Keaau is the one town east of Hilo that has some familiarity for me. Back in the 1990s when I covered high school sports on the Big Island, everything was from our office in Kona, making East Hawaii the most remote area. Beautiful place, but I hardly got there.
Keaau since has become home to two new high schools, and I believe another school (Christian Liberty) took over the campus of Haumana, which had been Henry Opukahaia School. Growth also means more development, more traffic, more restaurants. I couldn't find the post office at first, but a resident directed me to the site, which was a short walk away. It's the only green post office I've been to.
I left Keaau still hungry and thirsty, having skipped breakfast and lunch. Only Pahoa was left on the slate, and I had more than an hour, thankfully. I stopped by a mall on the way there, one I don't recall seeing in the '90s. I was about to enter a grocery store when a couple offered to sell me pastele from the back of their truck. I got two, and they were good. Well, one was. I never finished the second. There's a lot of stuff I didn't finish on this trip, but that pastele hit the spot.
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