We live in an oceanfront resort complex in Maui, Hawai’i.  We are the only permanent, and full time, residents here.  Of 196 units, most are timeshares.  About 50 are privately owned by folks who use them as short term rentals, and of these, several folks own multiple units and hop over fairly frequently to maintain them.  We often “sunset” together with them, eating ‘pupus’, having drinks and watching the sun set as the evening turns to night.  This gives us great pleasure, and explains my current diet of “ant wings and dehydrated water” before the next, much anticipated, visitors. Occasionally, when their units are all rented, our friends stay with us; even better.

 

Most timeshare folks have a week, maybe two.  Some are perfectly nice, though the, “Hi!  I’m an OWNER!”  is absolutely inevitable.  (I got it, you own I/52nd of 1/196th, Wow!  For that you get a welcome breakfast of orange cake, pineapple, papaya and POG and ….a spiel, a barbecue with tiny little hamburgers (though the singer’s pretty good) and an ice cream social…..Oh, also make-a-lei day coconut painting day and a ukulele lesson.  No thanks, brah!)  Many however, arrive with an attitude that has given rise to the local saying, “I’m on Vacation; I can do Anything I Want!”

 

I was writing to a friend after an encounter with a particularly egregious tourist and asked, “How could one be expected to mix with such ‘hoi poloi’?”  The Greek term actually just means “people”, but in modern idiom it carries the connotation of “rabble”.  I certainly intended it in that context. When Spellcheck, increasingly heavy-handed and intrusive, changed “hoi poloi” to “Hot Polio”, a new synonym for “completely thoughtless, brain dead tourist” was born!

(“It’s on vacation…..HOT POLIO can do ANYTHING IT WANTS!”)

 

 Meanwhile, since I keep hearing, “You really ought to write a book!”,  and I’m toying with the idea and putting some things in short story form or at least keeping them and not tossing my crazy stories away.  Here is the tale of “Hot Polio”.

 

There are some timeshare “owners” who stay for a number of weeks, but no one seems to get around to introducing us.  Just as well; they all seem to play bridge and honk their conks after the sun is below the horizon.  (See “The Pū”)  For some reason – and I never understood, or suspected this until educated by other “fee simple”, i.e. actual, owners – timeshare people deeply resent any privileges they suspect might accrue to fee simple, i.e. bona fide, owners.  There are precious few, if any, but my reserved parking spot is one, highly conspicuous, one.

 

As permanent residents, because I have handicap plates on my car, and there are insufficient HC spots for one to be reliably available, management assigned us a reserved spot, per ADA requirements.  The only reserved parking spot in the resort’s underground parking.  It’s a nice little corner spot, but not the closest, best, or most prominent in the garage.  It’s even hard to get into.  All the other HC spots are closer and any number of regular spots are as well.  The sign is a typical handicapped sign with the addition of  “Reserved for unit 372” below the graphic.  It’s not screamingly obvious, but perfectly legible, and set far enough away from all the others that you’d think one would wonder and give it a second look.  

 

But no.  Not infrequently we round the corner to jockey into our spot only to find it already occupied, and not always by a car with a HC placard.  After the second time we had to call Security to have them roust someone out of bed at 11:30 PM to move their car, we got an orange cone and began putting it in our spot every time we left.  A pain, but it worked.  Mostly.

 

One night we came home and someone was in our spot.  The cone was hidden across the garage behind a concrete post. (Dummy….Gotcha!)  Security rousted the 320 lb ‘Hot Polio’ out of bed and he waddled down in (only) his boxer shorts claiming he “hadn’t moved the cone”.  I was so disgusted I looked him in the eye and said, “Riiiight!  Someone else, with NO interest whatsoever in parking in that spot, just took the cone and hid it behind a post in the far end of the garage.  Man, I hate liars!”  He slunk over, slimed his way into his car, and drove away. 

 

Several weeks later, after a fabulous dinner at Mama’s Fish House, we drove in to find our parking spot open all right, but the cone well and truly GONE.  Stolen, not hidden, not in another building or garage, not left behind in a rental unit, not in the trash…..stolen and, we assumed, gone forever.  Strange, because, remember, we live here.  Everyone else is a visitor, staying a week or two, maybe three.  We smile at them in the elevator, ask if they’re enjoying Maui, and wish them aloha.  We don’t pick fights, (until the 6:30 AM conch blowing incident  of “Pū” fame, anyway, and that was weeks later)  We don’t cause any of them any trouble.  So this was strange indeed.  Security searched everywhere without luck.  We considered buying another cone and decided against it.  We opted in favor of continuing to have the bums hauled out of bed, and out of our spot, every time it happened.

 

  The next episode was an idiot woman who parked there without a placard and arrived giving the poor Security guard a total lambasting.  She then claimed we’d stolen the placard out of her (locked) car!!  We were with friends, and thus, witnesses to our innocence and, mind you, I have both handicap plates AND a placard of my own.  [Which placard, by the way, I had loaned (perhaps generous, by the way, but illegal) that very week  to a family of visitors from Japan.  They were total strangers, but I had observed them, obviously just having arrived, parked at the far end of the garage unloading luggage, groceries, boxes, bags, and a tūtū wahine (grandma) in a wheelchair.  I asked, and they had no HC placard of their own.  Parking on Maui, especially in crowded Lahaina,  is infinitely easier with such an amenity.

 

 Returning to the infuriated miscreant, by  the end of the her tirade, her placard became something she thought she “might have had”.  But nonetheless, the jerk later sent the police to our door to question my husband about stealing her “maybe” placard….from her locked car.  The police were on premises because they had already been called by the resort.  When Security couldn’t identify the owner (she also “might have” failed to display the required parking pass), they were going to have the car ticketed, a $500 fine!  She slithered out of that one but it alerted me to the possibility and I’m thinking faster now.  

 

The other day I parked in the underground lot at another resort and returned to my car to find that someone – no placard displayed – had parked in the blue-striped access aisle between handicapped spots, a generous 12” from my driver’s side door.  Entry was impossible except by crawling in across the passenger’s seat and center console, or risking a ding.  My blood pressure didn’t even rise; I made the call.  The police held my door so I could slide behind the wheel without fear of damage to either vehicle, and were affixing that $500 ticket to the windshield of the offender’s car as I drove away.  You may be able to do anything you want, but not necessarily without consequences!

 

The day after the incident with dragon lady, I went to the hardware store and bought two stick-on reflective arrows for the wall to point to the “Reserved for Unit 372” line on the sign.  We reinforced them with clear packing tape.  I foolishly thought that would be the last of it.  We came home three days later and they were gone.  We figured Security had objected and removed them.  I drove in the following day and some SOB had backed his Jeep into my spot…..no handicap placard.  I was loaded for bear and should have parked right across his bumper and left my car there, but it’s a  year old white Mercedes and there was an open HC spot right by the elevator so I called Larry.  He took photos and marched off to find security.  

 

Security was  P I S S E D!  They had not removed our arrows and which local or employee cared was a mystery.  None parks, or is supposed to park, in that area and we are on excellent terms with the staff.  WHY would it so annoy the Hot Polios – or anyone – that an old woman who limps around the resort, when she bothers at all, has an assigned handicapped accessible parking spot in a

 

In any case, Security took the license number and ultimately had the violator removed.  They are currently in a huddle to come up with a solution: bigger sign, striping the floor, striping the wall, mining the floor (Uh-oh……..GUYS?!!).  Meanwhile, we drove in from dinner the other night and . . . . THERE WAS OUR CONE!  We still don’t know where it came from; it had been gone for weeks!  I wrote “If found RETURN to XXX SECURITY” on it.  That might give the Hot Polio some pause…..or not.  Hopefully the cone-tergeist is someone with a weird sense of humor, not one who bears us a serious grudge.

 

 

Maui is an island under siege.  And I’m not talking about tourists this time.

I don’t believe that America is the force behind “Climate Change”, or that Mankind is the force behind “Global Warming”; it was warmer 500,000 years ago than it is today.  However, there’s no denying that, here in Hawai’i, higher sea levels  and higher ocean water temperatures are exerting adverse effects.

I live in West Maui.  When we purchased this oceanfront condo in 2015, it was 50’ from the breaking surf.  Now it’s more like 30’.  The golden sand beach now sports outcroppings of exposed coral, expanses of it running parallel to the shore.  Sandbags weighing a ton apiece have been stacked seven high, in rows of twenty, where that 30’ has dwindled to a frightening 20’ from our building.  The sandbags are fragile, and expensive.  The legs of the chaise lounges provided by the Resort are especially likely to puncture the burlap surface.  Signs have been placed on the sandbags asking beach goers to stay off.

We’ve lost sixteen beachfront palm trees to the encroaching surf.   A truly bad high tide can make beach access impossible, make the beach itself disappear in a matter of hours, and bring surf crashing right to the wall surrounding the pool, 100’ from the edge of the beach.

Naupaka kahakai (Scaevola taccada), an indigenous, salt-resistant, prostrate shrub, grows along the shore, separating the walkable “land” area of grass and dry sand, from the water-lapped sandy beach.  It’s vital as a hedge against erosion and forms quite a  formidable and lovely, bright green, flowering barrier, two or three feet high and as much as five or ten feet deep.  Ours was once thick, dense and healthy.

Unfortunately, visitors often don’t seem to understand how fragile our island home is and how sensitive to abuse it is.  They commonly use the naupaka to hang their clothing while they swim, to dry their towels, even to hang their backpacks and beach bags.  It’s painful to see where lazy tourists have ploughed right through this living barrier, crushing it underfoot rather than walk a few steps to a designated pathway to and from the beach.  The naupaka is now scraggly and thin with many bare branches, entirely missing in places where it’s succumbed to traffic.  Sandbags, once pierced, allow sea water to invade, the sand then washes away, and only a burlap bag remains, and accomplishes nothing.

In an effort to prevent such devastation, the resort has erected sturdy posts, and strung three strands of bright blue and white braided nylon rope through holes in those posts.  The ropes are strung along the shoreline, “mauka” (inland) of the naupaka in an effort to restrict access and diminish the devastation.  Signage has been placed every few yards for the feeble minded, explaining the purpose of the ropes.

While visitors to the islands often treat the land with disrespect.  Hawaiians profess devotion to the “aina” and to the ocean which surrounds it and on which all are dependent.  However, sometimes those of Hawaiian blood or just locals, kama’aina (the term means child of the land), whom one would expect to know better and care more, also commit ignorant and thoughtless acts that damage plants, and the land and sea and their living creatures.  We have seen both tourists and locals trample landscape plants, pick fruit on private property, bring living coral or shells from the sea (sea stars are a favorite), and touch resting sea turtles or even put their children upon their backs for a photo.  Swimmers chase them at sea, seldom winning the contest unless several surround one of the poor creatures.  While lava isn’t living, it is native and famously supposed to be left in place.  It is equally famous for bringing unparalleled bad luck to visitors removing it from the Islands.  There is even a special Post Office devoted solely to receiving lava being returned from desperate sufferers trying to reverse the “curse” the pilfered rocks have put on their lives! (Too bad! It has to returned in person to break the curse & anyone who has taken lava home from the Islands & suffered the kind of bad luck that has been reported to follow is desperate enough to do exactly that!)

I know you bring your good manners and eco-sensibilities with you wherever you go.  Not so many who can now visit “Paradise” for a mere $199, round trip, from the West Coast.  Some go over, under, or between three strands of rope.   Occasionally, a “hot polio” (See essay by the same name) actually cuts the rope!  They then trample the low growing nāupaka that protects our threatened shores.  Then they hang their “Save our Oceans!” T-Shirts on the nearest struggling Kou tree and head across the sand to the erosion-prone beach, oxybenzone-laden sun lotion, cooler, plastic bottle of water, soda, &/or can of beer in hand!

I’m sure, if they think about it at all, they expect that someone else will pick up that non-biodegradable trash after they leave so it doesn’t strangle a turtle, or endangered monk seal.  After all, they have to rush home and march against . . . I dunno, MY carbon footprint, rising sea levels, or maybe ……saving their marine wildlife?

Daybreak conking and purloining parking spots are the least of ‘Hot Polio’ crimes!

Please remember, when you travel:                                                                                            The places where you are a visitor, are someone else’s home…..                                     Their home is as infinitely precious to them as yours is to you.                                       Respect the “aina” wherever you go, the sea & all the world’s creatures as well.     Even if it’s noon at home, it’s the time where you are that matters. What you truly “own”, wherever you are, is not the “weeks” you bought, but your own thoughts, words and behaviors…..   Be respectful of others, not loud or obnoxious, messy, envious, grudging, thoughtless or mean.                                             Hawaii is expensive!   It is equally expensive for your server, naturalist, tour guide or boat captain. Tip well!

Paradise is only Paradise if we all act angelic!

“IT’S NOT WHAT YOU GATHER, BUT WHAT YOU SCATTER THAT TELLS WHAT KIND OF LIFE YOU HAVE LIVED!”

Don’t be a “Hot Polio”!