Molokai

After hanging out with the AnD folks and seeing the screenings of THK and FTG, I took a week off with Junko to go to the island of Molokai. Amazingly, Junko has never been to Hawaii before and at only $300 airfare, it seemed like a good time. She chose Molokai as the island to go to because it's one of the least crowded.

I met up with her at HNL and off we were to Molokai on the smallest plane I've ever flown on, a single prop cessna:



These things don't fly very high, affording great views of the island:


Oahu coastline:


We rented an amazingly cheap studio on the west end of the island and quickly met some friends:


First day was the mule ride down the famous sea cliffs. It was raining fairly hard and we nearly rescheduled for the next day. Luckily, we decided to go ahead with it and the day turned out gorgeous.



You can either take the mules down, or you can hike your way down (and back up!) by yourself for free....except at the bottom, you must take a tour of the leper colony for $40 (the mule ride includes the tour and costs $165/person).

I can't imagine what it must be like to live with leprosy (in the old days...it's curable now), however, if I had it, I'd want to be here:


A local dude fishing at the nearby beach:


The next day, we did a hike in the Halawa Valley. It's not public land so we had to hire a guide to take us through. There's a shop in town that we used to organize the tour, but if you can find them, it's possible to hire guides directly for far cheaper (less than half). Unfortunately, I found this out in the little tourism kit in the condo after the hike. Ohwell. Despite bringing a full can of bug spray and reapplying about 8 times, I still got about 20 mosquito bites. Love is sometimes itchy.

Our guide Lawrence and his Taro patches:



Waterfall:


Junko and I tried to go across the river and  into this cave at the bottom of the waterfall. We made it across just fine, but a bat gave us a little warning flyby and sent Junko screaming off (not because it was a bat, but because she thought it was a giant moth).


Halawa valley:


Halawa Beach from above:


Halawa beach from below:



Back on the west side of the island where our studio was, were a few beaches, but none very safe for swimming because of the rough seas during the fall/winter. It was a little disappointing because this also meant that there weren't very many good snorkeling spots.
Papohaku beach, one of the longest in Hawaii and wow, there really are no people here on Molokai:



Sunset view from our studio lanai:


There really wasn't all that much more to do on Molokai except relax. Of course, too much makes Jack dull so we visited the local coffee plantation for a little caffeine kick. We got to try coffee fruit right off the branches. It's actually quite sweet.


Coffee picking machine. Apparently the way it works is that the branches go between the disc things and they vibrate and shake the fruit to the bottom where the little flaps convey the fruit to a bin.



I started to get a little too used to island time: on the morning of our departure, I got my times a little mixed up and ended up leaving the studio at the time I should have been already at the airport. We ended up missing our original Go! flights by a hair (the lady  yelled at the pilot asking him if we could still board). Luckily, only 15 min later, a flight by another airline was leaving and had room for 2. This flight was funny because they checked us in before I had even booked the tickets and right before take off, the desk lady came running out, tapping on the cockpit saying "Hey, you only paid for one. You didn't pay for your girlfriend!" Oops. I thought I told them 2! Fortunately, they let us pay at the end of the flight which allowed me to barely (just my luck, the United counter was at the very opposite end of the airport from the commuter terminal) catch my connecting flight out to Narita.

This flight was neat because we got to sit RIGHT behind the pilots and get a good look at all the cool flying gizmos.