradewinds. They come from the Northwest, remember, and the beach is just North of the main street. All around are those cane fields and that iron oxide dirt. You can sweep it away, you can rinse it away, but you cannot remove the rusty stains it leaves everywhere. Paia is authentically weathered. Old woodframe buildings have survived over a hundred years of tropical storms, termites, and sometimes neglect.

Storefronts in Paia, Cafe des Amis nearest

We sat at one of the shabby chic tables, and the server brought us a bottle of filtered water and three rustic glasses. Oh, that tastes good! Besides crepes, there are curries and sandwiches, but I'm focused. We will have a bottle of that Cote du Rhone and I'll have that mozzarella tomato basil crepe.

You know the food is good when it's on the table and everybody stops talking.

We paid the bill and left the cafe. Judy decided she needed to go back and use the washroom, so Fran and I waited outside.

Judy ran up to us a few minutes later shaking like a leaf. It's pretty unusual to see her rattled about anything, so it must be a big deal.

"The paper towel roll was empty, so I reached up to get a new one. This huge spider jumped out of it and ran down my arm! He's in the toilet bowl!"

Fran had to go look. "Yep. He's still there, and that's a big one."

Now I had to go look. Wow. He's as big across as a tuna can and not delicate. He was inside the bowl, partially under the rim. I walked to the kitchen and told a server about him, thinking he should be removed before the next customer went into the washroom. The girl shrugged and said that they don't bite.

The cane spider, or brown huntsman spider, does not spin a web. It hunts insects on foot, mostly at night. So the slumbering creature was probably as startled as Judy was. In it's sleepy state, it rested in the toilet where it landed, and unless aroused again, it would probably stay put until nightfall.

But I don't think that's likely.