Molokai-Day 3 (Finally!)

Well, it only took me a year-and-a-half, but here it is.  You may recall that back in November, 2009, I took a promotional trip to Moloka'i, which was generously supported by Hotel Moloka'i, which provided us with free accommodations.  I told you about Day 1 of our trip (which was mostly getting settled into the island and its mellow vibe) and Day 2 (which included lots of activities and the cutest dog on the planet), and I have been promising to tell you about my favorite part, Day 3, ever since.  Luckily for you, since it has been so long, I don't remember a lot of details, so this will probably be more pictures and less words. (In fact, this is an extremely photo-heavy post.)

We got up early on Day 3 to meet up with Bill, our Nature Conservancy volunteer guide.  Bill would take us on some wild four-wheel-drive roads and into the beautiful Kamakou Preserve, which consists of over 2,700 acres of beautiful rain forest and something I had never even heard of before, a mountain bog.  The end of the hike brings you to a valley overlook that is breathtaking.  So, let's begin!

On the way up to the trail, we stopped by this pit in the ground.  It doesn't look like much, but it had some fascinating history behind it regarding the sandalwood trade.  Be sure to ask your guide about it.  

Another stop along the way provided us with a beautiful valley view and a sort of preview of what was awaiting us at the end of the trail.

Finally, we made it to the boardwalk that marks the trail through the preserve.  Wow!  This is much tinier than what I had in mind!  

See the metal grid tucked behind this cool plant?  Notice how it is almost the width of the foot that is standing cross-wise on it?  Yeah, tiny.  

We walked through a lot of rain forest and saw many cool plants, like these:

Luckily, the tiny boardwalk did open up in some spots, like when we finally reached the bog area, which was beautiful, but nothing like I thought it would be.  It was a spectacularly open view and not at all full of swamp monsters and bog mummies like I was expecting. 

(Hikers, not bog mummies)

Our guide, Bill (also not a bog mummy)

There were still some cool plants tucked in to these wide open spaces, like this ohia... 

and whatever this is:

Pretty soon, it was back into the rain forest.

Wow.

Jungle-y.

And Dr. Seuss-y.

Finally, we reached the end of the trail and we were blessed with a break in the clouds for a beautiful, sunny view of the many peaks and valleys surrounding us.  It's so hard to capture, but this was truly breath-taking.  

After a nice break for lunch, it was time to head back into the jungle and prepare to return home.

I'm in there somewhere!

After this experience, I can't say enough good things about The Nature Conservancy or our guide, Bill.  He was full of information about the history of Moloka'i, gave us tons of information about the plants that  we saw on our hike, and even gave us a reading list in case we wanted to follow-up on our education.  

Funding is being cut everywhere these days, and organizations like The Nature Conservancy are going to become more and more reliant on private donations.  Please consider supporting them in any way you can.  Even if you can't donate, you can volunteer or even visit one of their projects and spread the word about your experience.  I would love for everyone to be able to come to Hawai'i and experience the beauty here, but The Nature Conservancy is active in all 50 states and over 30 countries, so even if you can't come to Hawai'i, you can probably find something close to home that will give you a whole new appreciation for the place you live. 

Molokai-Day 2

So, I told you about Day 1 of our visit to Molokai about 10 days ago. It was only a three-day trip (Fri-Sun), but at this rate, you all get a month's worth of Molokai!

Just a reminder that Amber (@tiabla)worked to set up a promotional weekend retreat at Aqua's Hotel Molokai, so our stay there as well as our dinner Friday night at the Hula Shores restaurant was free. Woohoo!

Saturday morning we decided to grab some breakfast at Hula Shores before exploring the island. I ordered the three-egg omelette, but with two eggs, and my husband ordered the short stack of pancakes. While we waited for our food, we enjoyed the peaceful ocean-front setting, with a great view of Lanai. Again, I didn't get any good pictures of the food, but there was lots of it, enough that Amber didn't need to order anything when she came down and joined us later. We had enough left over that she had a whole meal of her own! Luckily, @Melissa808 was more on top of things, and she got some good foodie pics for her blog, Urban Mix Plate. Please visit her post, Unplugging on Molokai (Part 2) to get an idea of what we were dealing with. This is no place for amateurs!

After all that food, it was time to visit the Farmer's Market! Where we could go look at more food! So, seven of us piled into a van and drove into Kaunakakai, which is the place to be on Saturday mornings. You can buy fresh produce and see wonderful arts and crafts from local vendors. Again, I failed to get any good pictures-morning's not my best time, OK?-but, again, Melissa came through! Without any coordination on our parts, she managed to get all the pictures I would have taken, so I'm going to send you back over to her blog, this time for Part 3 of her Unplugging on Molokai series. I particularly liked the painted gourds and coconuts-they're very whimsical. I grabbed a business card from the lady running the stand with the intention of putting in a link to her web site but somebody threw it away. I won't name names, but I think it was my husband. I did, however, manage to get a picture of what might be the cutest dog in the world. (Here I will dazzle you with cuteness and hope that you will forget about my lack of journalistic skills).

You can see how I might have been distracted, no? Now, I can't guarantee that you would see this same dog if you went to the Farmer's Market, but it might be worth a trip just to check. And now you forgive me for not having pictures of eggs, right?

After the Farmer's Market, we returned to the hotel so that people could drop off their loot and to reassemble for the afternoon's activities. Some people decided to lounge in the bar for the afternoon, others decided that a hammock was the perfect location for a nap. We (me, my husband, and Amber) decided it was time to drive around and check out the island. We jumped on the road and headed east, for a beautiful drive toward Halawa Valley. The road from Kaunakakai to Halawa Valley is 28 miles, the last seven of which are narrow, one-lane and winding. (Coincidentally, Hawaii's longest continual coral reef, just off the south shore of Molokai, is also 28 miles and accompanies you for most of the drive, even though you can't really tell from the car.) Since there aren't too many places where you can really stop and take pictures-narrow one-lane road and all-I was just snapping pictures through the open top of our Jeep. So, this picture is a little blurry, but it gives you an idea of where we were in relation to the ocean-not a lot of room for error here.

There are a couple of places that you can stop on the way to Halawa Valley. Puu O Hoku Ranch has a little store where you can grab a snack or some locally-crafted items. The thing that most intrigued me was the Pepsi Natural-I had no idea such a product existed, so, of course, I had to try it. It was good, but it reminded me more of a root beer than a Pepsi.

After our stop at Puu O Hoku Ranch, we continued on to the Halawa Lookout, a place where you can pull over and get some pictures. See the waterfall waaay at the back of the valley?




Now that we could finally see our destination, we were even more happy about our decision to take this drive. After the obligatory tourist stop to "Oooooh," and "Ahhhhh," and take pictures, we continued on down to the beach area.

From there you can hike around the valley, up to the waterfalls, but it is recommended that you coordinate with a guide as much of the land is privately owned. I've seen and heard a couple different pieces of advice regarding guides, so it would probably be best to check with the locals once you arrive on island. If you are staying at Hotel Molokai, you should be able to arrange a tour through them, and I would expect to pay up about $75/person.

We didn't hike around the valley, as we had plans for the evening and didn't want to be out too long, but we did ford the stream to walk along the beach for a little while, enjoying the beautiful setting and trying to keep our pants dry.

You might think I'm holding a fish in my mouth. I'm not. It's a Peppermint Patty, but it's not even my Peppermint Patty. My husband foisted it on me half-way across the stream, and it was already open, so I couldn't just put it in my pocket and it was too hard to hold it in my hand without getting chocolate everywhere and keep my pants out of the water. Sheesh.

After a beautiful day out in nature, it was time to return to civilization and check out the Saturday night jazz at Coffees of Hawaii, but first we had to make an airport run to drop someone off and stop to take some sunset pictures.

Just as Hula Shores at the Hotel Molokai is the place to be on Friday nights, Coffees of Hawaii is the place to be on Saturday nights between 6:00 and 8:00. Everyone gathers here to listen to some great music and visit with friends. There is a limited menu available and, of course, coffee, but you can BYOB. We listened to Molokai Jazz, perused the Coffees of Hawaii gift shop and enjoyed some red wine. The music was great, the female vocalist has a wonderful velvety voice and seemed to know almost everyone in the audience, and we walked away with a whole lot of coffee. Everybody out there knows about Kona coffee, but we've been fans of Molokai coffee for a few years now, so we were stoked to visit the mother ship of one of our favorite products. Bonus! Coffees of Hawaii is a member of 1% For the Planet, a group of businesses that have pledged to donate part of their proceeds to environmental causes.

While the menu at Coffees of Hawaii looked good, we were holding out for pizza at the Zagat-rated Molokai Pizza Café. While we were waiting for our flight to Molokai, we met a woman who lives part-time on Oahu and part-time on Molokai, and she works at Molokai Pizza Café and invited us to stop by during our visit. So, we did. Although the restaurant looked like it was in near-closing cleaning mode, we were greeted like family with big hugs and enthusiasm by our airport buddy, B. We ordered a pepperoni pizza and a BBQ chicken pizza, both of which were really good. The crust was light and crispy, and the BBQ sauce had an odd sweet flavor which might not be for everyone, but I liked it. We told B we were planning on a big hike the next day, and she said they could wrap up some sandwiches for us. So we ordered some sandwiches, which were huge! Also, they wrapped all of our pickles separately, which we very much appreciated when we opened up our non-soggy sandwiches the next day.

After an early breakfast, Farmer's Market, driving along the coast, hanging out on the beach, an airport run, jazz and wine and a pizza dinner, you'd think our day would be done. Wrong! We still had the Saturday-night bread run. The what? The late-night bread run for fresh bread from Kanemitsu's Bakery. You saw pictures of their day-time operation at Melissa's blog. This is the other place to be on Saturday nights. We had heard from several locals about the drug-deal-like quality of walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night, knocking on a door, and waiting for someone to appear to take your order, but until you actually go, you're a little skeptical. And then you drive into the middle of Kaunakakai, where all the shop owners have long since closed up for the night, and you start walking. And you think, Seriously?

Yeah, seriously.

Now, we had just gorged ourselves on pizza, and we weren't particularly hungry, and we were really doing this more for the experience than anything else (except Amber, who was trying to avoid being beat up at work on Monday for returning from Molokai without any Kanemitsu bread!), but when we got back in the van and decided that we should at least taste this stuff...you know how sometimes something is so good that all you can do is laugh with joy? Yeah, that's where we were. It's worth staying up until 10:00 for the bread run.

After that, it was finally time to return to our room at Hotel Molokai to rest up for our big hike the next day. We were afraid that we were going to have a repeat of the bar noise from the night before, but everything seemed to die down pretty quickly, and we were left with a quiet, relaxing night's sleep.

Molokai-Day 1

I recently had the opportunity to take advantage of a promotional weekend offered by Aqua's Hotel Molokai. They were hosting an Unplugged Retreat, a chance to get away from all the blogging, twittering, Facebook-ing, iPhone-ing, and texting that usually goes on in our lives and actually enjoy a beautiful place like Molokai. Our room was free as was dinner Friday night at Hotel Molokai's Hula Shores restaurant. We arrived Friday afternoon and departed Sunday evening. I decided to break this out into separate posts, one for each day, instead of one looong rambling post.

On Friday, we flew via Mokulele Airlines to the island of Molokai. Our flight was delayed and our pilot was a little snippy because when he finally showed up to escort us out to the plane, my husband had gone out of the gate area to see if he could get any information about our flight since there is no information available inside the gate. That's right, you have to walk back out through security to the little Mokulele counter to find out any information about your flight. Then, of course, you have to come back through security. So, just know that going in. Once we got in the air, it was only about a half-hour flight on our nine-passenger plane, and it was pretty smooth until we got over Molokai where things got a little bumpy. Luckily it's a short flight and you have a great view of the islands as you fly over toward the airport.

Flying over Molokai, looking at Lanai (I think. We might be looking at Maui, but I'm pretty sure it's Lanai. Can anybody help me out on this?)

When we arrived at the airport we went to the rental car counter (THE rental car counter-there's only one!). Here I have to give props to Alamo for their customer service. Both our pickup and our drop off were very pleasant experiences. The women who were working behind the counter each time were so friendly and made us feel like we were really being taken care of.

When we arrived at Hotel Molokai, we were a little surprised. It doesn't look like a traditional hotel, it sort of sneaks up on you.

The parking lot is in front, so it's set back just a tiny bit off the road, but it's almost easy to miss-it blends into it's surroundings a bit better than most of the giant hotels in Waikiki I guess. We got the keys to our room and found our Garden View Deluxe room nicely appointed. You can tell that the property is an older property, but they have done a nice job updating the rooms. I would say that the pictures on their web site are a pretty accurate representation of what you actually get. No magic cameras here! We also had a huge lanai (at least by Hawaii standards), big enough for a largish four-person table and a porch swing. Our main view was of the banana trees planted outside our balcony, but from the outer side of the lanai, you could see the ocean. Even though the buildings here are fairly close together, they've done a good job of maintaining privacy on the lanais. Here's a poorly-adjusted picture looking from our room to our lanai, but you get the idea. Hey, I never claimed to be a professional photographer.

The other side of the room, opposite the lanai, was all jalousie windows. This is great for letting in air-not all rooms have A/C-but not so great for privacy since ours opened up on the main walkway between the front desk and the restaurant, and there are no window coverings. Also, jalousies provide absolutely no insulation from noise, and since we were close to the restaurant/bar area, there was a lot of noise. This was the view from our room.

After we got settled in to our room, we decided we still had some time to drive around and check out the island before our dinner. We drove up to the Kalaupapa Lookout and Phallic Rock. As you might expect, the Kalaupapa Lookout looks out over the Kalaupapa Peninsula. If this sounds familiar to you it's because it is where the recently-sainted Father Damien did his work with patients suffering from Hansen's Disease (leprosy). In 1866 King Kamehameha V exiled people suffering from the disease to this isolated peninsula. Today, Kalaupapa is a National Historic Park. There is still a settlement there, but people are not confined as they once were. Visitors are allowed to the settlement, but arrangements must be made ahead of time to fly in, hike in or ride in on a mule. I've heard this can be a pretty treacherous hike, so research your options ahead of time if you do decide to go.

Anyway...the lookout was beautiful. It is surrounded by a gorgeous wooded area that felt very "Where the Wild Things Are" to me and, of course, provides an excellent view of the Kalaupapa Peninsula.

After admiring the view here for a few minutes, we walked back to the parking lot and headed over to check out the Phallic Rock. Because how can you not? What can I say. This is one aptly named piece of nature. How could it not have some lore attached to it? Just imagine you're the first person to discover this-you're walking along one day and all of a sudden, "Whoa. Hey, what's this?"

"Hmmm...my...well, that looks slightly...let me just walk around and examine this a little more before I make any final..."

(Running back to village) "You are not gonna believe what I just found! You guys gotta come see this!"

So, our curiosity assuaged, it was time to return to the Hula Shores Restaurant at Hotel Molokai for their weekly Aloha Friday Sunset Celebration. Every Friday people from all over the island gather here for music, drinks, hula, story-telling, general camaraderie, and, of course, food. What Hawaiian gathering is complete without food? We heard from many people that we talked to on the island that this is the place to be on Friday nights, and it seems they were right. By the time we got there at about 5:45, the parking lot was full, and we had to park on the road. We missed most of the hula, but there was music going all night long, and we got there just in time to wash our hands and go to dinner.

Before dinner was served though, everyone stood up and joined hands (good thing I just washed mine! I hope everyone else did too...); I thought someone was going to say grace, but instead the band started playing, and everyone started singing. Well, I say "everyone," but I mostly just swayed and smiled since the first song was a Hawaiian song that I didn't know. Later it morphed into another song, something patriotic, I just can't remember what. I think it was "This Land is Your Land." By the time I figured out that I actually knew what was going on it was over. Story of my life.

Dinner was wonderful. Our gracious host, Michael Drew, General Manager of Hotel Molokai, started us out with some yummy pupus followed by our tasty entrees which were accompanied by good drinks and followed by a rich cheesecake for dessert. I ordered the Huli Huli Chicken, which is the island version of rotisserie chicken, and it was perfectly cooked. It had great flavor and was still very moist. I didn't get any good pictures of the food, but @NctrnlBst got some good pictures and posted them in a slide show at the end of the great post he wrote about his weekend on Molokai. He also provides a better and more thorough explanation of our unplugged weekend. So, please head over to check out his post on his blog, Baker's Hours.

After all this great food at the end of a long week, we hit the wall. It was time for us to retire while the Unplugged Retreat raged on in the bar below us. This is the part where we found out that not only is our room not noise-proof, but actually acted as a bit of an echo chamber. It didn't matter. We were tired enough that we were able to sleep through the band, and the raucous laughter that continued well into the night and into the wee early hours of the morning, which I'm told was about 11:00 or so, maybe midnight. I think I'm getting old.

And so ends our first day on Molokai. Join me later in the week and I'll tell you about late-night bakery runs, amazing hikes and what might actually be the cutest dog ever.

Anyone else who has pictures and/or blogs from this weekend, please feel free to leave a link in my comments. Thanks!