Makaha Nighttime Orchestra

Palms tree and Jupiter

One of the reasons I chose our condo in Makaha (besides the sea turtles) was because it is ocean front, and close to the water with a nice sandy beach in between. I wanted to be able to hear the waves at night and have them lull me to sleep after a log day of swimming and sunbathing. But things didn't turn out quite as I'd imagined.
I don't know if it's because our condo was so close to the water, or if the waves were especially big, or that the hole wall facing the ocean was one giant sliding door, but it was so almost unbearable!
The first night I tried to convince myself that I just needed to get used to it. The second night I tried to convince myself that I wasn't tired enough and wouldn't have fallen asleep anyway, the third night I lay awake trying to convince my ears that the waves didn't sound buildings collapsing on a 10 second interval all night long.
The fourth night I used ear plugs and covered my head with a pillow which worked great until one fell out at about 3:30 am abruptly changing the sound level, and then I sat up wide awake in a panic thinking the mountain behind our place had come down when an especially huge wave crashed on shore.
The fifth night I tried no ear plugs, and closing the door half way, but it made almost no difference at all in terms of the waves. It did however somehow enhance sounds coming from the other windows on the mountain side of the condo. Thus it was easier for me to hear the sound of a woman's blood curdling scream coming from that direction. In terror I jumped out of bed and went to listen, and discovered that it wasn't a woman but a confused rooster. It was 3:15 am. So in between crashing waves I was "serenaded" by a strangled sounding cock-a-doodle-dooo of a rooster who apparently couldn't tell time.
On the 6th night I gave up on the waves and closed the door almost completely. To make up for the lack of air circulation  we opened up all the windows on the island/ mountain facing and went to bed. Initially it was quite peaceful, but then around 2:00 am my loco rooster friend started in again. He sang his hoarse solo on and off until about four thirty or five, when all the other roosters in town decided to join him. I was surprised I hadn't heard them at all before, but then, it's hard to hear anything above the train crash that was occurring on the shore. I opened the sliding door to drown the roosters out a little. At that point my weird serenade was complete.Waves crashing, roosters calling, it was a cacophony of noise! All the while I was laying in bed staring at the ceiling trying to either a.) fall back asleep or b.) "appreciate" the situation.
On the very last night I cracked the door the same as the night before, opened the windows, but not all of them, covered my head with a pillow, and finally slept soundly....the waves seemed far off, and the roosters stayed quiet till it was time to get up and make the coffee...it was just how I'd imagined!